How do you know if your use of social media is effective?

I was recently privileged to be asked to record an episode of the personal injury marketing minute podcast with Lindsey Busfield, and one of the questions she asked me was, “How do lawyers know whether their use of social media is effective? What metrics should they be looking at?”

And, as a typical lawyer, my answer was, “It depends.”

It depends on what your goals are for using social media, who your audience is, and even where you are in your career or in your journey on social media.

Let’s look at some examples.

Goal: Visibility

If you’re new to social media, if you’ve started a new practice area or if you are new to social media, your main initial goal on social media may be to increase your visibility with your target audience. In that case, some of the metrics that might be most important to you are impressions or mentions.

Goal: Engagement/network building

If your goal on social media is simply to be an extension of your “real world” networking – growing your network or building engagement with your existing network – the metrics that might be most important for you are how many new connections you add on the platform, how much engagement – especially comments – you receive, or how many offline invitations you receive that you can relate back to your social media activity.

Goal: New leads or clients

If your main goal in using social media is to get new leads or clients, the main metric you might be concerned with is how many new inquiries you receive outside of social media. Or perhaps it’s whether people are filling out a form or downloading information from your website.

Goal: Get media attention

If one of your main goals on social media is to attract media attention – to be asked to give a quote on a news story, comment on a television program, or be a podcast guest, you may be most interested in metrics specifically related to journalists – how many journalists are you connected to? How many journalists have contacted you for your thoughts on their stories?

As with any marketing endeavor, when you are evaluating the success of your social media efforts, you need to first think about your purpose and your audience.

If you want help making your social media presence more effective, or you want me to speak to your firm or organization about maximizing their use of social media, please contact me.

See more posts about social media:

• How Posting Checklists Can Help Your Marketing
• What Does It Mean To Be Yourself And Add Value On Social Media?
• Should You Use AI to Post on Social Media?
• Notify Employees of LinkedIn Posts
• Saving LinkedIn Posts
• Taking Control of Your LinkedIn Feed Part III
• Taking Control of Your LinkedIn Feed Part II
• 5 Ways to Take LinkedIn to the Next Level
• Why Create a Poll on LinkedIn?
• Two Ways to Build Engagement on LinkedIn