Facebook has become the de facto social network globally and is one of the places where people spend the most time online. With over 2,000,000,000 (yes, 2 billion) users worldwide on Facebook, your law firm can’t afford not to be visible on this social network. Therefore, using Facebook marketing for lawyers, law firms, and attorneys is essential.
In fact, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are owned by their parent company, Meta. Due to demographic reasons, the number of active Facebook users is expected to continue growing in the coming years, and this tech giant will maintain an increasingly dominant position in the sector. With the data in hand, you need to position your firm in this market as well.
Plus, in this case, there aren’t many excuses not to do it. Having a Facebook page for your office is free, easy to set up, and you only need to hire a virtual assistant for attorneys to handle and manage your Facebook page.
A Facebook profile and a Facebook page are not the same thing.
There’s widespread confusion between Facebook Pages and Profiles. Profiles are accounts you create for individual, non-commercial use, where you can friend your contacts and share information with them.
You can’t create a profile for your law firm.
Quoting Facebook itself: “Using your personal account to represent something other than yourself (for example, your business) violates Facebook’s terms, and you could permanently lose access to it unless you convert it to a Page.”
So, what is a Facebook Page?
A Page is similar to a Profile, although with some differences. Although you can only have one Facebook Profile associated with you, you can have as many Facebook Pages as you want at the same time, and these Pages can be managed by one or more people.
One of the main differences is that Facebook Pages don’t have friends, they have followers . That is, only those who click “Like” will be followers of your Page, and you can’t ask anyone who isn’t your friend to follow the Page.
If you’ve created a Facebook profile for your law firm instead of a Page, convert it to a Page as soon as possible; otherwise, you could lose the account. Learn more about how to do this here.
It’s essential to note that even if you don’t have a law firm and are acting as a self-employed lawyer, it’s advisable to have a Facebook page that is completely separate from your personal profile. Keep your personal profile for everything related to your personal and private life, and a separate page for your professional legal activities.
How to create a Facebook page for your office?
The truth is that it is very simple; you can start from this page.
Unless you’re a large firm with several offices in different cities, it’s best to create your page as a “Local Business or Place.” Once you’ve selected this option, add basic information about your firm, choosing “Law” as the category:
Configure your office information
After completing that first step, you’ll land on your new Facebook page, which will look something like this screenshot:
At this point, all you need to do is configure your page to give it a professional look and include all the relevant information about your business.
Follow these steps:
Upload your office logo
In the top left corner of your page, you can add your firm’s profile image. Ideally, you should have a square logo in PNG format that clearly identifies your firm.
If you don’t have a logo and you’re a freelance lawyer, you can upload a photo of yourself, although a logo always adds a professional touch. If your firm doesn’t have a corporate image, I highly recommend contacting a designer to create even a basic one. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on it, and you’ll create a much more professional image.
Upload the cover image.
The cover image is the background that appears at the top of your page and the largest space you can customize with images. Depending on the case, you can upload a photo or use it to include business information, such as your phone number, email address, or a slogan.
Customize the background image text field.
In the lower right corner of the background image container, by clicking “Edit,” you can customize the text that will be visible in the page header, placed over the background image. You can choose whatever you want. For this example, we used the name of the imaginary firm we created, its specialty, and its location.
Fill in the information about your law firm
The next step is to go to the “Information” menu, located in the left navigation bar under the logo. This section is very important, so take your time to fill it out correctly. Verify that the displayed address is accurate (note that some users may view it and proceed directly to the office) and that the phone number is correct.
Next, change the business category to “Attorney & Law Firm,” which is the most appropriate option provided by Facebook for a law firm. Check that the name is spelled correctly (I don’t recommend using all capital letters) and customize a username. The username is what will appear in your Page’s address and will make it easier to remember.
As for the rest of the information, fill out as many fields as possible. Email, company website, information, and history are especially important. Take your time to write professional and commercial text in these last two fields.
This is a good opportunity to convey what you do and what you excel at to potential clients who visit your page. If your firm is several years old, don’t forget to complete the founding date field.
Customize the main button of your page
You’ll have noticed a blue button that says “+ Add a button” by default. You’ll need to customize it to include the most important action you want page visitors to take with your business. Click the button, and a wizard will open to choose from a series of actions:
Which primary action should you choose? Actually, there are several options, but I recommend using the “Contact ” option, which also has several interesting internal options:
- Call: By clicking the button, people can call the office directly. This is undoubtedly a very good call to action, as long as the call response rate is good. Obviously, it’s not possible to be on the phone 24/7, but if you use this button, make sure you’re on the phone most of the time or, failing that, always return missed calls as soon as possible.
- Contact: Redirect the person to a form on your website. It’s not a bad idea if you want to get more information from the customer and have forms with plenty of fields, but I prefer the next option.
- Send a message: Along with calling, this is, in my opinion, the most recommended option. Clicking this button will open a direct Facebook private message conversation with your Page. It’s a convenient option for people, since they’ll be less hesitant to send you a message (something they do hundreds of times a day with their friends and contacts) than to call you, fill out a contact form, or write you an email. Additionally, Facebook allows you to set up an automatic response message so that if the response isn’t immediate, the lead will at least know you’ve received it.
