Social media networks represent one of the brightest opportunities for law firms to engage with their target audiences, build brand awareness, and stay top of mind. But how do you measure success, and what makes a successful campaign? One of the decisive factors is engagement. Today we’ll look into the specifics, keeping an eye on the most valuable platforms for law firms. 

The benefits of networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for attorneys are countless, and you can optimize them by fine-tuning your non-converting ads. However, the essence of social media is not primarily sales and initial consultations. Instead, it begins with engagement. How do your efforts perform in terms of likes, shares, saves, and comments? In this article, we’ll dive into the importance of engagement. We’ll discover the most critical metrics and explain how to understand whether or not your organic or paid campaigns are reaching their potential.

  • What is social media engagement?

It’s the metric that shows how involved your follower base is with your social media content. It’s one of the most coveted success factors for social media strategies. Even though it doesn’t necessarily translate into sales, it’s decisive for a law firm’s brand awareness. The more your target audience engages with your posts, stories, or videos (among others), the more you stay top of mind when they or one of their relatives needs your services.

Fact: Don’t base your success purely on engagement. It’s an invalid component towards achieving your end goals. However, combining it with tangible data will allow you to get the most out of your budget.

  • What are the most crucial Engagement metrics?
  1. Likes

That’s one of the first engagement options that social media introduced to us. In the past, likes were, in many ways, the king of measuring for engagement. A like, among other things, would show that people were happy with your posts as well as notify their friends/followers about liked posts. Nowadays, this has changed some, and likes are not as powerful as they used to be. In fact, platforms have given them less visibility and have even included the option to hide them (on Instagram). Nevertheless, likes remain a meaningful metric for your law firm’s performance on social media, as it still signals engagement and potential preference.

  1. Comments

They are a similar engagement metric to likes, but with some added value. Comments can help you get into discussions with your followers, reply to their open questions, and potentially involve more prospects. Remember to monitor your comments, reply when necessary, and keep connected with your commenters.

  1. Shares

This is one of the most impactful engagement types across all social media channels. A share increases your visibility within the friends/followers cycle of the person that shares your assets. It can work wonders for brand awareness, increasing followers, and extra engagement with comments and likes.

Tip: Stay alert and share from your personal accounts. Ask your employees and colleagues to do the same. A slow but steady increase in reach can give you the necessary boost to take your strategy to the next level.

  1. Direct Messages

This one is the least public of engagement types and metrics that we’ll review in this article. However, even though it’s private, it signals the highest intent among the engagement types we’ve mentioned so far. A direct message on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn can be a legitimate question from a prospective client, a request for information on a specific topic (related to your latest Q&A, for example), or even a potential consultation that can lead to a signed case for your law firm.

Tip: Ensure that you monitor your inboxes across all social media channels, even the general inbox, as messages can fall there.

  • How to measure engagement?

We’ve selected the two most prominent ways (from our perspective), and we’ll explain in a few simple steps how you can calculate your law firm’s engagement rate.

  1.  Engagement rate by reach (ERR)

That’s the most wildly used form of engagement measurement, where you get a grasp of how many users interact with your content once they see it.

ERR = total engagements (single post) / reach(single post) * 100

Average ERR = Total ERR / Total posts

With the first formula, you can understand the unique ERR of each of your posts. The second one allows you to get the average. Ensure that you use both to benchmark against different posts and post types, coming up with the optimum mix for your social media content.

  1. Engagement rate by posts (ER post)

This metric and formula work similarly to ERR, but instead of benchmarking against reach, you measure against followers on a specific post (and on average).

ER post = Total engagements on a post / Total followers *100

Average ER by post = Total ER by post / Total posts

Again, the first formula allows you to measure the average engagement rate per post and followers, giving you a first overview of how a post has performed. Using the average will help you see the bigger picture, assisting you in creating your complete strategy based on what your followers seem to prefer and engage with.

Tip: Combine ERR and ER posts for a complete overview of what content works the best for your law firm regarding reach and user preference. That way, you can provide your followers with the content they need while getting the proper exposure.

As always, it’s time for our takeaways:

  • Social media is primarily used for purposes different from searching for products and services. Therefore, goals like brand awareness, exposure, and reach are a more realistic first step than immediately signing clients.
  • Engagement is one of the most vital factors, but not the only one, to understand if your campaigns are performing according to their capabilities or if they need further optimization.
  • Measure your engagement rate with the formulas we provided above. They will allow you to get a complete overview of what’s working best for your law firm, spot the pain points, and maximize your ROI.