Tik Tok For Lawyers

Allison Williams: [00:00:11] Hi everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your Law Firm Mentor. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money. 

Allison Williams: [00:00:25] Hi everybody! I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor, and welcome to another edition of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. This week, we are going to be talking about TikTok, one of those social media platforms that has become ever elusive, but also popular. And a lot of us have been enjoying TikTok, especially since quarantine. But a lot of lawyers have been asking the question, is TikTok the right platform for me? Is it something that’s too silly or really not my style, not my jam, not something I think I can get behind. And I know for a lot of us, especially those of us that consider ourselves to be a little bit older, maybe a little bit wiser, maybe even a little bit conservative in terms of how we present ourselves to the world, it’s a real challenge to think about all of the fun, exciting, interesting but really wacky things that we see on TikTok. But since TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms out there, I think we would be remiss if we didn’t at least consider whether or not it is something that can benefit us from a marketing perspective in our law firms. So I want to give you today four things to consider about TikTok as to why it might be something that you want to get into.

Allison Williams: [00:01:38] OK, now, here at Law Firm Mentor, we are platform agnostic. We are some of everywhere. And I will be candid with you. I have not yet gotten into TikTok and not because I’m somebody who opposes doing the fun, crazy thing as a form of marketing. But honestly, we’re just so busy with the with the various different platforms that we have already. Adding another platform just doesn’t seem like the thing to do. But I got on the Clubhouse back in December of twenty twenty when people started sending invites and letting me know about it. And I said, let me check that out and see. And it seems like TikTok has has has grown in popularity while Clubhouse had a surge and it seems like it has fallen off for a whole host of reasons. Right. We’re actually going to talk a little bit about the decline or the declining of Clubhouse on another episode. But for today, we’re going to be talking about TikTok. All right. So four things to consider when you think about TikTok as a part of your law firm marketing strategy. Number one, it is quick and easy. OK. What I love about TikTok is the fact that it is a video based platform. Right. So it is typically short videos streamed and repeated. And there is, there tends to be more consumption of right now, video content in general, but in particular video content that is shorter in duration.

Allison Williams: [00:03:05] Right. So earlier on in the podcast many, many moons ago, I can’t remember now what episode it was, but we can certainly link to it in the show notes. I had on my good friend Mark Bullock, who is one of the co-founders of Video Socials and Video Socials is a video blogging club that helps professionals get their message out to the world in these professionally produced three minute videos. And by the way, we’re also going to have a link to Video Socials. Video Socials dot net in the chat section or in the in the show notes. So you’re able to go look it up and check that out if you’re interested. But one of the things that I that I spoke about with Mark was, was the popularity of video and how it has taken off in a way that that really is is unheard of. And and I say it’s unheard of. And that probably is a bit of a reach. But when I say that, what I’m really talking about is the fact that, you know, as professionals, we know that last year was kind of a cataclysmic year in terms of evolution and change. We had to adapt faster than a lot of us had ever had to adapt before. Even those of us that were already marketing online, already comfortable being in front of a camera, already using Zoom to some degree, we still had to adapt to the proliferation of people using Zoom and the extent to which we had to do old skills in this new platform, like trying cases by Zoom or doing initial client consultations by Zoom.

Allison Williams: [00:04:41] Right. There was a lot of newness in that. But one of the things that I think was was highlighted by virtue of that was that so many of us were now looking for an outlet where we could consume information that was light hearted, that didn’t make us feel like it was yet another place for us to consume information that could bring us down. Right. So we know that Facebook has had its own varying different iterations of usage and one of the major bones of contention in twenty twenty and even before then was foreign governments invading Facebook in order to promote propaganda to the masses about different political factions. And so you had these wild, outlandish stories about both political parties and whomever was vying for the highest position or even sometimes the not so high position. Sometimes it was even local elections where where there were messages put out about the political parties. And Facebook became this toxic cesspool of political debate. And it wasn’t even political debate. It was political vitriol. And there was very much a heightened sense that there was participation in politics only to the extent of being able to say nasty things about the opposite political party and to call names and to point fingers.

