The Four Pillars of Social Media Legal Marketing

Anthony Castelli posted the following questions on the LinkedIn Trial Networks Group: How do you use linkedin to get personal injury or workers compensation cases? Especially for your geographica area. I think LinkedIn is a difficult platform to use to drive PI/WC clients to your firm. More appropriately, in my humble opinion, is that it has to be part of your broader social media marketing program. I am in the process of developing my program using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and my blog (blog.tyralawfirm.com). I think you really need to do all four, something akin to the four pillars of online marketing. It is the blog (again – in my humble opinion) that is key to driving clients to your firm because it is there that you can give them the most value and expose them to the breadth of your knowledge in your practice area. So the analogies that I like to think of are these:

1. Twitter is the equivalent of talking with friends at the bar or over the fence in your backyard. It is here that you get the word out as to what you do and let people know of your practice. But more importantly, it is where you direct them to visit your blog. You do that with hooks regarding your recent blog posts that they may find informative or interesting.
2. Facebook takes it just a bit further in that you can more directly interact with friends, neighbors, classmates, etc. who may become clients. Here to you can promote your blog posts but you want to be judicious in doing so.
3. LinkedIn is the larger professional networking experience – something like going to your bar association meeting. Here you connect with others in your industry and use that knowledge to form relationships that hopefully lead to referrals. By the way, it is a great method for finding expert witnesses.
4. Your blog is what pulls it all together. Here you can teach, inform, inspire, lead, make rain – the possibilities are endless. But you have to have something to say, you have to provide value to your readers, and you have to let people know that your blog exists (see items 1-3).

Can it be time consuming? Absolutely. But I think if you manage it properly the potential far outweighs the risk. And in terms of return on investment, no other form of advertising in my opinion gives you the potential footprint and ability to speak directly to your client base as do these new social media platforms.