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Lawyers using hashtags
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: December 11, 2020
Hashtags (the symbol #) are a very powerful social media tool that lawyers can leverage to both generate business and keep an eye on the competition. They may not seem like much, but if used properly they can become a kind of sandworm burrowing through Twitter and Instagram to get a multitude or positive results.
If you use them correctly.
Technically, a hashtag is a metadata tag originally developed on Twitter that creates topics that can be followed across the social media platform. A hashtag, used correctly, can send a tweet or IG post through the accounts of many people who you don’t (yet) know. It can also give you the ability to see what topics clients may be interested in, what topics your competition is tweeting about and how popular their tweets are, and help to find new clients. In short, they are the quickest and easiest way to make your content discoverable and to “spread the word.”
Here are a few tips for using them properly, and thanks (again) to the folks at good2bsocial.
First, like in the practice, do your research. See what the competition has trending, and what is trending in your area. The simplest way to do this is a keyword search on the free service Hashtagify (https://hashtagify.me/). If you really want a complete set of social media control tools and want to pay for it, go over to Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/).
Then get to work. Figure out what hashtags you want to use.
Hashtags can be broken down into three categories: 1. Firm or campaign specific, 2. “Trending” and 3. Content related. Know which you are writing.
Use your original content to create original hashtags, or to jump on to another hashtag. It has to be relatable to the law and easy to remember.
See what is trending. Research how your target audience is following hashtags, and then jump into those streams by hashtagging your original content accordingly. You must have a very clear idea of the makeup of your target audience to write hashtags that will reach them.
Also—don’t do this alone. Get another opinion during the editing process. Hashtags do not have spaces, so what you’re thinking and what someone else is reading may not perfectly coincide.