Should Attorneys Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?
By Stephen Fairley on May 3, 2012 in Legal Marketing, Social Media
While digging into the data from Social Media Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, I was particularly interested to see that in the past three years, outsourced social media marketing for attorneys has grown from 14% in 2010 to 28% in 2011 to 32% in 2012. Thankfully, we have seen the benefits of that growth, as have some others in the law firm marketing sector.
So should busy attorneys outsource their social media marketing? Ask yourselves these questions before you decide:
1. Can social media marketing drive your business growth? It doesn’t make sense to spend time and money on something that won’t have a positive impact on your practice. When considering participation in social media, attorneys should study their target markets first to see if this is a medium they can engage them on.
2. How well is your social media working today? If you’ve already launched a social media initiative as part of your law firm marketing program, how’s it going? Are you finding enough time to engage online with potential clients? Or is it a chore that you dread facing each day? If it’s the latter, and social media is important to you, you should consider outsourcing it.
3. Could outsourcing free up your time to focus on your business? Social media takes time, and small firms and solos usually don’t have much of that to devote to something other than client work and running the business. If all your time is taken up with focusing on what you can’t outsource, you should consider outsourcing your social media to someone who can be just as effective at it – or more – than you are.
4. How do you measure ROI? Make sure you have measurable goals if and when you outsource your social media so you can see if you’re getting the bang you want for your buck. When you interview a legal marketing company, be sure they meet these criteria:
- They can point to other attorneys they work with;
- They have a written blueprint for how they intend to generate leads for your law firm;
- They clearly integrate blogs and social media and see one as an extension of the other;
- They charge a flat fee that’s reasonable based on results;
- They have clearly identified strategies to track and measure actual results from your blog and social media.
And a note of caution: if you choose to outsource your social media program, make sure your choice has experience working with attorneys. Keeping you “clean” in terms of the ethical standards attorneys are required to adhere to in their law firm marketing practices is critical.
About the Author: Stephen Fairley is the CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, the nation’s largest law firm marketing company specializing in lead conversion for small law firms and solo practitioners. Over 8,000 attorneys nationwide have benefited from learning and implementing the proven marketing and lead conversion strategies taught by The Rainmaker Institute. In addition, Stephen is a nationally recognized law firm marketing expert and international best-selling author.
About Stephen Fairley
Stephen Fairley is the CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, the nation's largest law firm marketing company specializing in lead conversion for small law firms and solo practitioners. Over 8,000 attorneys nationwide have benefited from learning and implementing the proven marketing and lead conversion strategies taught by The Rainmaker Institute. In addition, Stephen is a nationally recognized law firm marketing expert and international best-selling author.
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Comments (4)
Hi Stephen, I’m curious how you get around Bar rules pertaining to ONLY lawyers posting on their own or the firm’s social media platforms. If every message and interaction (according to WA State Bar) must be at least approved by a licensed lawyer, then how does that save the busy lawyer time if you have to run every post, entry, and reply by them?
Richard,
Thanks for your comments. I’m glad you’re thinking about these types of questions and it helps to clarify what the rules are. Actually, I am not aware of any bar rules that specifically require lawyers to be “the only person posting to their social media accounts or writing their blog posts.”
What the bar rules state is that an attorney is “responsible” for whatever is communicated on their behalf–whether it’s online or offline.
This is no different than asking, “How can you have anyone other than the attorney answer the phone because the attorney is responsible for everything their staff says to potential clients?” Just as no bar requires only attorneys to answer their phone, likewise no bar requires only attorneys to blog or post to their online social media platforms. This becomes a training issue. Whoever is communicating on your behalf, whether it’s on Facebook, your blog or over the phone, must be trained how to do so in a professional and ethical manner.
The bar does hold you responsible for the communication that’s done on your behalf and that’s why it’s so important to be very careful who you outsource or delegate those tasks to. You want to be sure they have extensive experience working with law firms and they are very familiar with what you can and cannot say to a prospect. I get very nervous when attorneys tell me they “saved a lot of money” by hiring a part time college student to manage all their social media, instead of paying more to hire a pro with extensive experience in the legal industry!
I highly recommend you check out Josh King’s presentation on ethics he did for the recent Avvocating conference. Josh is one of the nation’s foremost experts on attorney ethics and he is the General Counsel of Avvo. Josh covered this and many other myths and misconceptions about the intersection of ethics and social media. Look for the video of his presentation on this website.
Sincerely,
Stephen Fairley
CEO, The Rainmaker Institute
(480) 659-9700 main
http://www.RainmakerRetreat.com
http://www.TheRainmakerBlog.com
Isn’t the other problem also that you lose any ability to have a real voice? Even a savvy social media person is going to struggle to bring your voice to the table. I gotta think that this hurt the results.
[...] I authored an Avvo blog post entitled, Should Attorneys Outsource Their Social Media Marketing? This post elicited a couple of comments from attorneys concerned about the bar rules on lawyer [...]