Allison Williams: [00:06:02] And people really got sick of Facebook for that reason. So I think a lot of people went looking for some way of kind of vegging out, but still getting their their information, their their their knowledge, their news pieces, their connection to the outside world from data sources that would often also be on Facebook. But TikTok was kind of the rising star of releasing and escaping. Right. So you learn and see very quickly that people were taking video marketing, video content that they were creating for marketing purposes. Normally, it would go on a website or on Facebook and now it was going into TikTok. And the beautiful thing is that when we started looking at consumption rates, and I have various different sources that I pulled this information from, I’m not going to sight to all the sources here. But I will tell you that the level of consumption of shorter video is something that Mark Bullock and I also talked about when I interviewed him about video marketing. And the fact is that instead of what used to be like a 30 minute, 60 minute, 90 minute video that someone would consume from soup to nuts. Now people are consuming shorter snippets of content. And the beautiful thing about that is that for you, as the marketer is easier to create shorter snippets of content. It’s easier to talk in soundbites.

Allison Williams: [00:07:29] It’s easier to take 30 minutes of your life and create a piece of content that can be sliced and diced into small segments and give you a moment after moment after moment of usable content from a relatively short period of time in your live, all things considered. So the beautiful thing about TikTok is, number one, that it is quick and easy. Right? So there is a low barrier to entry. There is a low threshold for being able to create the content. And you don’t have to take a whole lot of time to create because the consumable pieces on TikTok are shorter videos. All right. Number two, to know about TikTok for lawyers is that advertising on TikTok is much, much cheaper than Facebook, Google, even Instagram. Right. So you can get a better return on your investment or a lower spend on TikTok. And the beautiful thing about that as what I would refer to as the young and scrappy and I say young, but lots of lawyers don’t start law firms when they are quote unquote young. I don’t consider myself particularly young when I started my law firm, but I was young-ish in career. I was a decade into the practice. Right. There are some people that hang a shingle fresh out of law school. They went straight through college to law school. They’re twenty five years old. That would be, quote, young.

Allison Williams: [00:08:51] But when I say young, I’m talking about young in entrepreneurship. So that could be you start a law firm when you’re 50, you’re young because you’re young and entrepreneurship. Right. So that young and scrappy, that new lawyer, that new business owner who’s who’s charting a course for his or her first time, when you first get out there, the first thing that we instinctually want to do is to go with what’s popular. But as many marketers will tell you, when you don’t have much ad spend, content is king. It remains king, even when you do have a lot to spend.

Allison Williams: [00:09:23] But the more that you can start to proliferate your digital imprint with information, the more you can get yourself out there to be consumed by other people without spending money for that, the greater likelihood that when you do start spending money, the marketers will be able to drive people to your website and to be able to make you more well known in the digital space by virtue of what you have already created. Right. So they’re actually going to market something. They’re not just marketing you, the human, you, the lawyer, but they’re going to market what you have already started to create. So with places like TikTok, you are at an advantage in that you can start where a lot of law firms are probably too afraid to go at this point. Right. Because a lot of law firms have already created a presence online. They have already started to brand themselves. And a lot of lawyers are very resistant to change.

Allison Williams: [00:10:17] So if you are somebody that is willing to take that step off that cliff into the proverbial new territory, of having that fresh face, that that new idea, that new positioning out there in a place where a lot of people are consuming content and consuming it over and over again, there’s more consumption of the same content because, again, it’s in bite sized pieces. And the more popular you become with the pieces of content that you create, the more people see it, and thus the more people will see it in the future. Right. When that starts to happen, it becomes an advantage for you to have content marketing. But it’s also an advantage that you can take a low budget and start immediately with advertising instead of what was typically the case when we just have Facebook or when we have places like MySpace. When Instagram was added to the Facebook library, if you will, we still had to have something outside of ourselves to be able to afford the marketing. And if you couldn’t afford it at a high enough rate, it almost seemed like it wasn’t worth it. Right now, we’re starting to see a much better ROI from TikTok because, again, not as many people are advertising there and it hasn’t picked up as the same phenomena as it has with Facebook and Google and even YouTube.

