There is one question that virtually every attorney asks when the topic of social media comes up. That question is -”how is it going to get me cases?” That’s certainly a fair question. However, most attorneys don’t like the answer. In this video, I have tried to explain the potential for a well run social media program. I have also set some ground rules which include – you must participate to play. Social media is not like advertising where you can just pay to play.

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.

I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of buzz about social media. And for many attorneys, it’s not something they want to try. And that’s fine, if you’re finishing out your career and anticipate that your firm will just live off the work that you have generated from TV for a few more years and then close the doors. For some, that makes sense. Let’s face it, many of the powerhouse firms made their money in TV and have a full inventory of cases that will provide a steady stream of income for several more years. If you’re made your fortune and expect to retire in a few years after closing the doors on the business, I don’t see the need to get involved in social media.

However, if you want to sell the business, or create a future for the business, then you better start learning about social media. It’s here to stay and it is the way the world communicates these days. Here are a few great resources to help you get oriented to social media:

Mari Smith is one of my favorite social media guru’s. Start following her and learn all you can from her.
The Social Media Examiner is another great resource. They are also the ones that do the Facebook Success Summit.
I like Don Crowther as well. He is probably the premiere social media guru out there right now.
Paul Colligan is a great resource for understanding how to create a content marketing system.
Mike Koenigs is my favorite guru of all time. I have learned so much from Mike. He is brilliant!

There are plenty of others out there and learning about social media is well worth your time. Remember, the days of paying to play are coming to an end. In today’s world you have to participate to play and to do so you need to spend some time educating yourself and your time to this new topsy turvy landscape.

Doug Frisbie is the Toyota national marketing manager that took over right before their crisis. He said something that I think is really profound: “The price of inactivity is greater than the risks of anything we’d be doing in social media.”

In talking with lawyers across the country I still see a great reluctance to embrace social media and undoubtedly a lot of it is rooted in fear. The fear is that they will be criticiized or that their social media efforts will have a negative impact on their brand. If you have these thoughts, I encourage you to ponder what Mr. Frisbie said: “The price of inactivity is greater than the risks of anything we’d be doing in social media.”

Last year I remember speaking about the fact that as attorneys and small business owners we need to be publishers. And that is still very much the case. We all want online visiblity and the way to achieve that is by creating and strategically distributing great content. But let’s face it, creating original content consistently can be daunting.

In comes the digital content curator. I consider myself to be a curator. What that means is that I endeavor to filter and organize quality content from many credible sources in a manner that provides my clients/attorneys with succinct summaries that are most relevant to them. Phew! That’s a mouthful! But the fact is that in an age of information overload, there is no ONE authority source for any topic. There are many credible authority sources for every topic and so as curators our challenge is to filter and organize. And the biggest value in all of that is – it saves the end user hours and hours of time.

I recently did a one hour webinar on digital content curation. You can watch it below.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Have you heard that? I know I have many times and for the most part I have agreed with that. However, the landscape has changed in the last year or so and frankly, there is a lot of opportunity in this new media world to implement strategies that just can’t be conclusively measured.

The brand building and top of mind awareness that can result from a strong social media program are very difficult to measure. Because of that, some firms abandon them and prefer to stay with 100% traditional direct response mass media marketing.

In my opinion that’s a lot of missed opportunity. Social media is here to stay whether or not you can directly measure it. So, for those of you that are embracing new media strategies and learning to navigate this new landscape – bravo to you. You will be standing at the end of the day when your competitors fall as traditional mass media strategies become less and less impactful as compared to online video, social media and mobile campaigns that are embraced by the visionaries.

I was reading a blog post by one of my favorite marketing guru’s Seth Godin this morning and here is what he had to say:

Ralph Lauren is a billion dollar brand. Totally unmeasurable. So are Revlon, LVMH, Donald Trump, Andersen Windows, Lady Gaga and hundreds of other mass market brands.

There are two things you should never do:

1. Try to measure unmeasurable media and use that to make decisions. You’ll get it wrong. Sure, some sophisticated marketers get good hints from their measurements, but it’s still an art, not a science.
2. Compromise on your investment. Small investments in unmeasurable media almost always fail. Go big or stay home.

If you want to read the post you can find it here: Seth Godin Post

In these short videos you will be introduced to what we believe is a unique and powerful turn-key legal marketing system.

One of the ways to really make your social media sites and pages stand out is to customize the graphics on them. In this tutorial video you will learn about the various sizes and specs for creating custom pages.

Location based social media is growing rapidly and foursquare is probably the most popular of all such sites. I joined about 3 months ago and was so proud when I became the Mayor of my favorite Starbucks. The other day, one of my employees told me that he is trying to replace me as the Mayor of my own business and I was delighted because that means he is checking in regularly which means more visibility for us.

If you are unfamiliar with foursquare, you might want to watch the video below where the co-founder of the company explains how he uses foursquare.