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. Consider these tips on how to increase your law firm LinkedIn visibility:
1. Be consistent.
2. Implement a custom URL and banner.
3. Keep your brand consistent.
4. Fully use the About Us section.
5. Add your practice areas to the Specialties section.
6. Post regularly.
7. Engage your audience.
8. Use LinkedIn analytics.
Consistency is Key to Increase Your Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility
Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn provide inexpensive and even free marketing tools. LinkedIn includes many features that provide marketing opportunities with zero financial cost and minimal time investment. 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?
Claim Your LinkedIn Custom URL and Add a Custom Banner
To get started, claim your LinkedIn vanity URL. 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. 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. Adding a custom banner and your firm logo also help to show you take your firm’s professional social media presence seriously.
Keep Your Brand Consistent across Social Media Platforms
It may go without saying, but your brand should be consistent across all platforms. Logos and trademark designations should be identical. Even the slight alteration of a logo or trademark can be confusing for both the web browser and the search engine when looking for your law firm. Inconsistencies like these can make your firm harder to find online.
Also be aware of aesthetics. Color schemes and photography themes should be consistent. If your firm’s chosen website colors are teal and gray, choose similar colors from the LinkedIn color palette to carry that theme across to the company LinkedIn 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 Us” Section
Many law firms cut and paste the copy from their firm’s About page into the About Us 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?
The About Us section of your firm’s profile is a great opportunity to hone in on key words to improve the traffic to your profile and your profile’s ranking in response to user searches. Use SEO best practices to include keywords into your profile’s About Us section. This is an opportunity to remain consistent with branding while reinforcing your law firm online marketing strategy.
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. Ensure you 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 contact page to make it easy for surfers to reach you.
When you follow these guidelines, it’s likely that your LinkedIn About Us section will vary from your firm’s About webpage. This is a good thing because it avoids a potential duplicate content penalty from Google.
Add Your Law Firm’s Practice Areas to the “Specialties” Segment
The Specialties section of LinkedIn company profiles is often neglected. Remember that LinkedIn uses an algorithm to return and rank relevant results to searches. Populating your Specialties section plays a critical role in enhancing search visibility on this platform.
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! Be personal! Post an update anytime something happens at your firm.
- Feature an employee of the month.
- Feature a client story or testimony.
- Announce/Introduce newly hired employees.
- Create postings about job openings.
- Share lawyer blogs.
- Highlight the law firm or employees in the news.
When creating LinkedIn posts, include a relevant photo and an appropriate hashtag. Creating consistent posts with relevant and interesting content will increase followers to the law firm LinkedIn page and visibility across LinkedIn.
Increase Your Law Firm LinkedIn Visibility with Engagement
Enhancing law firm LinkedIn visibility doesn’t end with posting. Engage with the readers of your updates. If someone makes a comment, reply to that comment. Even a simple “thanks” to a congratulatory note is good. Every “like” and comment creates more visibility for a post and your firm.
Encourage your employees to set up personal LinkedIn profiles and connect current employment to the firm’s page. Also encourage employees to follow the firm and share firm news and posts on their personal profile pages.
Engage followers by including posts of questions as updates. Throw out a relevant question to your audience and see how many comment. Remember to respond to the user comments to stay engaged.
Another way to engage is to create a group in LinkedIn. Creating groups is a way to connect a community together with your firm at the center of the group. While this naturally creates increased LinkedIn visibility for your firm, it can be time-consuming.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn Analytics
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.
If you are still wondering how to increase your law firm’s LinkedIn visibility, or if you would like help creating or enhancing your firm’s LinkedIn 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.