Allison Williams: [00:11:35] OK, so I want you to seriously consider looking at advertising on TikTok because of the ROI you can get there. And if nothing else, have a conversation with a marketer where you can actually start looking at what your ad ROI would likely be on TikTok relative to other platforms. All right. Number three, third consideration of TikTok for lawyers is that TikTok is the land of millennials. OK, so if your target market is in the millennial category of age, consider bringing yourself over to where your folks are, OK? One of the things that we ask of people all the time when they are trying to figure out who is my ideal client avatar. Right. Who is that person that I need to be positioning my message for, that I need to be speaking to and I need to visualize when I’m writing a story that’s going to appeal to that person to get a hold of me so that they can allow me to help them with their legal problem. That ideal client avatar is oftentimes a millennial. And if your ideal client avatar is a millennial, I want you to think about the fact that it is proliferated. TikTok is proliferated with millennials and brands that are most known to be on TikTok including brands associated with fashion, with food, with travel, with fitness, with health, with beauty, cars, sports. Right?

Allison Williams: [00:13:00] There’s lots of different demographics, people that are searching out certain types of content there. But I want you to think about this. If you’re looking for clients who can afford your legal services, someone who is interested in travel and is pursuing content in the area of travel is more likely statistically to be able to have discretionary income that would go to paying legal fees, if need be, than someone who doesn’t necessarily have a concern about travel because they can’t afford to. That doesn’t mean that every person seeking out travel information is rich or every person who is not seeking out travel information is unable to afford it. It just means that we start to see trends with what people look for. So I want you to be thinking ahead about where does my ideal client Avatar hang out? Are they on TikTok? And if they are on TikTok, what type of content are they following? Right. And some of this, by the way, is research that you can do just by going onto the platform and looking at who’s following who. Right. Who’s zoomin who. God I’m really making myself old by saying that, but you know what I mean. Right? So think about it that way. But I also want you to seriously consider that people that are searching out particular types of content can become aware of your content by virtue of you being connected with those other sources so you can find where your people are and hang out there and put messages there.

Allison Williams: [00:14:26] Then all of a sudden those people become your people. All right, and finally, fourth, but not last, or rather, last but not least. It’s been a long day. Last but not least in the TikTok for lawyers consideration list is that you can actually drive huge amounts of traffic to your website on TikTok. OK. Now one of the things that’s easy about doing this is that the way that you are able to put your links from TikTok on TikTok videos in order to drive people to different locations, it’s just very omnipresent. Whenever you go on to the platform, you can see it as soon as the video pops up. And so it allows you very easily to take content that’s there. And if you just pump out a lot of content, the likelihood that somebody who is interested in your content is ultimately going to be driven over to your website is something that is more likely. OK, now I want you to think about the idea that driving people to your website is almost always one of, if not the primary objective of putting marketing in other places online. Right. Your goal is to get people back to your home base so that they can learn about your services, learn about your branding, they can see your videos, they can connect with you.

Allison Williams: [00:15:44] They can ultimately make a request to have a consultation so that they can become your client. So your goal in putting your messaging in any form of social media platform is in part to brand who you are so that when people are in need, they might not be in need when they see your messaging, but when they are in need, they’ll reach out for you. But it’s also to get people who would otherwise be inclined to reach out now to know that you’re the one to whom they should be reaching. OK, now I had this conversation recently with Matt Rouse of the Digital Marketing Master’s podcast. So shout out to Matt. I actually am going to have Matt on the podcast one day soon. He did agree to come on. He’s such a great host of his podcast and he was such a down to earth guy. I could clearly see how he knew what he was talking about. But one of the things that we talked about in particular was kind of the the festive fancy fun out of the box lawyer marketing genre of videos, not just videos, but any type of marketing, really. Right. It’s the standout factor. And some of the standout factor is just being there for the first time and doing it when people are not otherwise doing it. In fact, I’ve heard this now from a couple of lawyers and of course, we know it to be true instinctually.

Allison Williams: [00:16:58] But when you hear anecdotal evidence that supports your instinct, that really does solidify your knowledge that something is true. But there are a couple of lawyers that I know that started off in Internet based marketing a long time ago, could be over a decade ago that they were kind of fresh on the scene. And they were one of the first law firms that were kind of out there pounding the pavement by virtue of their website. And they are now at a place where while other lawyers are just now figuring out how to get a website optimized, how to get enough content on it, how to get it to show on the first page of Google. They don’t have that problem because they have been around for so long that they have a longer digital imprint and that longer existing digital imprint is now proliferating more content pieces. Right. There’s more connection to it on the web because more people have had a chance to see it. Right. So if you think about that and just kind of the idea of the snowball effect of marketing, right. As soon as you put something out there, it doesn’t go away. That means the people who are available to see it today have the ability to see it. The people that are available to see it tomorrow are available, as are the people who saw it today.

