By using social media as a networking tool, Amanda finds new referral sources for her law practice.
Utilizing social media is more than just posting interesting content with hopes of going viral. When done right, social media marketing will open the door to many networking opportunities that will help advance your firm.
Every firm should have a social media marketing strategy in place. This type of marketing allows your firm to highlight its values in a more interesting fashion. It will not only improve your brand loyalty but will lead to better SEO, higher conversation rates, and increased traffic.
In this week’s #FollowAttorneyAmanda, Amanda follows up on how hosting her gameshow live on social media platforms has allowed her to network within her legal community.
Follow this video and see how Amanda’s gameshow has opened the door to referrals and other opportunities.
Video Transcript
Amanda Shaffer: Hi, I’m Attorney Amanda Shaffer. Today I want to talk about using social media marketing as a networking tool, which is something I’ve been working on and I think found some success doing it. I thought about talking about this because last night I had episode seven of my game show, “Are You Smarter than a Naturalized Citizen” and every single episode so far, I’ve had two immigration attorneys competed. I initially decided to use immigration attorneys for this because I thought it’d be interesting to see if immigration attorneys can get the questions correct on the naturalization test, but also because I already had a community of immigration attorneys that support me and I support and I trust and I thought would be good to be some of my first two contestants. So I think my first two or three shows, at least one of ladies that are in my marketing WhatsApp group.
Since then, what I do is advertise – I posted like the immigration lawyer groups on Facebook, “Does anyone want to be a contestant? It’s a good way to market yourself and your firm. Just reach out to me.” I didn’t really know how many people I ended up getting, but I already have my spots for the next show, which is in two weeks filled. So last night, at the end of the show when I end the live broadcast, I can still be in the broadcast studio with the contestants. I like to thank them and wrapped up or whatever. And one – the two girls that were on last night, they didn’t know each other before. One of them – we’re all in New York. So I’m in Manhattan, one contestant was in Brooklyn and another one was in Long Island and I’ve never seen any of them as my competition. I feel like it’s always helpful to network with other attorneys, especially even immigration attorneys, even in the same area. And all of us actually do slightly different things with immigration, so that was helpful.
Like one of the girls has actually referred me insolvent case before because she doesn’t do legal defense. And then the other contestant last night, one said to the other, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you do business immigration. I’ve been looking for someone three for business too. And then they’re also trying to get into doing more Lives and opening themselves up to more to social media marketing. And she was like one of those [inaudible] and she was talking about an H2B visa, where there’s a lot of Spanish-speaking population who applies for those. So she was like, “Oh, maybe we can do like a collaboration where I would speak in Spanish. And she was kind of talking to both of us, but that’s more Laura’s thing than my thing. And I was just like sitting there listening and I was like, yeah, that’s awesome. Like the reason that this is happening right now is that I brought these two people together and it wasn’t just them. Another reason that I wanted to do use attorneys, especially immigration attorneys at the beginning of this show until it took off a little bit is that I wanted to make connections and network with people.
So I’ve met at like 14 people now. So a couple of years before, but I met a bunch of people now that I didn’t know before. Some of them have other practice areas and immigration like I do with family law. And so it doesn’t necessarily matter where they are in the country, but it’s always good to, to know people and to stay in contact with them, which I plan to do. And I see them in my groups all the time, like asking questions and I’m more inclined to answer now that I know the person. So I think it’s been a great opportunity to do that. I have some other collaborations in the work coming up. It’s just – it’s a lot of work to do. I’m actually going to be on one of my colleagues’ broadcasts tomorrow. I’m doing a national humor comedy round table. It’s not always- it doesn’t have to necessarily be relevant. I don’t know, I doubt it’s going to be related to the law. She’s an immigration lawyer too. She does like arts and entertainment law mostly, with immigration. So it’ll just be another opportunity to get myself out there, get open myself up to another audience. And that’s how I sell my show to get people on it. The only problem is now because the tests, they switched back to the old naturalization test it’s pretty easy. So everyone keeps getting all the answers right.
So I might need to get a little more excitement in the show. I do want to open it up to high school teachers and whatnot. I think that would be a lot of fun, but I never really thought of social media as a networking tool, because you go in person and I was never good at an in person, but when I do it on social media, it seems to work much better for me. And I have a lot of ideas, a lot of things I want to do and people seem to like my ideas and they want to participate. So that’s really cool. So I do plan to continue. I just hope that the Lives continue to be popular because as long as they’re popular, I’ll be doing them. If they’re bringing business, who doesn’t matter. So the bigger audience you can open yourself up to, of course, the better off you’re going to be. So that is all today for #FollowAttorneyAmanda, I’ll see you next time.
