Social Media Marketing for Attorneys: Is Facebook Making an Offer You Shouldn't Refuse?

Late last week, Facebook rolled out its Offers marketing platform to U.S. businesses after a four-month test with select retail users. 

Now you can create an Offer on your Facebook Business Page free of charge and it will be distributed to likes/fans in your Page’s news feed. This is a great opportunity to create Offers for free reports,  articles, even a free consultation. Click here to find out how to create an offer for your Facebook Page.

I’m not necessarily recommending that you create a Groupon-type purchase offer, although three state bar associations (South Carolina, North Carolina and New York) have weighed in on the daily deals model for attorneys and found them to be OK, according to an ABA Journal article on the subject.

Free reports, white papers or e-books – whatever you want to call these informative downloadable documents – are a wonderful tool for attorneys to generate leads by driving traffic to your website or blog, get sign-ups for your newsletter and engage your followers on social media networks. To create a impactful free report, follow these steps:

1. Identify your prospect’s point of pain. The best reports provide a solution to a problem, so you need to identify what problems are plaguing your prospects – i.e., their “point of pain” – and then provide them with a solution.

2. Give some secrets away. You don’t have to give it all away, but entice your readers with a few secrets so they feel they have something of true value. Secrets are another way of demonstrating your experience and expertise, and that you know what you’re talking about.

3. Be brief. Your report should be 3-10 pages long and should start with a brief summary.

4. Make it attractive. The layout should be easy to read with appropriate graphics and saved as a PDF file for easy download.

Facebook is now providing another great avenue for you to generate leads, build your database and grow your social media following with their Offers marketing platform.