Between Facebook, Twitter, and a website (and, if you've been reading here, podcasts!), maintaining your Internet presence can seem like a full-time job, or at least a half-time job. And, wait, don't you have a law firm to run? All that marketing won't matter if you don't have to do any actual lawyering.
That's why you might want to consider hiring a social media manager -- a full- or part-time employee who not only manages your Twitter feed, but functions partly as a marketing manager who knows how to leverage social media.
Cost Is a Factor
A small firm or a solo might not have the money to spare for a full-time employee with benefits (and, depending on where you are in the country, "full-time" could be quite a bit of money). On the other hand, a social media manager may only need to be in the office a few hours a day or a few days a week. Forbes also suggests that you could alleviate some of the cost by hiring a student or an intern, but what you really want is a professional.
Someone With Ideas
A social media manager will not only tweet interesting news items, but will also come up with new and interesting editorial content for your firm's blog. Ideally, the person in charge of social media will be able to come up with some strategy in addition to just putting links on Facebook. (Maybe you want to dig back into the archives for that blog post about O.J. Simpson the next he does something foolish.)
How Do We Do It? Volume!
If you anticipate engaging in a lot of social media interaction, then you just might need a social media manager. Believe it or not, keeping up with the content scroll through various platforms is hard work, and if you want to spend your day on billable work, you've got to pick one or the other. And we're not even talking about the time-consuming work of picking through the news to find things to write or post about. Even a part-time social media manager has more time to be better at his or her job than you do.
Expertise
Assuming we're going with a professional and not, say, an intern, a social media manager is someone who knows the lay of the land and how to use things like SEO to your firm's advantage. Do you know which audiences favor which formats? Do you know how to cross-post content? Do you know what HootSuite is? Thankfully, a social media manager does.
Guess what? FindLaw's Lawyer Marketing can be your social media manager! Our experts know how to tweet, retweet, and strategically tweet so that you can focus on running your law firm instead of social media marketing. Click on the link above to learn more.
Related Resources:
- 6 Must-Have Attributes of Social Media Managers (Entrepreneur)
- 5 Qualities to Look For in a Law Firm Marketing Manager (FindLaw's Strategist)
- 10 Tweets of Advice: Social Media Lawyer Marketing (FindLaw's Strategist)
- 5 Ways to Find Your Law Firm's Social Media Tone (FindLaw's Strategist)
