CIRBA LAW P.C. SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Ben Cirba
Have you or anyone you know been seriously injured recently and are looking for compensation? Here at Cirba Law, Ronald Cirba has over 25 years of experience in defending the injured people of Berks County. If you want honest, efficient, and reliable representation, contact us immediately! Consultation is free.
INTRODUCTION
I have decided to devise a social media strategy for my father's law firm, Cirba Law P.C. He has been practicing as a personal injury lawyer in the Berks County area of Pennsylvania for over 30 years. As the digital age has become increasingly more important of a tool for businesses, Ron, my dad, has not adapted with the times.
I have devised a social media strategy around Facebook. I feel like this social media platform will be most beneficial for Cirba Law P.C., and hope that this strategy can help my dad get more clients and establish a following, or at least a voice, on social media.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Two of Cirba Law’s biggest competitors are Edgar Snyder and Associates, and Kozloff Stoudt. Both of these law firms are much more active than Cirba’s, however, they are much larger so have many more resources. For example, when you click on Edgar Snyder’s Facebook page, an automatic messenger pops up with an array of options for the potential client to click. Something like this wouldn’t be possible with Cirba Law because it’s only Ron and his secretary.
In terms of following, Edgar Snyder and Associates Facebook page has over 21,000 people who have liked it, and over 20,000 people who follow it. Again, this firm is located in many different areas all over Pennsylvania so it’s not realistic for Cirba Law to even come close to this much traffic on their site. Cirba wouldn’t be able to handle all of those clients on his own.
We also see Kozloff Stoudt with a much bigger following, but they mix things up and take a Twitter approach. They post every week, and it’s typically about information that could potentially be important for people seeking legal trouble. It seems much less effective than Facebook, because they never have any interaction with anybody.
CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Cirba Law’s current social media strategy is almost nonexistent. The profile picture is very bland. It’s just a picture of two capital letters “CL”. The header is a picture of Ronald Cirba. They have nobody that follows them, and they haven’t posted since 2017. The only real post they have is a short 30 second video that briefly describes what Cirba Law does and what kind of representation you will receive. The video uses generic pictures of a courtroom that most likely came from google. The other “posts” are just statuses saying that he updated his profile picture and cover photo.
To be completely honest, there really isn’t much going on here. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, because it leaves lots of room for creativity and improvement.
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
The characteristics of the audience of Cirba Law are people who were severely injured in an automobile accident, work accident, or family members of someone who wrongly died. His audience are that they are injured, feel as though it was not their fault, and looking for immediate legal representation. The demographics of the audience is made up of people of all ages, races, and sexes. The beauty of personal injury law is that the lawyer doesn’t get paid unless they get some sort of money for their client. Because of this, people of all social classes are able to afford representation. This really expands Cirba’s audience and gives him much more opportunity for business. Also because of the huge diversity in demographics, his audience’s interests and behaviors will also vary a lot. The location of the audience is preferable in the Berks County area or within an hour or two of Philadelphia.
JUSTIFICATION OF STRATEGY
Ronald Cirba has been representing injured people all over Berks County and further for over 30 years. He is known for his work ethic and integrity when practicing law. There are many lawyers out there that only care about the money. However, Ronald specifically picked personal injury law because he felt this was an area where he could really help people out. Knowing you are being represented with someone who has your best interests at heart is very reassuring and a necessity for someone who has been seriously injured and traumatized. Helping Cirba Law establish themselves on social media will help not only the business but the people who seek his representation.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Cirba’s primary audience is definitely people who were directly injured and are looking for legal representation. The secondary audience is people who may not be injured but have heard of Cirba Law. These people are important because when someone that they know gets injured they can refer them to Cirba. Getting your name out there to as many people as possible is important. Cirba’s tertiary audience is the government and insurance companies. The policies that are in place effect insurance policies and in turn effect how much Cirba can make in lawsuits from settlements.
The audience is using social media for some sort of gratification. In this instance, Cirba’s audience’s social media goals are to let their friends and family know what happened to them. Often times people will post pictures of their car accidents or pictures of them in their hospital beds with a description of how they were injured. They post this to inform people of course, but also to get loving feedback. Friends and families will comment on posts saying that they’re happy that the person is okay, they’ll show concern, ect. Getting support from people on social media, especially when you’re injured, feels good.
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The main goals that Cirba Law has, are to get the name of the law firm out to as many people as possible which will in turn produce more clients. To do this we will have to effectively get people onto our social media sites, and make sure we create a brand that will stick in the minds of the people visiting. We will track the KPI in a number of ways. We can look at the number of people who visit the page, track how many people comment and like the posts, and if people are talking about Cirba Law on their personal social media pages.
Getting people to visit the site is a challenge in itself. This will be done by advertising on social media. We will target all demographics, but more specifically those who have recently posted about being in automobile accidents or workplace injuries. We can use analytics tools such as NUVI Social Analytics. This can track how much traffic our social media sites are getting as well as the Cirba Law website.
STRATEGY DISTRIBUTION PLAN
Because Cirba Law is not selling merchandise, the approach that will be taken will be a little different. The strategy will be to establish a base following on social media since there is no media presence present yet. To do this I think the smartest thing to do would be to start a video campaign on Facebook. The page would post videos of previous clients speaking about their positive experiences with the law firm. They would be short 1-2 minute videos briefly describing the process and how the law firm was able to win them a bunch of money.
