With over 3.2 billion members and networks in over 200 different areas, LinkedIn is the most powerful network for connecting with industry experts. More and more people are taking their professional lives online by hiring consultants who specialize in social networking sites. Businesses and individuals are now looking for people with knowledge on the Internet, social networking sites, YouTube, and other popular websites.
LinkedIn has become a great platform for lawyers to connect with industry partners: employers, clients, and others. But most law firms do not know how to use this website effectively to generate leads and prospects.
Do you know your target audience? Do you have a strategy in place to reach the right people? There are many techniques that you can use. If you’re a lawyer and want to get more business on social media for lawyers, then you need to take LinkedIn seriously. It’s easy to reach out to the right prospects through LinkedIn, but you need to develop a good LinkedIn profile that helps your business grow. We have collected some tips for setting up the perfect profile which will boost your account performance:
Here we will discuss how to create a perfect LinkedIn profile for a lawyer and top strategies to boost your law practice.
Why LinkedIn Marketing for Lawyers is Worthwhile an Investment Grow
Across all firm sizes in 2020, the specific marketing channels most often used are LinkedIn (42%), Email (41%), Facebook (33%), and print media (21%). (ABA, 2020)
A survey estimates that 68% of people with a LinkedIn account were likely to use this platform to find a lawyer, and 94% would use it to research an attorney they were referred to.
According to the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Survey, around 76% of law firms are using LinkedIn.
How to Create a Perfect LinkedIn Profile and Law Firm Page?
- Use your real name, including a professional profile and cover shot: Starting with the obvious, you wouldn’t want your current clients to wonder if the profile belongs to you or someone else. When creating a LinkedIn account, use your original name or, in the case of a business, the page uses your law firm’s name. You need to put a professional headshot on LinkedIn. Don’t mix up your Facebook profile with your LinkedIn profile picture or business logo. Both are completely different. Your professional photo creates a first good impression on your audience, which has a long-lasting impact. You also need a cover picture for your profile. You can include a background photo of your office or a cover banner mentioning your core services.
- Write a compelling headline that summarizes your best attributes: Crafting this headline into summarizing your best attributes is a great opportunity to immediately connect with your LinkedIn audience. Don’t just mention your position in the firm, for example, partner or owner at XYZ law firm, this is right but complete. Mention in what core practice area you offer your services for. For example, tax attorney| tax and transactional services. This gains immediate attention and gives an idea to your audience about what services you provide. Another benefit is that when you are more descriptive about your services in the headline, you are more likely to pop up in the internal LinkedIn searches.
- Craft an engaging summary (about you section): LinkedIn users treat the about section as just a glorified space to fill, but the about section is more than that. The about section has a word limit of 2000 words. Don’t just mention your old positions and your experience. Add keywords describing everything in detail about what you do, and how you can help your audience overcome the challenges they are facing and segregate them with bullet points. Remember, the first 200 words will make your audience click on, read more, and craft an engaging pitch so your audience can become your potential lead.
- Add your contact information so potential clients can reach you directly: A potential lead landing upon your profile but unable to contact you, that’s not what we aim for. In your contact information on your LinkedIn profile, add every detail about how someone can contact you. You can include your office number, your email address, your law firm website address, and your other contact information, like your social handles on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Any other information related to how one can contact you?
- Add skills and endorsements: Someone endorsing you adds authority and skills and boosts up your credibility, using keywords to rank in internal LinkedIn research. Add skills, then ask your colleagues and clients to endorse them. You can add up to as many as 50 skills and your connections can endorse it with just one click. Endorsing skills show your credibility and act as a review for your services to your LinkedIn audience. A good way to gather endorsements is to actively endorse others and ask your clients to endorse you on your account.
- Be specific when listing experience and skills: By the time you reach this step, you would have already gained attention for your connections. This is where you need to be more specific and back up what you say by building credibility among your LinkedIn audience. Listing experience won’t just include where you worked in the past and location. You have to be more specific about what was your role, and were your responsibilities and include company logos. It creates a good visual for visitors. Stuffing keywords in the content of your experience section will also help you pop up in your LinkedIn search history.
Best Practices for LinkedIn
- Stay active by consistently liking, commenting, and sharing: Being present on LinkedIn is just not enough. You need to actively engage with other people’s content, too. Actively liking, commenting, and sharing will promote others to do the same and increase your brand awareness, visibility, and reach in front of others. Also, when a post is liked or commented on by someone on LinkedIn, it is shown in suggested posts in the feeds of his connections. This way, you have a wider audience and reach people.
