Social media is an invaluable extension to website engagement. It likens to lawyers beginning an important meeting with partners at work, but continuing the conversation over dinner then cocktails. The venue may have started out being at an attorney’s office, but the initial ‘seriously toned’ conversation became more enlightening yet still informational as the evening hours wound down.
Facebook extends your website’s ability to keep conversations going each day in identical fashion. Whereas your firm’s main site provide serious information to those who arrived via Google or Bing, conversations get more engaging the deeper one goes on a firm’s Facebook page.
The $10 billion-dollar platform was designed to enhance one’s outside life by bringing distant friends, relatives and coworkers into their daily grind by posting blurbs and pictures. Mark Zuckerberg designed it to have that effect. And, after recently overhauling their sponsored content algorithm, it can do wonders for your law firm.
Let’s see how attorneys like you are engaging users and building a meaningful social experience based on their Facebook goals which, in time, will drop their cost per acquisition.
Sponsored content, once overhauled in Facebook’s newsfeed, will reprioritize how paid posts will appear. Seems discerning for attorneys looking to spread messages to masses, but it’s actually forcing attorneys to refocus on engaging content relevant to their firm.
Facebook wants to see users edified by the content they read. That means not only will likes and shares be an important ranking component, but the amount of comments each post has – along with their relevance to the initial post – will be important. The frequency of posting will be important as well.
In order to stay relevant to Facebook’s organic content ranking engine, it’s important that posts contain subjects relevant to your firm, and those which would appeal to a greater audience. Upon the conclusion of your post, making sure relevant hashtags (which double as keywords users can find your posts with) are present helps keep Facebook’s news engine filled with content relevant to potential users’ interests.
As Facebook learns the frequency and relevancy of organic content, law firms will joy how they appear in their ever-evolving search engine. The higher firms appear, the more organic users they’ll attract.
Initially, paid to advertising on Facebook can be relatively inexpensive providing geo-targeting goals aren’t outlandish. Unless you’re a national law firm, Los Angeles attorneys will benefit greater by zeroing in on cities within Los Angeles County as opposed to the United States. Same would go with age group, interests and so forth. Once you’ve attracted a small following and begin engaging them, organic likes and followers will appear automatically.
As your following increases, so will your budget. Once you’ve grown your following to whatever you believe is strong enough for your geo-targeted area, advertising budget may tail off.
Advertising budget should always be indicative of your audience goals. If you’re looking at securing clients, you’ll probably want a budget with goals to yield one client per ‘x’ dollars spent. So if you’re geo-targeting 1,000 potential clients, you may want an average cost per acquisition of $35, or less.
Taking $35 and waving it before 1,000 people with only one person that day retaining you is pretty good. Los Angeles County, for example, has roughly 9,000,000 people – so potential is there with accurate advertising and flexible budgets to get clients often.
However, if your advertising goals are to only get people talking about you, your costs will scale based on your intent. Facebook uses a similar cost per click or cost per impression model that other search engines do, but again, your costs will drop with more engaging content.
Since 95% of our Earth’s inhabitants are using Facebook for a myriad of reasons, the social media giant has had to adjust the presentation of content along with its viability. With Facebook’s new algorithm changes, people that aren’t interested in buying new sandals won’t need to worry about seeing that in their newsfeed.
Engaging clients is something law firms do well. You’ve built a solid website and get excellent organic traffic, so why not bring that traffic to your social world?
Creating an engaging user experience will establish you as an authority on Facebook. Make sure your content reflects the image you wish to portray, keep your posts relevant to your firm, and always add relevant hashtags to your posts. By doing so, you’ll decrease your advertising budget over time as organic visitors will increase.
Facebook can work for your law firm if you follow their simple rules of engagement.