There are a couple major keys here for the videos. For one, the videos should have some sort of emotional feeling that people watching can connect with. People looking for Cirba Law’s services have more than likely experienced some sort of trauma and the key is for them to be able to relate to the people in the videos. Secondly, it would really benefit the page to have the people who were clients in the video re-post the video on their personal page. That way all of their friends and family can see. If we have 30 videos of successful stories to being with, that should be enough to establish a presence on social media. We would then take to other platforms to continue the growing process.
Goal: To establish a social media presence on Facebook using success story videos, and then potentially move to other platforms.
Target: Upload about 24 videos over the course of the year onto the Facebook page and have the clients in the videos re-post them on their own personal pages as well.
Strategy: Use the Facebook video sharing option to our advantage so as many people can see the videos as possible.
Tactic: Make the videos as emotionally connectable as possible so people who have been injured can relate.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Cirba’s primary audience is definitely people who were directly injured and are looking for legal representation. The secondary audience is people who may not be injured but have heard of Cirba Law. These people are important because when someone that they know gets injured they can refer them to Cirba. Getting your name out there to as many people as possible is important. Cirba’s tertiary audience is the government and insurance companies. The policies that are in place effect insurance policies and in turn effect how much Cirba can make in lawsuits from settlements.
The audience is using social media for some sort of gratification. In this instance, Cirba’s audience’s social media goals are to let their friends and family know what happened to them. Often times people will post pictures of their car accidents or pictures of them in their hospital beds with a description of how they were injured. They post this to inform people of course, but also to get loving feedback. Friends and families will comment on posts saying that they’re happy that the person is okay, they’ll show concern, ect. Getting support from people on social media, especially when you’re injured, feels good.
TIMELINE
First 3 Months- every week
Monday- Post video of previous client experience
Tuesday- Nothing
Wednesday- Nothing
Thursday- Post about how law firm could potentially help/new laws
Friday- Nothing
Saturday- Nothing
Sunday- Nothing
TIMELINE CONTINUED
Remaining 9 months- every other week
Monday- Post video of previous client experience
Tuesday- Nothing
Wednesday- Nothing
Thursday- Post about how law firm could potentially help/new laws
Friday- Nothing
Saturday- Nothing
Sunday- Nothing
CONTENT EXAMPLES
The Full Story
EVALUATION
We will be doing a number of things to measure the the action on the site. For one, we will be looking at how many times the page is visited. Since people are not likely to re-share our posts due to the nature of the content, the goal will be to try and drive as many people to the page as possible. Engagements on the social media pages themselves will most likely not be very high. Because of this, we will pay attention to see how many people contact Cirba Law for business. This could be from phone call, email, or direct messages on social media. We will then compare the amount of people calling for business before the implementation of social media with the amount of traffic afterwards. The whole goal is to bring more business to the law firm, and to do that we need to be as visible as possible on these social media platforms. Having videos of success stories are something that could be shareable and bring more traffic.
POLICY
Use professional language at all times. Proper punctuation is a must, and no swearing.
Respond to all engagement (unless it’s a troll) in a timely manner.
The Law has very strict confidentiality rules. Never post anything about your clients without written consent from them.
Do not over-post. Quality over quality
STYLE GUIDE
Contacting a lawyer can be a very intimidating task. The goal of Cirba Law’s Facebook page is to use language that is easily understandable. We want to look professional, but also appear as if we are just another average person. We will dumb down language so that everybody knows what is going on and so people don’t feel like they are being tricked or played.
We will accomplish this by using language like, “Are you hurt? Contact us to see if we can win you some money!” This is as simple as it gets, and everyone will be able to comprehend it. Finding a balance between being professional and personable is key.
STYLE GUIDE
Contacting a lawyer can be a very intimidating task. The goal of Cirba Law’s Facebook page is to use language that is easily understandable. We want to look professional, but also appear as if we are just another average person. We will dumb down language so that everybody knows what is going on and so people don’t feel like they are being tricked or played.
We will accomplish this by using language like, “Are you hurt? Contact us to see if we can win you some money!” This is as simple as it gets, and everyone will be able to comprehend it. Finding a balance between being professional and personable is key.
RATIONALE
As hard as it is to really market a law firm on social media, using my strategy will really benefit the firm in the long run. By adding as many friends as possible on Facebook, and by posting good content a reasonable amount, we will help fuel the amount of clients Cirba Law can represent. Executing will also be a big part of being successful on social media. If we do not stick to the plan then we will not see an increase in business at Cirba Law. In order to assure the success of the plan, we must create a posting schedule/content plan, use a content management system, monitor the analytics, and stay in our lane.
I also believe that running a social media campaign where Cirba Law posts 2-3 minute videos of their successful experiences. It will be an on-platform campaign on Facebook, and the videos will be posted about once or twice a week. The reason I believe this will be successful is because the clients can explain the process it took to get representation from Cirba Law. From this, people will get a better understanding of how easy it is to get the representation they need. They will also be able to connect with everyday people in the videos, and this will help because contacting lawyer can be very intimidating. With a plethora of success stories to watch on Facebook, they’ll be more confident and know that contacting Cirba Law is the best choice.