Social media is a vital tool for engaging with potential clients of your law firm. Your posts can also help to build your brand, and showcase your legal knowledge, case results and testimonials. Many law firms are also using social media channels to showcase thought leadership and connect with other attorneys.

If you want to get the most from your social media efforts, and allocate resources appropriately, you need to have a working knowledge of the terminology. For example, you need to know the difference between social media marketing and social media management.

PMP has created a detailed guide explaining these two crucial aspects of social media for law firms. If you are looking to enhance your social media efforts, contact our experienced marketing professionals to discuss customized website solutions.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) focuses on creating, publishing, and promoting content across social media platforms to achieve specific marketing objectives. It involves strategic planning and execution to reach target audiences, increase brand awareness and encourage potential clients to engage with your law firm.

Social media marketing is more of a long-term strategy. Law firms need to make a consistent effort over a long period to see results, sort of like you would with search engine optimization. It takes time to increase your followers and get more engagement.

What are the Key Components of Social Media Marketing?

While the specific details of every law firm’s social media marketing strategy may differ in some way, the key components are usually the same:

  • Content Creation: Developing engaging and relevant content that resonates with the target audience. This includes text-based posts, videos, stories, infographics, and other multimedia content. For instance, law firms may post links to blogs on their websites, new client testimonials, case results or pictures from community events.
  • Campaign Planning: This refers to designing and implementing marketing campaigns that align with your law firm’s broader goals and strategy. You need to set objectives, identify target audiences, and select the appropriate social media platforms. For example, some content does better on Instagram than on X or LinkedIn. This is based on how people use these platforms.
  • Advertising: You can pay to help amplify your law firm’s reach and engagement on social media. Fortunately, you do not need to paint with a broad brush on social media. You can carefully target your ads to reach specific demographics and psychographics.
  • Analytics and Reporting: You need to use analytics to determine the effectiveness of your social media marketing. You can look at engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. As with other types of marketing, you need to refine your strategy as you get more data. You want the next marketing campaign to perform better than the previous one.

What is Social Media Management?

Social Media Management (SMM) is an umbrella term that refers to the day-to-day activities required to maintain a social media presence. This includes managing interactions with followers, monitoring brand mentions, and maintaining a consistent voice in your posts on each platform.

Key Components of Social Media Management:

  • Profile Management: Setting up and maintaining social media profiles, ensuring they are updated with the latest company information and branding. You do not want to have profiles that have an inaccurate or outdated representation of your law firm, as it hurts your brand.
  • Community Engagement: Responding to comments, messages, and reviews helps to keep followers engaged and builds positive relationships. One of the advantages of social media is that you can directly engage with the people who see your posts. This helps to humanize your law firm, encouraging potential clients to contact you when they need a lawyer.
  • Content Scheduling: Planning and scheduling posts to ensure a steady flow of content. You can use social media management tools such as Hootsuite to organize and automate posting. If you want to grow your social media presence, creating a schedule and sticking to it is a must.
  • Monitoring and Listening: Keeping an eye on social media trends, monitoring brand mentions, and listening to customer feedback. This helps in identifying opportunities, staying relevant, and addressing issues quickly.

Person meditating with social media logos around him

Comparing Social Media Marketing and Social Media Management

While both social media marketing and social media management are essential, they have unique objectives and require different skillsets. It is important for your firm to understand the differences.

Objectives:

  • Social Media Marketing aims to drive specific marketing outcomes such as lead generation, sales, and brand awareness through targeted campaigns.
  • Social Media Management focuses on maintaining a brand’s online presence and fostering community engagement.

Activities:

  • Social Media Marketing involves strategic planning, content creation, advertising, and performance analysis.
  • Social Media Management includes profile maintenance, content scheduling, responding to interactions, and monitoring trends and mentions.

Required Skillsets:

  • Social Media Marketing professionals need strong analytical skills, creativity to generate engaging content, and detailed knowledge of digital advertising.
  • Social Media Management requires excellent communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to manage and engage with social media followers.

What Are the Keys to Success With Social Media Marketing and Social Media Management?

There is no way to condense the keys to social media success into a sentence or two. There are many factors that go into effective social media marketing and management.

  • Staying Faithful to the Overall Strategy: Whatever your strategy, you need to stick to it in everything you do. Otherwise, you will have trouble building a brand and achieving the results you want.
  • Maintaining a Unified Brand Voice: Maintain a consistent brand voice across marketing campaigns and everyday interactions. This consistency helps build a strong, recognizable brand.
  • Effective Data Analysis: We live in an age of seemingly endless amounts of data and analytics. It can be tough to know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Make sure you are focusing on the useful information and applying it to your efforts. Sometimes that means you need to change what you are doing and other times it means you need to stick with it.
  • Adapt and Evolve: Use the feedback and data collected from social media management to refine and improve marketing strategies. Similarly, use insights from marketing performance to guide your efforts to engage with your local community.

Need Help With Law Firm Marketing? Contact PMP Today

Whether you are looking to increase conversions on your website, grow your social media following, increase conversions from pay-per-click ads or rank higher in search results, PMP can help.

Our marketing professionals have helped law firms across the country sign more cases through traditional and digital marketing strategies. Contact us today to discuss how we can help your firm.