We believe that Facebook is another important page to claim solely because your prospective clients likely spend a lot of time in the Facebook ecosystem. There are over 2 billion people on Facebook—30% of the world’s population. Many of those active users spend hours a day
Therefore, it is likely that some of your past clients have visitedvFacebook to “check-in” to your business and may have left a review about your firm.
Furthermore, prospective client referrals will find your Facebook page when they Google your law firm’s name.
One interesting development that we come across a lot is that many law firms have a business page on Facebook without being aware of it.
Some reasons a page is automatically created are:
- When someone checked in and you didn’t have a page (or they didn’t find it)
- If you have multiple locations or meet your clients at a temporary
office, when someone tags that location that didn’t have an individual location page already created - Someone tags or checks-in or tries to leave a review but uses incorrect spelling or created the page under the attorney’s name and not the overall law firm name.
Facebook itself says this: “A Page may exist for your business even if someone from your businessvdidn’t create it. For example, when someone checks into a place that doesn’t have a Page, an unmanaged Page is created to represent the location.”
Many law firms we talk to think that these unofficial business Facebook pages are not a big problem. But, more often than not, the
unofficial page could lead to confusion for people referred to your firm and are looking for your business. Even if you have a Facebook page claimed and optimized, sometimes Google or even Facebook may show the wrong unofficial
page.
Even worse, sometimes you will find reviews left by past clients on these unofficial pages. These reviews would go unanswered and if
they are negative, that leaves bad reviews out there that you didn’t even know you had to address.
You
Therefore, you need to start the process by looking for unofficial pages.
We also recommend periodically, once every quarter or so, doing searches on Facebook to look for any unofficial and unclaimed pages that seem to refer to your law firm.
Therefore the first step in setting up your Facebook page is:
- First, search for your business name. Be sure to try a few variations. As mentioned above, your business may already have a page that has check-ins, comments, and reviews. You will want to claim and merge all the various pages into one main page.
- If you find unclaimed business pages, use the help guide on Facebook to claim and merge the pages.
If you don’t see a page already for your law firm, let’s create one now:
- Visit the Facebook “Create a Page”
- Select “Local Business or Place.”
- You will be prompted for your law firm’s information, follow your template you created on Day 3 and enter the information here. And hit Get Started
- If you are not logged in, you will need to associate your page to a Facebook account. You have two options here:
you can either log in using your personal Facebook account (again, your personal information will not be used on your page; this is just to ensure that you are a real person, not a scamming computer program) or create a new
account. - Also note: You can add other people as administrators to your page so your account is not the only one that needs to be used to have access.
- Next, upload your profile picture and cover photo for your page. Until you have your brand well understood and professional images designed, a profile photo of your logo and a cover photo of the law firm staff in front of your sign, or logo, or in the entryway of your firm will suffice. At the time of writing this, the ideal profile photo should be 170 x 170 pixels and the cover photo
should be 828 x 315 pixels. But Facebook seems to change this from time to time so check that your photo looks good and crop accordingly.
- Once you upload your profile and cover photos, the initial setup is done, and you will be taken to your new Facebook business page.
- When you are brought to your new Facebook page, look in the middle section of the page, you should see a welcome banner with tips on improving your page. You have your saved information from Day 3, use it to complete your profile as much as you can.
Now you have a basic Facebook Business page. This is enough for now. There are other things you can do with your page, like understanding how to add a button that goes to a page on your website to schedule a consultation or using Messenger to interact with
Prospective Clients who have questions.
We will come back to Facebook Business pages when we talk about getting online reviews for your law firm.
Tomorrow we focus on claiming Avvo profiles. These are a little different because the profile is for each lawyer at the firm, not for the firm overall.
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