In this
article, we focus on social media for lawyers. We start with some statistics
about social media that underpin their relevance. Next, we have a look at the
different categories of social media that exist. We conclude with a selection
of social media that are recommended for lawyers.
Some statistics about
social media
In a
previous article, we explained why
social media matter. They are a valuable marketing tool, even for
lawyers, because they provide direct access to your target audiences. Legal consumers are online consumers and
social media allow them to familiarize themselves with the lawyers whose
services they want to employ.
And social
media are extremely popular, as the following statistics illustrate.
· In April 2023, there were 4.8
billion social media user identities, which is the equivalent of 59.9% of the
global population. If we narrow it down to adults (18 years and older) then we
are dealing with a number that is the equivalent of 78% of the population.
· If we look at the number of people using
the Internet, then we find that 92.7% of them are on at least one form of
social media.
· The average time a social media user
spends each day on social media amounts to 2 hours and 24 minutes.
· Demographics: 46.5% of social media
users are female, while 53.5% are male.
· People who are active on social
media tend to be active on more than one platform and on average have 6.6
social media profiles.
A key
concept in the metrics about social media users is the number of monthly
active users (MAU). These are the unique users who use a social media
platform at least once a month. Based on these monthly active users, these are
the 21 most popular social media platforms.
1. Facebook — 2.96 billion
2. YouTube — 2.2 billion
3. WhatsApp — 2 billion
4. Instagram — 2 billion
5. WeChat — 1.26 billion
6. TikTok — 1 billion
7. Sina Weibo — 573 million
8. QQ — 538.91 million
9. Telegram — 550 million
10. Snapchat — 557 million
11. Kuaishou — 573 million
12. zone — 553.5 million
13. Pinterest — 444 million
14. Twitter — 238 million
15. Reddit — 430 million
16. LinkedIn — 424 million
17. Quora — 300 million
18. Discord — 150 million
19. Twitch — 140 million
20. Tumblr — 135 million
21. Mastodon — 2.5 million
Now, many
of those you may not be familiar with because they are mainly used in the Far
East, and more specifically in China. Those are probably less relevant for most
Western lawyers.
Not yet
included in the list is Threads, the new Twitter alternative that was
launched by Instagram. In the week after it was launched on 5 July 2023, it
already gathered more than 100 million users, which would put it near the top
20. But note that at the time of writing, Threads is not available in
the EU.
Categories of social media
There are
many different types of social media. To tell them apart, it makes sense to
group them in different categories. The Wikipedia uses the following
categories.
•
Blogs are
informational websites published on the World Wide Web, consisting of discrete,
often informal diary-style text entries (posts). By now, most law firms have
their own blog. (For more information, read our article on starting a blog).
•
Business networks are a type of social network service that focuses on interactions and
relationships for business opportunities and career growth, with less emphasis
on activities in personal life. LinkedIn is an example of a business network.
Most law firms also are on LinkedIn.
•
Collaborative projects like, e.g., Wikipedia.
•
Enterprise social networks focus on the use of online social networks or social relations among
people who share business interests and/or activities. Enterprise social
networking is often a facility of enterprise social software. Yammer and
Socialcast are examples.
• Discussion Forums
•
Microblogs are
a form of blogging using short posts without titles. When Twitter, e.g., launched, the size of a message
was limited to only 140 characters. Other examples include Tumblr, Mastodon,
Post.News, Threads, Spoutible, et. al.
•
Photo sharing
websites like Instagram,
Flickr, Photobucket, etc.
•
Websites
with crowd-sourced reviews of products and/or services. Sometimes these
focus on specific market segments like, e.g., Tripadvisor, while others
are more generic, like Yelp or Amazon.
•
Social bookmarking are online services which allow users to add, annotate, edit, and share
bookmarks of web documents. Delicious and Pinterest are two examples.
•
Social gaming
(ex. Mafia Wars, World of Warcraft).
•
Generic
social network sites like Facebook.
•
Video sharing
websites like YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, etc.
•
Virtual worlds
are computer-simulated environments which may be populated by many users who
can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the
virtual world, participate in its activities and communicate with others. (We
discussed virtual worlds before in our article on Web3).
Note that in
this overview the Wikipedia did not include messaging apps like WhatsApp,
Telegram, or Signal, while most other overviews do include them.
Not included either are websites where people can ask all kinds of questions,
like Quora or Reddit.
It is also
worth pointing out that the boundaries between these categories are fluid and
that they often overlap. Videos, e.g., are not only shared on video sharing
sites, but also on virtually all messaging apps, as well as on most other popular
platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
A selection of social
media for lawyers
The annual
reports by the American Bar Association and Good2bSocial reveal
that by now most law firms are active on social media. Many are present on the
most popular platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, and most have their own
blog. The most important current trends are that a) more and more law firms are
discovering short form video and start using those, and b) that firms who cater
to multiple audiences are seeing the importance of market segmentation. In
other words, law firms are learning it pays off to target different audiences
on different platforms.
Online
articles that recommend lawyers which social media to use are fairly consistent
in their recommendations. The selection below is limited to those social media that
are most relevant for lawyers, topic-wise and geographically. For most of the
ones listed below, we have discussed them before in our blog articles.
When it
comes to business networking, LinkedIn is the platform of choice.
When it
comes to general social media, Facebook is the most popular choice. Recent
statistics show that in the US more law firms are advertising on Facebook
than on LinkedIn.
When it
comes to messaging apps, there are more options. WhatsApp, Instagram,
Snapchat, Telegram, and Signal are all popular. Because of
privacy concerns, Signal is probably most recommended for lawyers. Note that
most messaging apps now also allow to create groups which can function as
mailing list for updates as well as short newsletters. A WhatsApp group
can currently have 1 024 members, whereas a Telegram super group can
have up to 200 000 members.
Because
online consumers like to know in advance who they are dealing with, photo
sharing apps can provide them with a more human side of a law firm. Instagram still is the
most popular platform, followed by Snapchat, Flickr, and Photobucket.
Up until
recently, the platform of choice for micro-blogging was Twitter. But since Elon
Musk took over, many users and advertisers have turned their back on Twitter.
Several alternatives are available, like Mastodon, Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky,
or, e.g., Post.news. Threads seems to be positioning itself as the main
alternative but is not available in Europe.
For video
sharing, there again are several options. For longer videos, YouTube
and Vimeo are the platforms of choice. For short-form videos, TikTok,
Instagram, and Snapchat are currently most popular. Note,
however, that for lawyers TikTok is not recommended because of serious privacy
concerns. Several governments worldwide have ordered officials to remove TikTok
from their smart phones.
Pinterest still is the recommended platform for social
bookmarking.
When it
comes to question-and-answer forums, Quora and Reddit are
the two main platforms.
That concludes our overview of recommended social media for lawyers in 2023.
Sources:
· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
· https://buffer.com/library/social-media-sites/
· https://datareportal.com/social-media-users
· https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
· https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/
· https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/top-social-media-sites
· https://www.letamericaknow.com/blog/which-social-media-platforms-are-best-for-attorney
· https://lawyerist.com/law-firm-marketing/social-media/
· https://www.inboundlawmarketing.com/social-media-for-lawyers/