Is branding and social media important in legal services?

Is branding and social media important in legal services?

Social media and powerful company branding are inconsistent in the legal services sector. For every firm crushing it on Twitter, LinkedIn or TikTok there are many more with neglected profiles and inconsistent messaging. Perhaps you think that social media just isn’t for the legal sector? That creating a strong online brand for your company is a waste of time?

But social media can reflect who you are as a firm and deliver that message to wider network.

Social media is ubiquitous. When you accept that and tap into it for your company, it can really play to your benefit. It is essentially a whole other world in which you have the opportunity to enhance your company and reach people you may never have reached before.

Interested piqued? Carys Bello, Fellows and Associates’ Head of Social Media, elaborates…

Company branding:

Branding is very important when it comes to social media. Your branding is essentially your reputation and your visibility. It is about how your target audience sees you, it is not only your logo but the entire feel and look of your company. Branding is a great tool because you have the chance to visually communicate your company values, visions and expertise. Having a strong corporate identity builds trust from your audience as they can instantly recognise what your company is about and they now know who you are collectively. If you think of it like online dating, you usually would pick the profiles that say a lot about that person and you can tell if they are your kind of match before even messaging. It’s unlikely that you would message a profile that leaves you unsure of anything about that person. Creating a unique and standout brand that is consistent and in line with your values will set you apart from other competitors that may get lost in a sea of companies due to little branding. Here are some reasons why it can help enhance your company.

1. Charge more

A study by Professional Services Marketing, by Mike Schulz, John Doerr and Lee W. Frederiksen shows that the price advantage of a strong brand in the legal sector can be around 50%. This means that well branded firms are able to charge substantially higher prices than competitors.

2. Talent

Generations Y and Z arguably care about social media and a company’s brand more than those that preceded them because they have grown up with it and are usually the most immersed in it. Therefore, if you want to attract them, you are going to need to grab their attention in a world in which they have every company accessible to them digitally jumping out at them. Be the firm that draws their eyes and be a company that they want to get behind.

3. Winning referrals

When your company has a strong brand, this will help you retain your existing clientele and attract new clients.  Why? Because it creates forums for clients and potential clients to discuss your firm and ensures your name is prevalent in the discourse. A clear branding often increases referrals from satisfied clients and those referrals, when supported by your great branding, enhance your credibility.

Carys Bello

Mindfulness with IP Inclusive and Jonathan’s Voice

“An experiential introduction to mindfulness at work” with IP Inclusive and Jonathan’s Voice

This week has been mental health awareness week with the theme being “anxiety”. To understand more methods to help alleviate anxiety we attended IP Inclusive and Jonathan’s Voice’s webinar on mindfulness led by mindfulness expert Dr Sally Rose. Dr Sally Rose is a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher who leads the Staff Counselling and Psychological Support Service at the University of Leeds. “Her interest and area of expertise are in using mindfulness skills and qualities as the foundation for skilful self-care of minds at work across the mental health continuum – optimising performance and mitigating stress-related risks.”

Dr Sally Rose demonstrated practices and concepts that can help us to manage distractions and build mental stability whilst honing in on our attention and focus. She also discussed how mindfulness can help us to recognise when difficulties appear in our lives and how we can tackle them confidently. This, in turn, increases our ability to tolerate stress and better cope and adapt.

We started with observing our minds when we just stop and figured out what we noticed. When we are not focused on something that is absorbing the mind, the mind goes into a free-form wondering state as an unabsorbed mind will inevitably wonder. When we’re not absorbing anything, our mind can become vulnerable as the mind is set for threat detection. A common default state for our minds is anxiety where our minds lack control and can wander. Despite some minds wondering about being pleasant, most minds will wonder about the unpleasant. In fact, even if your wondering thoughts are pleasant, in 2010 research psychologists discovered that in an ordinary working day 47% of the time they found that regardless of where the mind had wandered to, people were feeling less content than they were in the present moment.

Applied meditation techniques can regulate our attention and open up curiosity to the present moment. We explored the difference between attention and thinking. Our attention is always travelling in whatever we are thinking. Our capacity for awareness gets carried along with whatever is being carried across our minds. When we bring our attention to a halt, we drop that default network. Dr Rose likened our attention to a handheld torch. With the torch, we can either zoom in on specifics where the light narrows or take the torch further back widening our focus. This is the case with our attention. We can narrowly hone in on one small area or we can expand our lens and view everything all at once. Our experience is governed by what we attend to.

One main mindfulness practice that stood out was when we focused on a sensory anchor. A sensory anchor is a body part (typically hands or feet) that you assert all your attention to. You anchor your attention on a chosen area inviting sensations, connecting and bringing yourself into a state of mental balance and control. It’s about paying attention on purpose in the present moment with an attitude of curiosity and interest. The purpose of this practice was to help us come to what’s actually there and bring us out of fear mode by tethering our attention to one thing. The bonus is that it can be done in a few moments anywhere, anytime as an effective grounding technique which can centre your busy mind. Executive functions all work better when the mind is in a state of calm and alertness. Sensations of contact can tell us we are here. When you collect and gather yourselves you are no longer trying to achieve a special state. Rather than being at the mercy of the default network we can plant ourselves in the midst of it all in an active position grounding our attention into the sense of being here.