- Register: In most cases, this won’t make much sense.
- Get a quote: If you don’t want to waste time receiving messages and inquiries, you can configure a button that takes you to a quote request form on your website. This option is ideal if you have enough clients and only want to be contacted by people with a more advanced level of interest. Anyone can write you a message, but filling out a quote request form implies that the potential client is much more determined. However, these types of forms create a lot of friction, and there may be cases where the visitor is genuinely interested, but directly requesting a quote seems too much of a commitment, and you lose the lead.
- Send email: Personally, I recommend sending a private message on Facebook (unless you take a long time to respond to messages). After all, if they want to send you an email, it’s very easy to do so, since your email address will be available on your Facebook page and website.
Instead of Contact Us, you could also use the Book Services option. This option allows you to send visitors to a form on your website or any other page, where they can book an in-person appointment at your office. Depending on the case, this can be very attractive.
As you can see, there are a wide variety of options to choose from, and the most appropriate one for you will depend on the circumstances of your case. If you don’t have many clients, include a button to receive calls or messages. You’ll receive many more contacts and can select those worthwhile.
If, on the other hand, you don’t want to waste time with inquiries and the like, use a call to action that indicates more commitment and a more advanced filter (request a quote). Finally, if you don’t pay much attention to phone calls and messages, or if you only want to be contacted by users who are very interested, then direct them to book an appointment directly at your office.
Photos
In the menu, you also have an option to upload photos to your Facebook page. While not strictly necessary, it will have a positive impact if you do so. Some ideas you can follow include creating an album with photos of your firm and/or creating a team photo album, featuring each of the firm’s lawyers and employees.
Highlighting the firm’s team often works quite well. Ultimately, clients like to know that behind a website and a logo, there’s a team of people who will address their issue. You can upload a photo for each lawyer (and employees from other areas), explaining in the image description who they are, what they do, and what makes them a good professional.
Ultimately, if you want to convey the image that your firm is the best for your clients, it’s because the best people work there, right?
A final, more advanced idea would be to create an album of your firm’s clients. Each photo features one of your clients, along with a testimonial about why your firm is the best and how it has helped them. It takes some work to achieve, but the results can be exceptional. Believe me, if you do it, you won’t regret it.
If you upload photos, try to make them look as professional as possible. If you upload poor-quality images, you may end up achieving the opposite effect. At this point, don’t skimp on quality, as hiring a professional photographer for a few hours isn’t expensive and is a very profitable investment. Keep in mind that you can also use these images for your website, social media, marketing communications, and more.
And one last tip: take advantage of every nook and cranny on your page to sneak in a marketing message.
Invite your first followers
If you want to project a professional image to your potential clients, you can’t have a company page with no followers. To attract them, the easiest option is to invite your trusted contacts to follow your page. Don’t invite everyone at will, as Facebook could penalize you for spamming, but do invite those who might be genuinely interested in your Facebook page.
Ask for feedback!
Although we’ve left it almost for last, it’s by far one of the most important points. Ask your trusted clients to visit your firm’s Facebook page and (regardless of whether they become followers) leave a positive review in the “Reviews” section.
If your clients don’t pay much attention to you, or you don’t have many, you can also ask your colleagues, friends, and family to do the same. It’s not ideal if they haven’t been your clients, but hey, if your office provides great service, there’s nothing wrong with doing this.
In another article, we discussed the importance of ratings and reviews when it comes to attracting new clients. If you haven’t read it, click here. And to illustrate the importance of reviews with an example, consider what happens if someone searches for lawyers on Facebook (if you haven’t thought about it before, some people do). One of the criteria used to determine the ranking Facebook follows is the number of reviews and the average rating.
Publications
The posts section is where you’ll share relevant content for your page’s followers and, especially, for your potential customers.
In an ideal world, you’d have a blog on your firm’s website with quality content every few days, which you’d post on your Facebook page. But we know this isn’t something all firms can afford, because it takes time and/or money to regularly generate quality articles.
If your firm doesn’t have a blog or isn’t very prolific in new content, that’s fine. The content doesn’t have to be from your firm. It’s more than enough if you regularly share news from media outlets relevant to your firm’s business as posts on your firm’s Facebook page. This will provide quality content (even if it’s not from your firm’s website) that will be interesting for your followers, while also giving your Facebook page the impression that you’re active there.
One of the things you need to avoid is having your law firm’s Facebook page feel like it’s been abandoned for months. If that happens, your firm’s potential clients may get a bad impression. As we often say, attracting clients online is a game of inches, and nothing should be left to chance: every little detail counts.
Finally, download the app for managing Facebook pages.
If a potential client sends you a message on your Facebook page, you must respond as quickly as possible, even if it’s just to say that you received the message and will respond in more detail shortly. The main reason for responding as soon as possible is that if the potential client doesn’t receive a response promptly, they’ll look to other firms. And if they’ve already contacted other firms, the first to respond has a very important advantage.
Unfortunately, you can’t reply to messages sent to your page using the regular Facebook mobile app. To manage all the notifications and messages that arrive on your law firm’s Facebook page, I highly recommend installing the Facebook Page Manager app.