Held at the San Diego, California Convention Center on April 17, 18 and 19, 2016, the Social Media Marketing World 2016 (SMMW16) was well-received with over 3,000 participants from around the world. Networking was the name of the game, with recognized brands from Airbus, Allergan, and Amazon to Verizon, Walmart, and World Vision. Platform representatives from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many others were front and center imparting valuable social media marketing tactics.
There were a couple of major takeaways from this year’s event. Several things you need to know in order to better promote your expert witness services:
- You Need To Be On Social Media:
If you are not yet active on social media you are losing precious brand awareness, engagement, and community building opportunities. At a time when consumers and clients are more informed than ever before, you need to have a social presence so your customers can “know, like, and trust you.” Attorneys cannot get to know the real, authentic version of you if you are absent from these platforms.
It is not necessary to be present on every available social media platform. Having a strategy is important. If you are looking to target attorneys, it is important to know how to find them and how to get their attention. We have services to assist you in building your presence on the correct social platforms.The priority is building relationships within your community. If you are regularly creating content and posting it to social media platforms without a community, you may find your content is not being read, watched, shared, or cared about. If you build those relationships and others care about you individually, they will share your content. It was great to see several of those in our live-streaming community in attendance at the #SMMW16, including:
- Build An Online Community
A community on social media is not terribly different than an offline community. There are leaders, managers, and community members. Usually there is an interconnecting of these individuals for some shared purpose (or shared interest). For example, Experts.com is active in the live video / live-streaming community. There are many active Members in this community and the one thing we all have in common is we participate in creating live video. Although our businesses may be different, we still support others in the live streaming community by sharing their content.
Mitch Jackson, Esq. and Jeff Weinstein, Esq.
The priority is building relationships within your community. If you are regularly creating content and posting it to social media platforms without a community, you may find your content is not being read, watched, shared, or cared about. If you build those relationships and others care about you individually, they will share your content.
Ivan Raiklin, Esq. and Nick Rishwain
It was great to see several of those in our live-streaming community in attendance at the #SMMW16. Just a few with whom we were able to spend significant time include:
- Live Video is the Future of Marketing
Here are just a few facts that were shared by Mike Stelzner, CEO of the Social Media Examiner (host of the conference).
- 73% of marketers use video in 2016
- Only 14% of marketers are using Live Video
- In May of 2015, there were 2 billion videos viewed daily
- In February of 2016, there were 8 billion videos viewed daily
The following platforms have bet big on live video (a.k.a. live streaming, social video): Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Blab. Each of these companies has a major live-stream component or is entirely live video as a product/tool. Facebook now gives priority to video content in its news feed. Other content will fall below live video in your news feed.
Live video allows you to increase the” know, like, and trust” factor better than anything else, according to social selling strategist, Kim Garst.
Our friend, Mitch Jackson, Esq., has said he wants to “see and hear the expert” before hiring him or her as an expert witness. Seeing and hearing an expert witness provides endless value to attorneys as they get an idea of how you sound and perform. Live video allows you to do this authentically.
As live video is the future of marketing, we highly recommend getting comfortable with live streaming sooner rather than later. Join Us to become a pioneer in the live video community. Improve your visibility, professionalism, and authenticity with live video marketing. If you do not know how to begin, reach out to us at info@experts.com.
Nick Rishwain, JD.
Vice President of Client Relations, Experts.com.
Outstanding article Nick. What a fantastic conference and experience. I hope your experts take this advice to heart. The world is changing exponentially fast and we’re all either on the “change train” or lying face down on the tracks. You are a leader in this new digital world and in my humble opinion, experts should put a great deal of weight on your thoughts, opinions and advice!
Always seeking a variety of experts for case evaluation and trial. Those who are embracing this new technology will certainly stand out in a field of many.
Thank you for your input, Tamara! It is always nice to see those embracing the new technology and providing real and authentic representations of their expertise.
Thank you, Mitch! You hit the nail on the head. Being on the “change train” was much of what I got out of the conference. The times have changed. The legal industry and litigation support services need to jump on the train.
Great post. I really need to take a look at video options.