Companies are increasingly turning to digital media when spending their marketing dollars, and law firms are no exception. LinkedIn™ is often considered the best platform for professional networking and marketing legal services to businesses and professional clients. Here are seven steps you can take to increase law firm LinkedIn visibility:
- Create a custom URL and add images.
- Maintain consistent branding.
- Complete and optimize the About section.
- Add your practice areas to the Specialties section.
- Post regularly.
- Engage your audience and employees.
- Use LinkedIn analytics to measure and adjust.
Keep reading for details on each step and to learn how they can help you optimize your law firm’s LinkedIn profile to grow your social media community and engagement.
Consistency Is Key to Increase Your Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility
Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn provide free and low-cost marketing opportunities. LinkedIn includes many features with zero financial cost and minimal time investment, so LinkedIn marketing for lawyers is worth serious consideration. However, using your firm’s social media accounts can waste both time and money if not managed effectively.
Consistency is key to maintaining top search engine results throughout the Internet. But what does that mean? And how does that relate to improving your law firm LinkedIn visibility?
Create a LinkedIn Custom URL and Add Images
To get started, claim the LinkedIn vanity URL for your firm. The URL is the web address typed in to reach a particular page. Your vanity URL should include some form of your law firm’s name to make it easy for searchers to find you and to enhance your professional online presence. LinkedIn also requires that a company’s name and LinkedIn URL align.
To make sure you’re easy to find on LinkedIn, be sure to claim your firm’s vanity URL before another company with a similar name does. If your company’s name is taken, choose an available URL that matches your company name as closely as possible.
Adding a custom banner and your firm logo are also important baseline tasks in LinkedIn marketing for lawyers. Completing these steps will get you on the right path to creating a professional, polished profile.
Consistency Is Key to Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility
Consistent branding across all marketing efforts helps build brand recognition and trust. Alteration of a logo or trademark also can be confusing for web browsers and search engines, making it more difficult for your law firm to be found online.
Law firms should also be aware of aesthetics. Color schemes and photography themes should be consistent. If your firm’s chosen brand and website colors are teal and gray, choose images and elements that carry that theme over to the law firm’s LinkedIn profile page.
Photos used in features throughout your firm’s website should be consistent with the LinkedIn page, too. For instance, if photos featured on the law firm website generally feature professional portrait photography, don’t use all nature photographs on the company LinkedIn page.
Take Full Advantage of the About Section
Many law firms cut and paste the copy from their firm’s About Us web page into the About section of their LinkedIn profile. If branding and contact information should be the same, then so should the About Us section, right? Or should it?
Duplicate content—the same or similar text that appears in multiple places online—can be confusing to search engines and result in poor search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Avoid dings to your online credibility by drafting fresh, engaging, and informative content for each online platform where you publish.
The About section of your law firm’s LinkedIn profile is also a great opportunity to hone in on keywords to improve the traffic to your profile and your profile’s ranking in response to searches both on LinkedIn and the web. Use SEO best practices to include keywords in your profile’s About section. This is an opportunity to remain consistent with branding while reinforcing your law firm’s online marketing strategy.
Finally, be sure to feature what you can do for clients in this section. Dive into problems your clients face and solutions your law firm provides. Include all practice areas and jurisdictions to enhance search visibility. Complete this section with a call to action and a link to the law firm’s home page and additional contact information to make it easy for potential clients to reach you.
Increase Your Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility by Including Practice Areas
The Specialties section of LinkedIn company profiles is often neglected. Remember that LinkedIn uses an algorithm to return and rank relevant results to searches. Adding your practice areas to the Specialties section plays a critical role in enhancing search visibility and improving overall success in LinkedIn marketing for lawyers.
Keep Your Law Firm LinkedIn Page Relevant—Post! Post! Post!
To ensure your law firm stays at the top of a potential client’s mind, you must publish content regularly to appear in your followers’ feeds. The key to keeping your law firm on top is to post, post, and then post some more. A company should post an update no less than once a week, and some firms average 20 or more posts per month. Consistent posting is usually best accomplished with a content or production calendar.
Postings should be current and relevant. Be creative, and use a consistent voice that aligns with your law firm’s brand and culture. Here are some examples of different types of law firm LinkedIn posts to consider:
- Employee and law firm recognitions, accolades, and achievements;
- Client stories, testimonies, or reviews;
- Announcements/introductions of new hires;
- Job openings;
- Blogs posted by the law firm and/or its attorneys;
- Employee and law firm volunteer efforts, sponsorships, or community involvement;
- News about the firm or its employees shared by media outlets; and
- Links to articles, news, events, or research in your geographic and/or practice areas.
When creating LinkedIn posts, include a relevant photo and appropriate hashtags. Creating consistent posts with relevant and interesting content will increase your law firm LinkedIn visibility and attract more followers—and potential clients—to your law firm’s LinkedIn profile page.
Engage Your Audience and Employees to Improve Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility
Enhancing law firm LinkedIn visibility doesn’t end with posting. Engage with your followers to develop goodwill and create a sense of community. If someone comments, you should reply, even if it is a simple “Thank you!” When followers like, comment on, or share your posts, it tells the LinkedIn algorithm that your content resonated with people or was useful to them.
You can also engage followers by including posts with questions. Throw out a relevant question to your audience and see how many people respond. Measure results across post types to learn what kinds of content resonate most with your audience.
Law firms should also encourage their employees to set up personal LinkedIn profiles and connect current employment to the firm’s page. And don’t be hesitant to ask employees to follow the law firm’s LinkedIn profile page and share firm news and posts on their personal profile pages. LinkedIn can be a great place to engage with your employees and recognize their efforts—and the resulting engagement is a win-win.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn marketing for lawyers should include strategies to measure success and adjust accordingly. LinkedIn provides basic user analytics for free. These can be used to see which law firm posts received the most views, likes, and comments. Use that information to continue to post about topics that are most widely received. Building off of what potential clients and referral sources already read makes it easy to increase your law firm LinkedIn visibility.
Learn How We Can Help Boost Your Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility
If you are still wondering how to increase your law firm LinkedIn visibility, or if you would like help creating or optimizing your law firm’s LinkedIn profile page, contact the law firm digital marketing pros at TOPDOG Legal Marketing, LLC online or by phone at (844) HEY-TDOG (439-8364) or (480) 744-7331 and follow us on LinkedIn.