- Share relevant content: It’s crucial to share regular content with your connections to build trust and establish yourself as an authority in the industry. Don’t post content on LinkedIn, which is not relevant to your expertise. Create content that interests your audience and is easy to understand. For example, you can curate guides, infographics, blogs, videos, and carousel posts. Also, you can host Q&A sessions, and webinars or promote your podcasts if you have any.
- Grow your network by sending a regular connection request: Another important factor of LinkedIn is networking. Regular networking is crucial for your social growth, send regular connection requests in your niche, for example, lawyers, or your potential audience which you want to convert into leads. Actively engage in group conversions and regularly post in various groups.
- Start a biweekly newsletter: This is a great way to attract engagement, if you are into writing, you can start a biweekly newsletter feature offered by LinkedIn. This feature is most underrated, but you can use it to its full potential. Newsletters on LinkedIn go to straight email with getting posted on LinkedIn. LinkedIn sends requests to all your connections to subscribe to your newsletter. It’s a great way to engage with your audience, and try to choose topics that are interested in and are in trends. Provide solutions to their pain points through your newsletter.
- Join or create groups: The easiest way attorneys can build their credibility and visibility and stay active is by joining groups or creating groups. This way, you are part of a larger, closed community. You can create groups relevant to your practice area and share relevant posts and information. For example, if you’re based in Georgia you can create a group DUI defense in Georgia if someone is a lawyer in this location they would join the group this way you can increase your credibility, and people start seeing you as an expert and a go-to person in your field.
- Consider advertising on LinkedIn: Organic reach is great and if that’s not working for you, then you can try your hands on LinkedIn advertising. With LinkedIn paid advertising, you can target your potential audience. You can target your ads according to location, education, size of the company, job title, groups, seniority, gender, age, and connections. You can put ads on 3 types; sponsored content by which you can directly promote content in targeted client news feeds. Sponsored InMail sends targeted messages through ads to specific people you are in contact with. Text ads usually have a compelling image, description, and small image.
- Set up a company page: We have targeted how lawyers can create a personal profile on LinkedIn in this blog, but your firm should create a company profile on LinkedIn. You would need a company domain email address and then simply follow the steps you followed for your company profile. With the company page, you can also set up a CTA button and track your leads.
- Use hashtags: Using appropriate hashtags is important, to gain more visibility and increase the post’s reachability. Although sometimes we might have felt they are irrelevant, they help to categorize your posts and help users to discover content they are interested in. Pro tip – if you don’t know which hashtags to use, go to the LinkedIn search bar and explore your options. You can also create your hashtags based on your main keywords.
- Upload your email list: With this feature of LinkedIn, you can send connection requests to all the people in your professional email list, whether or not they are on LinkedIn. You can do this by going to the connections on the middle left. You’ll see more options that are where you’ll find options to import emails. For more information, refer to this LinkedIn support article. Importing your professional email can greatly help those who want immediate boosts in their connections and connect you with your current and former clients.
- Repurpose old website content into new posts: Curating content from scratch can be exhausting and initially be too much for an attorney. Let’s agree with the fact that lawyers don’t have the time to create new content every time. That’s where repurposing your website content into new posts, infographics, or brief articles can help a lot in your LinkedIn content planning. You just need to rewrite from a different angle or spin the blog in a different direction for LinkedIn.
Summing up
So, there you have it. Use these tips to create your perfect LinkedIn profile.
The present day is the age of advancement. Lawyers can take good advantage of the advancement in technology. There are high chances that they will benefit from making a positive impact on their client base and, in the process, they can have the best exposure. They do not need to be worried or be tense about the potential problems that might bother them with LinkedIn. The main reason behind this is that there are several tools available on the internet which can help them create an effective profile page that is professional and can offer them better communication too.
To put it simply, social media for lawyers is an excellent way for lawyers to stay connected with their network, both professionally and personally. Whether it’s through LinkedIn or one of the other most popular social sites, you must use social media for lawyers as a law firm. An active profile will make you more visible to prospective clients, as well as advance your law firm’s branding. LinkedIn can be a great tool for lawyers, as it is for any business owner.
92% of people won’t read your resume if you place it there. Your LinkedIn profile needs to make a positive first impression and keep an audience engaged until the very last word. Becoming a networker is a great way to get attention from potential clients and employers. Be sure to create an interesting profile, one people will want to click on! Hope you enjoyed this blog. If our blogs were helpful, please leave a comment or share them with friends and colleagues. Want more? Visit our website www.mattersuite.com
