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2016: The Year Everything Changed In Social Media Marketing

By By Larry Bodine
November 01, 2016

Three megatrends culminated in online business development in 2016, requiring attorneys to change their digital marketing tactics and to re-focus on what produces results.

  1. Your next client will most likely visit you using a smartphone, not a desktop computer. New data from comScore shows that digital media time spent on mobile devices is now a whopping 68%. Desktop computers account for only one third of digital time spent. Ask yourself: What does your law firm website look like on a cell phone?
  2. On social media, Facebook is by far the most effective. Facebook is social media to consumers. Sixty-six percent of adults log onto Facebook every day, according to Social Media Explorer. Eighty percent of consumers use the Facebook smartphone app. It is also on almost half of users' smartphone home screens, according to comScore. How many likes and followers does your Facebook page have?
  3. A majority of Americans are likely to retain a lawyer who is active on social media. Fifty-four percent of consumers say they would likely retain an attorney who is active on Facebook, Twitter or Linked-In, according to research by Thomson Reuters. This is especially true for younger Americans between the ages of 18-44. When was the last time you updated your firm's Facebook page?

The New Social Order

To grasp how much things have changed online in 2016, it is useful to compare the current number of active users on the social media that most lawyers use. (Source: Smartinsights.com)

  • Facebook: 1.59 billion (by far the largest, fastest growing medium);
  • Instagram: 400 million (a Facebook property);
  • Twitter: 320 million (total of users is stagnant);
  • Snapchat: 200 million (growing rapidly); and
  • LinkedIn: 100 million (now just a resumé site with little engagement).

Did you notice that YouTube was not on the list? That's because Snapchat (the mobile app to send videos that disappear after a few seconds) has more than 10 billion daily views, which exceeds even YouTube — the original site to showcase video content.

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