Okay, so not every law office has a social media pro on staff. If you're part of one of the 45 percent of law firms that doesn't yet have a Facebook page, you may need to hire a Facebook marketing service to get your social media marketing efforts off the ground. Keep reading to find out why Facebook marketing services are often an attractive alternative to DIY social media campaigns for lawyers.
Why Not Do It Yourself?
If you're considering doing your own Facebook marketing without the help of any Facebook marketing service, you should ask yourself a few questions. How comfortable are you with social media platforms? Are you already comfortable with maintaining Facebook pages, including fan pages and groups? Do you know how to get the most out of your Facebook page even though recent site redesigns have changed what works?
If you're unsure, it's okay to get professionals to help you out. Facebook marketing services can help firms regardless of their level of social media expertise. Whether you're brand new to the social media world or have been tweeting and redditing for years, a Facebook marketing service can help you create a new brand srategy to get the most out of your Facebook presence.
When law firms start to use Facebook marketing services, they often express concern about how much control they'll be able to keep over their Facebook pages. You can discuss your needs with your Facebook marketing service, which can help you to learn how to control your own page or take the work completely out of your hands.
Using Facebook Marketing Services for Direct Ads
Direct advertising is one way to market your law firm on Facebook. Much like Google AdWords, this type of Facebook advertising involves bidding on clicks. Often, small law firms are intimidated by click bidding and cost per click advertising, so you may want to contact Facebook marketing services for help.
Using a Facebook marketing service for these ads can help you use current best practices and keep your bids as low as possible. Working together, you and Facebook marketing services can figure out the best way to talk to Facebook fans so that you don't have to do all the research on your own about bidding and targeting.
As you continue to work with a Facebook marketing service, their analysts will work to find ways to understand the visitor data you're obtaining. Facebook marketing services can then tailor their services to match your company's needs and what your customers want.
Using Facebook Marketing Services for Content Creation
When using a Facebook marketing service, you may want them to help you to create your initial design or you may want them to create a great deal of custom content as well. Make sure that you obtain custom content samples from any Facebook marketing services that you use, because there can be big differences to the quality levels offered by different companies.
While a Facebook marketing service can certainly do a great deal of custom content work for your firm, it's also important to create some original content yourself, about local topics you have a high level of expertise with. Authority counts in today's web world, and you'll get much further if you're able to give real legal advice and offer tips, not just content that may appear generic.
Using Facebook Marketing Services for Analytics
A lot of people at law offices would like to leave the tough math back in the classroom. If this is the case at your firm, you may not want to do your own analytics. In fact, you may even be asking what analytics are.
Analytics basically refers to looking at the results of your firm's marketing efforts and guiding new advertising based on the results of the analysis. If you're not using analytics yet, Facebook marketing services can help you work out the details. Your Facebook marketing service can put analytics research into plain English so that you can start to design your social media presence based on real world data from your own clients.
Using Facebook Marketing Services for Redesign
What do you do if you've already got a Facebook page, but it's not generating many fans or much traffic? Hiring a Facebook marketing service can help you identify what's working and what's not, so that you can do a complete overhaul.
With Facebook's new interface, Timeline, now implemented sitewide, you can use a Facebook marketing service to help you craft a brand narrative based on the history of actual events in your firm's history. You can now make Timeline work for you, especially if you're part of an established law firm that has some big wins to its name.
Your Facebook marketing service can also work on your presentation with images and video. Many of these services will offer video packages that help you create potentially viral videos for your law firm. If you're going the viral video route, remember: funny works, but only if you don't look unprofessional.
Using Facebook Marketing Services for Social Media Integration
While you may want to use a specialized Facebook marketing service for exclusively B2B marketing, you may also want to integrate LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media platforms. Maintaining a consistent brand image across platforms with very different cultures and norms can be tricky—Facebook marketing services can take the guesswork out.
When you're redesigning your Facebook pages, you can look at options for marketing your firm including use of video and blogs. These can lead to your content being shared and linked, which is a great way to get better search engine results for your firm.
Although some kinds of social media integration can seem like they'd lead to less work for your firm, be careful when mixing Facebook and Twitter. Although Facebook can display tweets as soon as you've written them, these kinds of posts are often regarded as spammy and oversaturated by Facebook aficionados.