Does it feel like your social media efforts are lagging behind, like you’re in the prehistoric area roaming around with the dinosaurs?

Last weekend I went to the American Museum of Natural History, and while I was looking at the fossils of the dinosaurs from millions of years ago, I started thinking about how it relates to many law firms’ and individuals’ social media posts.

The legal industry tends to lag behind others – especially in social media. Many firms post the same dry self-congratulatory content (such as “We are honored and humbled to once again be named to Super Lawyers…”), which doesn’t help to differentiate them or build their businesses or visibility.

But if you follow everyone else and don’t innovate, you run the risk of potentially becoming extinct – like the dinosaurs.

So what do you do?

Start by looking at your competitors and see what they are doing well (and not so well) to find opportunities.

Put your audience first, whether you are posting content to your LinkedIn company page or your own personal page, and build your content strategy around a client-centric strategy.

The reason why so many people have low engagement on their LinkedIn posts because they make their content all about themselves. There’s nothing in it for the reader.

Try this as your strategy:

• Make it about them not you.

• Give freely. That means providing content of value.

• Be authentic. Use storytelling and don’t be overly self-promotional.

• Lead with emotion and stories. You can do this by featuring your people in your posts and not making every post about your wins.

Remember, we are selling services to people, and people want to do business with those they know and like and trust.

Gone are the days of dry boring business content. Think of marketing today as business to human. People want to do business with people they know and like and trust and there are a lot of people who do what you do so make sure that you are staying top of mind with them by providing high-value content that showcases your expertise in addition to your personality.

Here’s an article with ideas on how you can create social media content that can even go viral.

What do you think of these ideas? Also have you been to this museum? I highly recommend it!