While social media marketing should always include visuals, personal injury lawyers and law firms especially can benefit from images and videos on social media posts.
There are many reasons to use social media visuals, but one of the most compelling reasons for personal injury legal marketing is the emotional response videos and images generate. A personal injury law practice is already easily relatable for a consumer clientele: Everyone understands what it’s like to feel loss, pain, and injustice. Telling the personal injury law story with visuals, in addition to words, is a powerful marketing tool for both social media and websites.
Why Use Visuals in Personal Injury Law Practice Social Media
Let’s begin with the evidence that proves visuals, including videos, graphics, and images, benefit social media marketing:
- An oft-cited statistic by marketers is that content with relevant images gets 94% more views on social media than content without relevant images.
- LinkedIn posts with images generate a 98% higher comment rate, according to LinkedIn.
- The human brain can process entire images that the eye sees for as little as 13 milliseconds, according to researchers at MIT. When trying to capture people’s short attention spans while they scroll on social media, that time is valuable.
Social media visuals strongly support the common goal of generating business through activities that establish your brand, boost visibility, build a positive reputation, and create leads. Whether the goal is business development, attracting top legal talent, or promoting a specific practice or attorney, social media visuals capture attention. This translates to more engagement on the posts themselves, which lets the social media algorithms know the post is popular and, thus, it appears in more users’ feeds. Eye-catching visuals on social media posts also increase clicks to the law firm’s website. Potential clients, referral sources, and lateral attorneys can learn more about the firm’s services, culture, and successes.
Six Ways to Incorporate Visuals into Personal Injury Law Social Media Marketing
As a professional service provider, law firms have challenges in creating social media visuals. Unlike other business-to-consumer marketing, personal injury attorneys don’t have images of pretty products and mouth-watering meals to showcase on their feeds. Attorneys are also, rightly, concerned about confidentiality issues. Many also dislike stock images. Overall, it may feel like an insurmountable hurdle to find a way to visually say what you want to say.
Here are six ways personal injury law firms can incorporate visuals into social media:
Client testimonials are a powerful marketing tool for personal injury attorneys. Capture the client on video talking about how you helped them. Also, take still photos of the client in situations that add to the context, such as with loved ones or in a meaningful location to their case, like a hospital where they received treatment or an intersection where they were injured.
Record an introductory video to any content you’re posting on social media. Try adding a 30-second video of you discussing why this legal development is important or how honored you and the firm are to have helped a client.
Take photos and videos of attorneys and staff at firm events and attorneys making presentations, earning awards, or volunteering in the community. Images that showcase a positive firm culture help with both recruiting and attracting clients.
If a firm attorney is interviewed on a television news show or speaks at a press conference, work with a video editor to download and create a clip from the broadcast. Be sure someone snaps photos at the press conference or interview, if possible, too. Likewise, if an attorney’s photo appears in a publication along with a news story, ask the newspaper for the rights to republish it or re-share the publication’s social media post.
As mentioned above, sharing others’ social media posts is a way to incorporate visuals into your feed. Be sure to add your own messaging or context when you do.
While stock images are not everyone’s ideal, they do serve a purpose. There are platforms that allow you to buy the license to images and video, but there are also many free resources available. These include WordPress’ Openverse, Google Images’ Advanced Image Search, and Wikimedia Commons. Canva, the free online graphic design program, is easy to use and includes an extensive library of photos and graphics to create visuals with.
Social Media Images Tips and Best Practices
Deciding what visual to use on a social media post is the first step. Here are some additional tips and best practices:
- Try to include the firm’s logo in an inconspicuous place on the corner of every image to boost branding and ensure the image’s source is known should it be shared. For video, use graphics to do the same. Canva is a great resource for simple branding work.
- If the content includes data or other information, consider creating an infographic as the visual.
- Always observe copyright laws, and don’t use someone else’s photo, graphic, or video without permission.
- Posts that begin as an image post, vs. a link post, often look better with a bigger visual. This also allows multiple images to be used in the post.
- Make sure the image is high resolution and good quality. It may be better to omit a photograph than use a blurry one that doesn’t tell the story and looks sloppy. Standard computer photo software and mobile phone photo apps make adjusting for exposure and cropping easy.
- Be sure to note the preferred image size for each social media platform and adhere to them.
Personal injury attorneys and their clients have great stories to tell. Using visuals when sharing these stories on social media catches attention and leads to opportunities for more stories. Contact Scorpion for help telling your story with visuals on social media.
