Solo/Small Firm March 2022

LinkedIn Marketing

Five tips to help you build your brand

Written by Amanda Ravandi

Professionals and businesses are now experiencing more opportunities to build their brands on LinkedIn. What does this mean for your law firm? When done correctly, your law firm’s LinkedIn page can generate tremendous exposure, build relationships with potential clients and referral sources, and even drive abundant traffic to the firm’s website. Follow the simple steps below to start building your law firm’s brand on LinkedIn.

Start With a Strategy
Define specific goals for LinkedIn marketing, identify your target audience, and build your content around those key factors. Examples of goals to set for building your brand include:

• Increasing reach and exposure;

• Building professional connections;
  and

• Driving traffic to your website.

Remember that the key to success in any marketing strategy, especially when it comes to social media, is understanding who your audience is and coming up with a tactical plan to answer their questions, address their pain points, and to otherwise give them what they need and want.

Optimize
Now that your goals are established, make sure your law firm’s company page is optimized and ready for the attention that will be coming its way.¹ Your LinkedIn page is one of a law firm’s most important digital assets and should portray a level of professionalism that is in line with your company brand and values. Follow this checklist to guarantee your page is primed and ready to go:

• Page overview is complete with a brief but informative description that uses valuable keywords;²

• Profile and banner image are uploaded, look professional, and are properly sized;

• Contact information, including the firm’s website, phone number, and email address, is accurate and up to date;

• Followed hashtags are relevant to the firm’s practice areas; and

• Employees have added it (and thus linked to it) in their individual profiles under “Experience.”

Create
The foundation for content published on your page will be the law firm’s website and blog; however, before sharing updates, consider:

• What will resonate with your target audience (think about what questions clients frequently ask or what updates your followers should be informed of);

• What topics are current and relevant to your practice areas; and

• What will be useful to your audience.

Create a content calendar based around these questions with the idea that the number one rule for content is to give the people what they want. Focus on sharing high-quality content each week and sticking to a consistent schedule. Content doesn’t just mean text—videos, long-form posts, and/or infographics, among other forms of media, are also worth creating and sharing.

Participate
Being an active participant on other pages as well as your own can lead to more views on and engagement with your company page and even more traffic to your website. If you receive comments on your updates, be sure to respond in a timely manner. Join groups that pertain to your law firm and go the extra mile and participate in group discussions to build your credibility and develop relationships.

Analyze
Two more critical steps in a marketing strategy are analyzing the competition and evaluating your own work. It is not enough to post high-quality updates on your page, you must also measure how it performs using LinkedIn Analytics.

Learn how your content is performing under the “updates” section of analytics. Here you will find data such as impressions, social actions, click-through rates, and more. Make note of what is performing well and what isn’t to determine what your audience is actually consuming and appreciating so that you can adjust your strategy moving forward.

Under the “Companies to track” feature, you can get an idea of what law firms the network perceives to be your competition. Find out whether these law firms are posting the same types of articles or blogs, and if so, how can you set your law firm apart. Taking a step back to assess not only your own work but also the work of other law firms will help you refine future content while also giving your firm the edge it needs to stand out. ^TBJ

This article, which was originally published on the Stacey E. Burke blog, has been edited and reprinted with permission.

AMANDA RAVANDI is the social media marketing manager at Stacey E. Burke. She focuses her work exclusively on social media strategy and implementation. Always envisioning creative new ideas to
expand law firms’ social presence, Ravandi spends her days keeping up to date on the newest trends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and YouTube.