Are you on the crest of the Instagram wave? You could be.

Instagram remains untapped by many law firms, but this is rapidly changing. Why you may ask? Businesses have come to realize that jumping on the social media bandwagon is in their best interest.

To give you a few statistics and figures, around 90% of Instagram users follow business accounts. Moreover, 140 million users are U.S. based; and since the pandemic, the usage has increased from approximately 25 minutes to 30 minutes per day. Let that sink in for a moment.

People aren’t just trying to stay connected with their friends and family; they’re also interacting with brands and services. It’s clear to see, this platform is relevant for the networking of businesses and individuals alike. Specifically for businesses, this social media channel is valuable because your firm can create a space for increased engagement.

Additional benefits of opting-in on this channel include:

• Gaining followers.
• Increasing networking possibilities.
• Positioning your firm as leaders and experts.
• Building upon branding.

And the most sought out benefit: engaging and nurturing a relationship with all the users on different stages of the sales funnel, from the prospects building awareness to the loyal followers/clients participating and engaging.

While these benefits indeed sound great, setting up an Instagram business account is just the beginning. If you really want to reap the insta-rewards, you’ll need to create a posting strategy that’s aligned with your firm’s culture and brand.

Step 1:

Define who you want to engage with.

For starters, if you have a defined buyer persona, it will make sense to reuse this same information, at least during the early stages. If you don’t have this, worry not. Start by assessing, ”

Who is my service designed for?” and, “What are they looking for?”

Around these questions, create a detailed description of your ideal client and add information like age, gender, location, occupation, level of education, monthly income, desires, and pains.

In addition to this, you can flip the coin and look at competitors. You might be surprised and learn a lot by looking into their Instagram audiences. While the audiences might be somewhat different, it’ll provide a better understanding of what legal industry audiences look like. Just like the buyer persona analysis, you can also create a competitor analysis checklist and answer the following:

• Who are the people engaging with my competitors?
• Where are they located?
• Where is my competition located?
• What type of content are users interacting with the most and least?
• What seems to inspire this audience?

Step 2:

Find the spaces where your audience(s) engage in.

Instagram is a world of its own. There are many spaces, communities, and groups where your prospects might be.

By experimenting with the following, you can get a better understanding of the question, “Is my content reaching the audience I need?”

A/B test different hashtags

– The right hashtag positions firms in front of the right sets of eyes. Besides following other users, it’s also possible to follow hashtags on Instagram. To find relevant keywords, you can begin by researching the relevancy of specific industry keywords and measure the level of interaction and number of mentions.

Brand mentions

is one of the many online tools offering this type of analysis.

• Trending hashtags in the legal industry are #law, #firm, #legal, #attorney, #justice, #lawyerlife, #lawfirm, #instalawyer, #attorneyatlaw, #lawyerup
• Other hashtags are more specific to the practice area(s). For example, a personal injury law firm can add niche audiences like truck accidents, car accidents, etc.

Make use of geo-location tagging

– This means adding the location to your posts. Since firms focus on acquiring calls and cases in a particular area, adding this is essential for local discovery.

Conduct social listening

If you’re in need of more ideas for improvement, then conducting social listening will help. This means tracking mentions of your firm and competitors, tracking the responses, analyzing what works best and least.

Step 3:

Brand yourself.

This is the part where it gets interesting. While there’s a great deal of information, tips, and tricks that are applicable in branding, a good starting point would be to think back to the following: why is your law firm using Instagram? To build a community? Build brand awareness? Showcase mission and vision? Sell services? Make sure there’s a purpose in mind.

Before diving into the creative aspects, first thing’s first: create a solid first impression with the following:

1. Add a profile picture
   
   – To encourage recognition, keep the profile picture uniform across all platforms.
2. Write a quality bio description
   
   – This section only allows 150 characters, so make the best of it. The first part should explain who you are, and the second part should focus on what you offer. Don’t be afraid to use emojis and save up space!

And now to the fun part. You can think outside the box when it comes to content creation. The number one rule is developing a cohesive and consistent branding strategy. To begin, stick with a color palette and max. 3 fonts. To get a better understanding of what we mean, check out a sample of our Instagram feed @consultwebs:

If it helps, create a content guide outlining regulations and directions for photo filters, fonts, hashtags, and content type.

If you’re looking for more ideas and inspiration, begin with the following:

• Introducing your law firm and all team members.
• Highlight practice area(s).
• Provide videos and images of the office and business culture.
• Promoting the website/ blog section.
• Adding thought leadership videos with tutorials, hot takes, and how-tos.

@lawbymike develops similar content, and he’s currently building a great deal of momentum on Instagram and TikTok.

Additionally, jump on celebration trends like National Coffee Day, National Pro Bono Day, National Law Week, and others like International Be Kind to Lawyers Day. Every day is a celebration, according to the National today

Step 4:

Create a content calendar.

With a content calendar, you can plan to publish with purpose. Platforms like Later.com can help with this.

While scheduling seems like a “set it and forget it” deal, it entails much more than that. You can actively experiment with different days and times to post. According to research, the best global times to post on Instagram are earlier, between 5 AM – 6 AM. In other words, the early bird gets the worm. Accounts benefit from posting earlier in the day because there’s less competition.

In addition to planning, creating a content bucket can be a lifesaver in times when you’re running dry on inspiration (don’t worry, this is normal and totally to be expected after a while!). These are themes or topics that can give the content strategy uniform guidance. Are you feeling in need of inspiration now? Feel free to grab a bucket below:

Connect and build a community.

Instagram followers are more than numbers. They’re living, breathing human beings looking forward to sharing and receiving content from family, friends, and businesses. Due to this, you must be actively building and nurturing long-term relationships with audiences here.

You can start by constructing the content strategy with the previous tips and tricks, but a profitable Instagram needs a steady stream of content and ongoing planning. We’ve got additional

social media guides for lawyers if you’d like to start or continue connecting with audiences. What’s more, we’ve got a team of professionals ready to help cultivate your firm’s long-term success.

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