In an increasingly digital marketplace, it can be difficult to build trust. While many lawyers and professionals now have a dedicated website for their practice, their digital presence must often adhere to strict legal guidelines. It can be difficult to set yourself apart online while still meeting these guidelines.

One of the best ways to grow your practice is by building trust with your clientele. People often trust professionals to whom they have been referred by friends. However, if clients or potential clients visit your digital footprint prior to deciding to work with you, it’s important that you can build rapport and trust in order to get your relationship started off on the right foot.

Display Your Expertise You know your business. The trouble is, it’s not always easy to tell who is an expert in the niche you are looking for when hiring a lawyer. You can demonstrate your expertise by crafting digital marketing pieces that address common questions your clients have. Naturally, this needs to be carefully crafted so that you are not giving legal advice. However, you can still provide answers to frequently asked questions.

Demonstrate Professionalism There are far too many people, in every profession, that are just looking to lock in a sale and then disappear. Digital marketing can be an excellent way to show that you show up and do your job. This can be done in a variety of ways, including “behind the scenes” photos of your team hard at work or updates that focus on why you started practicing law in the first place. It’s important to remember that while digital marketing is more casual than the courtroom, your updates themselves should still be professional including correct grammar, punctuation and avoiding disparaging others.

Use Images and Video Your words are powerful. However, they are even more moving when connected to an image or video. Sometimes, it can be appropriate to use a stock image that resonates with your message – a happy family or a person climbing a mountain. However, sometimes using video to deliver your message to your audience can be even more powerful. This gives clients an opportunity to “meet” you before they even contact your office. Allowing them to feel comfortable with you, learn more about your practice and your work ethic can help them make the leap to actually calling you for help. Images and videos both have a place in a solid digital marketing strategy and can go a long way to helping you build trust with your audience.

Be Consistent If you update your digital presence – whether it’s on Facebook, blog, Twitter, Snapchat or another digital platform – and then don’t update again for another four months, it can give the impression that you do not follow up. Whether or not that’s true or fair is beside the point. In other words, focus only on platforms that you intend to maintain. Doing so will allow people to see that you are consistent, helpful and easily accessible. Starting marketing efforts and abandoning them only makes you come across as flaky. Whichever digital marketing platforms you choose to employ, make sure that you intend to update them consistently – whether that’s once a day or once a week – this will help people see that you are reliable and trustworthy.

Remember You’re Human As professional as you are, you are also a human being. No one fully trusts a robot or an automaton. Sharing glimpses of who you are can help people connect with you and build empathy. These two things directly lead to trust. While you likely don’t want to share in depth views on your political or religious beliefs, wishing co-workers a happy birthday, sharing photos of your child’s first birthday or reminiscing about colleagues you met in law school can be ways to remind people that you are a human who shares many of the same goals in life that they do.

Establishing trust can be a difficult task, especially when people may be reviewing your digital presence without you even knowing it. Relaying your expertise, professionalism and empathy can help build trust, even via digital marketing. Doing so can give you a leg up on the competition and help you resonate with clients and potential clients alike.