By Jenny Lewin
At GNGF, we stress the importance of establishing a presence on social media sites. With all of the options—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.—we know that it is difficult to determine where to channel your efforts, but with the rise of offsite content platforms, the options are only increasing.
As Avvo, LinkedIn, Medium, and other social websites are increasing their opportunities for paid advertising and offsite content, we’re taking a second look.
What is the return on investment (ROI) for using these social platforms? Let’s look specifically at LinkedIn and Avvo, and compare the two.
Which profile Should I Create: LinkedIn or Avvo?
LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform. If you work with us, we likely created a business page for your law firm, but we also encourage attorneys to create personal profiles. If you’re active on LinkedIn, you’ve probably noticed that your peers are using the feature LinkedIn Publisher to publish content. You can also increase your exposure by being active in groups and discussions.
Avvo is a unique platform where people can research legal advice, contact attorneys, and see both client reviews and peer endorsements. This is a great way for people to do more research on a prospective attorney—especially with Avvo’s new mobile app.
We encourage our clients to create both LinkedIn and Avvo profiles. Each individual attorney and firm profiles should be claimed, optimized, branded, and kept up-to-date. Include photos of your firm, your attorneys, and keywords for practice areas in which you’re looking for leads.
Paid Advertising with LinkedIn vs. with Avvo
Paid advertising on LinkedIn could be helpful for attorneys because they’re able to have sponsored updates, in addition to text and image ads. Advertising on this site could boost impressions and raise awareness, but we have yet to see the ROI in terms of leads, the most important metric.
Determining ROI of paid Avvo ads in terms of leads is a lot easier. Paid options include Avvo Pro and Avvo Advertising. Avvo Pro will allow you to customize your profile to increase visibility for prospective clients and sponsor listings. It will also track analytics on your profile, allowing you to see how many people visit your profile, etc. If we were to choose, we’d advise lawyers to pursue Avvo advertising.
Off-site Content on Avvo vs. on LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers people the opportunity to publish from their profiles through their Pulse network. While your posts are public, and therefore not just shared with your immediate audience, the offsite content should still be catered toward your audience. If you’re connected to mostly lawyers, and are interested in engaging with them and building your referral network, this could be a viable option. While sharing blogs on LinkedIn is increasingly important, publishing offsite content on LinkedIn might not the best use of your time.
On Avvo, however, publishing off-site content is a very efficient strategy to increase leads and improve your profile. Leaving comments in the Q&A forum and creating comprehensive legal guides can help increase your rating. This takes time, but if you’re already creating content for your website, you can repurpose content from your website and create quality offsite content to post on Avvo.
If we had to choose one, we would recommend spending the most time and energy on Avvo. It’s important to be particularly active on Avvo because real people are asking real questions, specifically looking for an attorney’s opinion. There are benefits to using both LinkedIn and Avvo. LinkedIn is user-friendly, and it’s also a household name. Avvo,
a little less well-known, is specifically for legal advice, lawyers, and law firms, but as Avvo gains popularity, we could see its value continue to increase. This gives it a leg up on LinkedIn because visitors to Avvo are only looking for legal matters, while LinkedIn users could be there for a vast number of reasons.
So, which do you prefer: LinkedIn or Avvo? Let us know on Twitter @GNGFound.