I decided to start a small series inside a series giving you the exact steps to creating a Facebook page for your clients and prospects. So follow these steps if you don’t have a Facebook page for your law firm or if you have one already, use these to double check what you have already done.
Is this where you should be marketing to your clients?
Do a little research on Facebook to see if your target market is using Facebook. Search using your existing clients in the department you are looking to market – are they active on Facebook – if so this is your place. If not, find out where they are and find a marketing channel for that media, it could be community newspapers.
Check to see is there is a common interest to these people – that was you can use this in your marketing and try to match your marketing focus keywords to this interest.
For this Step by Step example Facebook Page we are setting up a virtual law firm specializing in property law called “North of Umgeni River Property Law”.
Step 1
Create a new Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/
Step 2
Decide of whether to use a Local Business/Place or Company/Organisation/Institution
I would say that if you have one office and you are focusing on a local area around your law firm to get new clients, then you should go with the Local Business, but multiple offices or a law firm that spans to a large geographical or national base, you should choose a Company page.
You can change your type of page at a later stage.
Step 3
Complete your details, but make sure they are accurate and can be found straight away on Google Maps.
2. Enter your address in the search area and see if it finds your location, if not use the map to pin-point your location and see what address it uses – then use this address.
Make sure you choose Lawyer as your Business Type
Click “Get Started”
Step 4
Setup the Page – Categories
In the Category section, select the type of law you are going to offer – we are going to pretend to be Property Lawyers for this example – we are will type “Property Law” and while doing so Facebook should give me an autocomplete to select the category. We also chose “Real Estate Lawyer” – leave the “Lawyer” category, if you delete it you cannot retype it, you have to go all the ay back to the beginning of the page setup. As far as I can see you are limited to 3 categories.
About your page
Take some time to compile a good “about us” text, make sure your target market is addressed, your prospect’s interests if [possible and definitely your keywords for this department. It can be changed later, but get it right from the start.
Website
Enter your URL for your website, and make sure it works, by copy and pasting it into your web browser window.
Unique Username for your Facebook Page
This should be the name of your business or as close as possible. We used:
“northofumgenipropertylaw”
Check the selection to say you are a real business – we said it was not – obviously 😉
Step 5
Profile picture
For the profile picture use a good quality image in JPG format with dimensions of 180pixels by 180pixels.
Step 6
Add the Page link to your Favourites in Facebook, click Next.
Step 7
Preferred Page Audience
Here you add a bit more about who you are trying to target by setting location and personal preferences.
Location, type in the address and let it offer you the location to click and select, that will offer a 30km radius around your location, you can add more if you service other areas as well.
Age and Gender are self-explanatory.
Hobbies and Interests – I don’t really think I can pin-point a hobby or interest that people buying or selling a house would be interested in, so I am leaving that blank. These questions are more geared towards advertising in Facebook.
Select the languages you want to target and click “Save”.
It will create your page and have you ready to start entering your additional information, but that is for the next issue.
To view what we have achieved very quickly using the “Facebook Page – Local Business” you can visit our new virtual property law page at:
https://www.facebook.com/northofumgenipropertylaw
Notice that it allowed us to name the page right up front, the business/company/institution page forces you to finish the entire page setup before allowing you to name the page.
The above is easy enough for anyone to follow, so by now those interested in setting up a Law Firm Facebook Page, should be as far as we are.
Until next week…