So maybe give this technique a try. The idea isn’t to get it “right” as high achievers may strive to but to practice a mindful state that can help you create a sense of calm and control over your mind. You can find out more on Jonathan’s Voice here, IP Inclusive here, and Dr. Sally Rose here. To some degree, we cover these issues in our salary survey, the 2023 edition is available for completion. We really appreciate your input.

Carys Bello is Head of Social Media at Fellows and Associates.  If you require support in your social media strategy please get in touch with us at: [email protected].

Carys Bello

Why would you co-brand recruitment advertising?

Why would you co-brand recruitment advertising?

The norm in recruitment is for recruiters to advertise positions given to them by their clients but anonymously without the company being named. This represents the overwhelming majority of recruitment marketing. Most commonly when companies advertise using their own branding, they advertise directly.

That’s how much of the sector works but there are significant advantages to a co-branded route.  However, this article is not aimed widely but narrowly.  I’m not going to discuss the merits of co-branded recruitment advertising in general.  I’m going to focus on the IP sector specifically.

Those of us working in IP know a few truths.  It’s a pretty small sector and highly networked.  No matter how well an advertisement is crafted, certainly when you’re looking for anything other than entry level positions you will have very few applicants and people in the sector have long memories so a good campaign can have a disproportionately positive impact.

Historically, a campaign style recruitment project has often been associated with retained search.  Certainly, in my early days in finance recruitment, it would involve an advert in the FT and some headhunting.  Less a campaign more an advert funded by the client plus a third of the recruitment fee upfront. And because people still read newspapers when I started recruitment in the late 1930s, that often worked.  You would either receive direct applications to the advertisement or candidates might respond more positively to a headhunt call because you had something published to point to.

Recruitment has changed significantly over the last twenty years and I think we need to be a little more sophisticated.  Campaigns can be tied to search but really don’t have to be.  Actually, recruitment campaigns don’t necessarily need to be concerned with a specific job at all. There is plenty of benefits that can be built by messaging a client as a firm of choice – why people should aspire to work there.  There is an assumption in the IP profession, particularly with private practice and especially amongst attorneys moving firms for the first time, that every firm will be the same, every job the same, so what’s the point of moving?  That is most certainly not the case but there are significant advantages to be gained by communicating the differences a firm has to offer.  And if these campaigns are not tied to a specific piece of recruitment they can have broader scope and goals, and they can define the framework for when there is a vacancy.  Doing the work ahead of a need and not doing the work alongside a need which is much more difficult.

This is not about high volumes of traffic, if you want a vastly popular YouTube channel you likely need to regular feature cats.  Driving engagement in the IP sector does not mean millions of views, millions of followers or being swamped with applicants.  In the profession, it means giving yourself a better chance than your competitors of reaching that one candidate who is tentatively looking for a position and who might resonate with the messages you disseminate.  And possibly reaching them months or even years before they’re looking for a job and months or years before you want to recruit them

But why not do this yourself? You have a fantastic marketing department and a strong brand image, wouldn’t this be more cost effective and applicants will engage with your brand?  Sometimes yes.  But then sometimes, and more than you might think, not.  Why? I think the psychology around this is interesting.  Recruiters exist.  Even when they are advertising anonymously for a client quite often it is relatively straightforward to determine who they’re recruiting for.  And yet, many people prefer to use us than directly apply.  Sometimes this is because they want a recruiter to represent them to multiple organisations so going through them is more convenient than making numerous applications.  More often than not, however, and particularly for candidates contemplating but not absolute about moving firms, a recruiter can be a gateway to a job without having to fully commit to an application.  There is value in having a sounding board in the process, someone you can express your concerns to without having fear of consequence.  I think the same is true of a co-branded approach to advertising.  It increases the potential upsides.  You do still achieve the benefit of repositing your own brand but then you have the added bonus that the recruiter will engage on your behalf with potential candidates who are not ready to apply for positions as yet.  Then our network is highly likely to be different by working in partnership with a recruiter you maximise the reach of the project – your own network and ours.  Then finally and most importantly, we as recruiters speak to candidates every day and in Fellows and Associates’ case conduct a tremendous amount of research into current attorney thinking (our survey of the sector is now live to complete).  This additional knowledge will mean that what we decide to focus on in a campaign is driven by data and feedback which means we can choose a strategy that positions your firm to appeal to what candidates actually want.

What am I getting to here? Well, we know what we’re doing, we think bigger than just filling jobs and we now have the capability to put all of this together in a professional marketing campaign.  We’re launching our Social Media division, let us help you not only fill your jobs but also market your firm as the employer everyone wants to work for.

Pete Fellows