Hashtags have been around since 2007 and unless you are an
active twitter user / follower, you likely haven’t noticed their importance.
Now is a good time to take notice since Facebook has now adopted them and in
effect, tripled the total share of social media users that can now utilize them.
You may recognize hastags when you see a word that starts
with a “#” in front of it. Examples for attorneys would look like: #attorney,
#mesoattorney, #probate, #regulan, #wrongfuldeath, #policebrutality, etc. By
placing the “#” sign in front of words, it creates a metadata signal to
services like twitter and now facebook to help categorize the message based on
the keyword with the hastag in front of it.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO ATTORNEYS AND FACEBOOK USERS?
Facebook has around 170 million users in the United States –
nearly twice as many as twitter. This equates to around 50% of ALL Americans! The average Facebook user spends 7.5 hours on
Facebook each month compared to just 3.3 minutes on Google +. As the old saying goes: “fish were the fish
are”… and the fish (your clients) are on Facebook.
One of the greatest advantages to Twitter users was that information
on topics could be grouped together (through the use of hashtags) and searched
without having to be connected to a user beforehand. In short, hastags allowed
unconnected users to share information with anybody - something Facebook has lacked until now.
Facebook announced this week that hastags are now fully
supported in their messages and can now be searched on in Facebook. You can now
click on a keyword displayed with a hastag and/or search for messages containing
the same. For example, here is a search for “#medicalmalpractice”: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/medicalmalpractice - note that you can change the last portion
of this address bar (in this case /medicalmalpractice) and replace it with any
other words, just make sure to not include any spaces.
HOW ATTORNEYS CAN USE HASHTAGS TO THEIR ADVANTAGE
Most attorneys create an active content
strategy to better stay in front of their current clients, referral
partners and generate new clients and cases. Experts agree that you need to
touch your clients 7-10 times a year for them to actively remember you when
they need you. Why else would brands like Coke continue to spend millions reminding
you about them? The same applies to your
brand and image. Gone are the days of effective attorney email lists and newsletters
and instead attorneys are turning to more effective means of marketing through
blogs and social media.
When attorneys create effective active content strategies,
they will commonly author to blogs
and disseminate that content throughout their social media properties such as Facebook,
twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The challenge at that point is to build audience (or
reach) so that your pages are being followed and people will be able to find
and see you regularly. This is where most law firms fail – they create great
content but fail in creating reach…thereby hosting nothing more than an
expensive billboard in a cornfield.
Beyond the means in which to build audience and reach
through actively publishing and promoting your social media properties OUTSIDE
of these vehicles, hashtags now allow you to create better reach within them.
Here is an example: Risperdal is a drug that was involved a lawsuit involving
the drug companies downplaying of complications. When I search for “Risperdal
Lawsuit” in Google, I see 66,700 results – many of which are news sites, attorney
websites and blogs. When I search by the hastag #risperdal in Facebook, I see
ZERO results – except for my own. Wow! Really? 170 Million users and no mention
(in a hastag) for Risperdal? No facebook pages to follow on the subject? No
blogs to keep me updated? No attorneys that want my business if I or somebody I
know could be a client for this case?
This of course is merely one example but illustrates a point
– hastags now allow you to open your practice up to search within Facebook and
170 million potential clients. Want to build reach as an attorney and improve your
#attorneymarketing, this is a
great way to get started!
WHAT TO DO NEXT
If you have not already created an #activecontentstrategy for
your law firm, get started now – it is
the #1 driver of traffic to your website according to the most recent studies
by SEOMoz. Once you have your strategy in place, make sure to incorporate
hashtags within your content in the proper locations and with the proper density
to have an impact. This includes in your subject lines, the beginning of your
content, etc.
If you need more help on any of these subjects, contact a legal marketing consultant today
to help you out…