Social Media Monitoring Tools for Lawyers
There are several components to a successful social media strategy and countless ways to strategize. But there’s one part of the social strategy you don’t want to ignore. Your marketing plan isn’t complete without social media monitoring and social listening.
Social media monitoring consists of tracking data and what people are saying about your company, while social listening improves your strategy by using the data gathered. You can do both yourself, but it’s more efficient to outsource and use a social media monitoring tool.
Monitoring software helps you determine whether you’re meeting key performance indicators or KPIs. Clicks, likes, brand mentions, and followers are all examples of KPIs. Metrics like these can show whether a social media strategy is working or not. Social media monitoring tools also give you an easy way to track the raw data needed for a comprehensive analysis. To be an effective digital marketer, you must adapt your marketing strategy. Social monitoring allows you to do so easily.
Effective social monitoring strategies differ by industry. Lawyers are most likely to use LinkedIn and Facebook for social media marketing, with a small number also choosing Twitter and Instagram. Law firms use these social media platforms to share paid content like ads, influencer-generated posts, and non-paid, organic content.
Articles and blogs on a firm’s website don’t fall under the social media umbrella but go hand-in-hand because they’re usually promoted on social platforms. Social monitoring tools aren’t only useful for a law firm’s social accounts. Some attorneys, including those who practice solo, have significant social followings of their own. These personal profiles can still help generate leads and increase brand awareness.
Making sense of social media monitoring and social listening can be difficult, but knowing exactly how you’ll benefit and which software tools are best for law firms is where to start.
Benefits of Social Media Monitoring
Saves time: Keeping track of posts, comments, and responses across multiple social platforms can be hard to sustain. A high-quality social media monitoring tool puts all of your content metrics in the same place, cutting out the need to visit several websites and manage the data on your own. You’re also able to keep tabs on the conversation about your firm, even if you weren’t directly mentioned in the post and didn’t receive notification otherwise. Monitoring software is also intuitive and presents information in a simple way, making it easier to make sense of metrics.
Informs strategy: Aside from tracking your own social media performance, social listening lets you easily make a note of popular hashtags and trending topics. Incorporating relevant news into your content marketing strategy is a fantastic way to get people to engage with your posts. Tools like Awario make it easy to monitor activity from competitors and industry leaders. You can track what people are saying about other firms, how many people they’re reaching weekly, and whether the feedback is positive or negative. Staying informed of this information allows you to shape and adjust your law firm’s social media strategy.
Tracks progress: You can easily track progress with the proper social media monitoring tools. These programs allow you to view your metrics over a broad period, enabling you to see improvement. Even if you aren’t generating the leads you expected, seeing other measures of success like increased engagement, more clicks, and a higher number of mentions are signs that your strategy is moving in the right direction. You can also shift your KPIs and make them even more aggressive once you begin to see the results you’ve wanted.
Reputation management: Research has found that 86% of people are less likely to purchase from a company with bad reviews, and not addressing negative feedback reflects poorly on a firm. No one wants to trend online for the wrong reasons, and being able to track mentions and reviews quickly can help avoid unnecessary bad PR. Social media monitoring allows your law firm to set email alerts every time you’re mentioned online, which means you’ll be looped in around the clock. Another benefit is that you’ll immediately know about any positive mentions and have a chance to highlight them.
Best Social Monitoring Tools in 2021
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social monitoring tools in the world, with over 200,000 accounts. You can schedule posts across social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and track conversations from people mentioning your brand. Hootsuite also offers real-time insights into how content is performing and provides an easy way to track brand mentions, relevant hashtags, industry keywords, and influential users in your field. Hootsuite starts at $129 a month for a three-person team.
BuzzSumo
Used by some of the biggest companies in the world, BuzzSumo is a premier social monitoring tool that makes it straightforward to sort and analyze data. The software allows you to monitor your competitors, brand mentions, and industry updates. If you’re publishing articles on a blog, BuzzSumo gives you a way to see which influential people share it on social media. BuzzSumo is free with limited features and $99 a month for five users.
Google Alerts
While Google Alerts offers more basic services than other popular tools, it has one significant advantage: it’s free to use and takes only seconds to set up. You can monitor your firm, your competitors, and other topics. Google will send you an email recapping anytime you’re mentioned online, which helps make sure you don’t miss any media mentions or notable posts about your law firm. All you need to start is a Google account.
Falcon.io
Falcon is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that monitors your social media campaigns and helps fine-tune your target audience for better results. It also streamlines publishing, engagement, listening, and advertising, all in one place. The platform includes an editorial calendar, allows scheduling across multiple social media channels, and offers easy-to-understand performance tracking. You can also set up Facebook and Instagram advertisements. For marketers who execute paid social media strategies, it’s an attractive option. Falcon starts at $108 per person every month.
Keyhole
Designed for campaign tracking, influencer marketing, and social listening, Keyhole is one of the most sophisticated tools on the market. You’ll see when your law firm is mentioned online and get a heads up if the software thinks that a post is likely to go viral. Keyhole also offers social listening to determine who’s in your audience, what they’re talking about, and what they like. The comprehensive reports provide valuable information to measure the impact of all of your social media posts and campaigns. Keyhole starts at $79 per person every month.
ReviewInc
One negative review can significantly impact your reputation and lead to potential clients being distrustful of you. Investing in reputation monitoring software is a wise choice, and ReviewInc is one of the most trusted tools in the industry. ReviewInc’s automated review management takes away the time-consuming and difficult process of manually tracking reviews and accessing review sites that could be missed without its software. You’ll be able to see reviews from more than 600 websites all in one place and create a strategy to increase your five-star ratings. ReviewInc doesn’t share its prices online, but you can make an inquiry.
Mention
Mention lives up to its name. It allows you to monitor conversations across the web from more than one billion sources. You can also manage social media strategy, analyze your competition, and analyze audience insights. Mention collects conversations about your law firm online and provides a concise recap. Plans range from free to €199 (about $235) per month.
Invest in Social Media Monitoring
All law firms can greatly benefit from social media monitoring and listening. Whether you subscribe to the most feature-rich social media monitoring tool out there or start slow with free or low-cost options, investing time and resources in this process is a core component of a successful content marketing strategy.
Your law firm can use what’s learned to help reach goals and adapt your marketing plan based on key metrics. Social media monitoring tools can help businesses discover new opportunities to better reach, engage, and influence their target audience on social media. If you aren’t monitoring your presence and impact, it’s past time you did.
