I am often asked by attorneys where to get started with social media. Many lawyers find social media overwhelming and they just don’t know where to dig in.

I believe there are 7 core components that must be part of a basic social media plan.

First, facebook is the epicenter of social media right now. You have to have a strong presence on facebook to be taken seriously. That means you need a page with professional graphics, a landing page, critical mass and a plan for regular updates.

Next, I suggest that you turn your sights to YouTube. If you are not currently producing web videos on a regular basis, you need to be. Technology costs are so modest that you can literally purchase a small HD equipment package for a few hundred dollars. I would look on amazon.com and order the Kodak Zi8 along with an external microphone, a high speed sdhc card and a table top tripod. That will give you full 1080p HD video. You also need to have an editor so that you can make your videos look a little bit polished. Or you can use a program like iMovie or Vegas Movie Studio and do your editing in house. I’m certain you can find a teenager that could handle this for you quite capably for $10 ro $12/hr.

A content creation plan is no longer optional. The way to get online visibility is through great content so you have to be creating great content on a consistent basis. One of the easiest ways to do this is by creating short 90 second videos faqs. Have a member of your team make a list of the top 10 questions you get from clients. Then put an attorney with some screen presence in front of your camera and have him/her answer them. A little bit of editing and you have a series of 10 videos faqs that can be used on YouTube, facebook, repurposed as a podcast, blog posts, articles, etc. It’s not difficult but it requires the ability to take action rapidly and consistently.

It’s not enough to create the content, you also have to have a content distribution plan. You should be distributing your content on multiple platforms. We live in a world of thousands of media options and people like to consume content multiple ways. You need to accommodate as many as possible by repurposing your content many ways.

We used to talk about list building. We now call it tribe building. You want to be constantly working at capturing contact information on people that have chosen you or asked for information from you. This can be done by setting up landing pages, using email blasts, newsletter opt in offers, running various campaigns, etc.

The sixth step of our seven step integrated social media plan is to include a mobile aspect of everything you do. This can be as simple as creating 2D barcodes for your campaigns. You may also want to set up sms campaigns. You can build a mobile website using software such as mobitsitegalore for about $50.

And finally, you need to be tracking key metrics for everything you do. This is an area that many law firms overlook. I am a fanatic about tracking and when I ask my attorney clients about tracking they will say things like – everything seems to be working ok. But when we break it all down, often everything is far from ok. You must be tracking your cost per call, cost per case and conversion ratios on everything you do.

If you will put a seven step plan like this in place you will be setting yourself above most of your competition.