Allison Williams: [00:18:15] Right. Because it doesn’t go away, which means that messages can be seen multiple times and they can be seen on multiple platforms if there’s hyperlinks to the content. So on some level, every time that you create something and you put it online, you’re creating a piece of opportunity for it to be seen over and over and over and over again. And that means when we start thinking about things that are timeless, that’s how lawyers like to think. We’re very conservative in terms of what we feel comfortable putting out there. And we know that some bar associations are certainly more aggressive than others in terms of policing, advertising and marketing communications. But we know that there is a component of us. There are components of us that will instinctually say, hey, I don’t feel comfortable putting out something of me not wearing a suit or or me doing something silly, whereas there are others that, you know, that’s their jam. Right. That’s who they are. You know, one of the one of the things I love about my best friend Amy is that she has hot pink hair. And when I say hot pink, I mean, she has hair that’s pretty much close to her waist. It’s very long. It’s very thick. And I love her. Her natural hair, her natural color is this deep, deep brunette, but she has chosen to dye her hair this hot magenta pink and it matches, by the way, her pink Maserati.

Allison Williams: [00:19:44] Right. So there’s actually in her town, like she’s very well known for driving a car that is pink. And it actually goes by the nickname Pink. So the pink Maserati gets quite a bit of attention, which I hate when I’m driving in the car with her and like, I need to scratch my nose or something because I always feel like there’s an audience of us in this Maserati. But I say that because she did something absolutely brilliant, which is shrinkwrap her car to have the firm name, website and telephone number on the car. So it’s actually a driving billboard, which is a 100 percent deductible marketing expense. So shout out to her for being smart with her money. But I mentioned Amy and the pink hair and the Maserati because this is something that is a key component of branding. Right. Differentiating, making yourself stand out. How can you stand out any more than hot magenta hair and a pink Maserati? Well, for the guys that are out there that are like, hey, I’m not I’m here, that’s not my thing. I don’t think that you have to do that. You don’t have to do that. But you can add some personality to what would otherwise be a conservative appearance or a conservative stature in the legal profession. So just the very fact that you go on to TikTok and do something that attracts attention and hey, these are the lawyers that fill in the blank, that is an opportunity that currently is an untapped opportunity currently.

Allison Williams: [00:21:06] That is not an area where a lot of lawyers are playing. Right. That’s not an area where a lot of money is being spent. That’s not an area where we’re getting a lot of focus and attention. And that does not mean, however, that your clients are not there, that the people who would buy your legal services aren’t there, especially because TikTok is the land of millennials. All right, guys, today we have talked about marketing and in particular, TikTok for lawyers. And I want you guys to start opening up your horizons to different opportunities to expand into different forms of marketing, because as we know, we drive in money in a law firm through our marketing and our sales. Right? Now once we get those marketing and sales numbers up, we then bring the, we then crush the chaos in our law firm by virtue of our people and our systems. But you have to have money in order to have that level of freedom that comes with being a business owner and not simply owning a job. All right, everybody, I want to thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Today, we talked about TikTok for lawyers. This is another innovative way for you to get your message out there in order to grow your law firms.

Allison Williams: [00:22:17] And we know that law firm growth comes in the form of marketing and sales. That’s how we drive money into a business and we crush the chaos in that business by virtue of getting the right people, doing the right things in the right way pursuant to a system. All right. And if you want help to get your marketing under control, to get your innovative ideas out there to the marketplace in a way that’s ethical, but that’s also going to get you more money and more free time sooner rather than later. Feel free to reach out to us here at Law Firm Mentor. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Everyone have a great day.

Allison Williams: [00:23:07] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s guests and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you own a solo or small law firm and are looking for guidance, advice or simply support on your journey to create a law firm that runs without you, join us in the Law Firm Mentor Movement free Facebook group. There, you can access our free trainings on improving collections in law firms, meeting billable hours, and join the movement of thousands of law firm owners across the country who want to crush chaos in their law firm and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a great day.