The 12 Days of Social Media: The Importance of Considering Mental Health in the Social and Digital Landscape

On the final day, Lynn Foley, outgoing Social & Digital Media SIG co-chair and new co-chair of the Well-Being Committee, discusses the importance of surveying and recognizing the mental well-being of legal marketers, along with sharing what her hopes are for mental wellbeing programs in 2021.

As we look ahead to 2021, what are you most excited about with regards to the legal social/digital space?

It's said that "necessity is the mother of invention." The immense constraints of this past year have resulted in law firms and lawyers gaining a new appreciation for the usefulness of social media and other digital channels. I see this is as a necessary evolution for legal, which has often been a late adopter of methods shown to be effective in other complex industries and markets. I'm thrilled to see law firms experimenting with new strategies, tech and platforms.

I'm equally excited to see firms listening attentively to legal marketing professionals. Many of our in-house legal marketing colleagues have been pushing their firms for years to embrace social media, digital marketing and data-driven methods. Now, firms are starting to listen more closely to innovative ideas. Our profession, and our industry, stand to benefit immensely. 

What digital or social media campaign/effort are you most proud of and why?

That's easy! The campaign I'm most proud of is the Legal Marketing Mental Wellness Survey.  

Mental health and wellness have always been key issues for the team at fSquared Marketing. When we realized that there was a marked lack of data on the mental well-being of legal marketers, we set out to conduct our own research to share with our community to use as they needed. 

In 2019, we conducted the first Legal Marketing Mental Wellness Survey. In 2020, we knew we wanted to reach a wider audience so, in partnership with the Legal Marketing Association, we set about designing a digital and social media awareness campaign with two goals in mind, firstly to get as many members of our community as possible to take part in the survey, and secondly, to share the research report with everyone who would find it informative and validating. We also expanded the survey to include legal marketing service providers.

There were many moving pieces of the campaign. We not only created the online survey, but we also created dozens of graphically designed and "branded" pieces, producing elements for social media, including video. We also created pieces for LMA to share on the website and through the Strategies magazine. We created a content calendar for each step of the process, and this was necessary to ensure that we reached our target audience at every stage: from raising awareness and getting people comfortable sharing their thoughts on such a sensitive topic, to sharing the survey link and collecting data, to distributing the report to thousands of LMA members and others in our industry.   

It was all worth it though as we greatly expanded the reach of the survey from the previous year, collecting responses from more than 400 law firm marketing professionals, as well as dozens of legal marketing service providers, across the U.S., Canada and at firms around the world. The link to the survey report was distributed to thousands of LMA members and others in our community. Almost 700 people downloaded the research report.

As law firms engage more and more with social media, how are you seeing social and digital media relate to your SIG/committee/task force area?

As the new co-chair of the Well-Being Committee, and the out-going co-chair of the Social & Digital Media SIG, I'm closely looking at how law firms are using, and will continue to use, social and digital tools to support their employees and leverage technology to ease the added stress that comes with the COVID-19 pandemic. We received feedback from the Legal Marketing Mental Wellness Survey that programs that law firms have put in place to alleviate stress often remain unused, as practicing them simply takes time away from the workload that still needs to be completed.  

I'm hoping to see digital tools being embraced by our firms as mediums to bring efficiency, solutions and techniques to our industry. I'm hoping to see social media reassert its powers for community-building and giving instead of acting as a pressure-cooker for angst and vitriol. I hope that law firms do not simply pay lip service to well-being in order to check a box on an RFP and institute initiatives that will make measurable changes to the wellbeing of our community.

I look forward as the co-chair of the Well-Being Committee to doing my part to move us in the right direction.