Through my experience in working with estate planning lawyers, I have found that before launching a social media strategy, it is critical to identify a very specific target market.  Do you plan to reach out to mothers of young children? How about couples in their 50’s or 60’s nearing retirement?  Maybe you would like to focus on senior citizens?  This is something you should decide prior to launching your social networking campaign, because your audience dictates your entire social media marketing strategy. You need to be where they are.

But what about passion?

Another critical component in choosing the audience is to identify your passion. You are an estate planning attorney, so I know you are passionate about making sure families take care of their loved ones by having a good solid plan in place.  You need to also think about where your passion lies when choosing your target market.  Are you passionate about ensuring parents get to make the ultimate decisions regarding their young children?  Are you passionate about making sure people near retirement age protect what they’ve worked to build up their whole lives?

Maybe your passions run the gamut from young families to senior citizens; if so, you need to think hard about where you would like to focus your practice, taking into account other factors, such as your geographic demographic (median income levels, age of the community, etc.). If you’re having trouble choosing a specific target market, here’s a helpful article on the subject: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29950.html

Once you have zeroed in on a market, you need to do a little research to find out where they spend their time online.  Specific Facebook groups are a good place to start, but there are literally thousands of other places to reach your audience online!  Niche social media networks – sites where people with common interests congregate online to share ideas and views – abound on the web; here’s just small sample of what’s out there: http://traffikd.com/social-media-websites/.    This is where the importance of narrowing your target audience really comes into play; the more specific you can be with your target, the better chance you have of reaching them online.  And what better venue than a site where all of the users are potential clients for you?

After you’ve identified your target audience and done some initial research on where to find them, you’re ready to identify and establish your social media objectives, which I’ll address next time.