Facebook referral traffic plummets. Ought lawyers worry?

Though referral traffic from Facebook to third party sites may be plummeting, lawyers using Facebook may have little to worry about.

As reported over the weekend by Lucia Moses of Digiday, referral traffic (desktop + mobile) to the top 30 Facebook publishers plunged 32 percent from January to October.

The bigger the publisher, the heavier the hit.

The Huffington Post’s Facebook traffic fell 60.1 percent, to 16 million. Fox News’ dropped 48.2 percent to 4.3 million. BuzzFeed’s Facebook visits fell 40.8 percent to 23.7 million.

Why the decline?

…[T]he most common theory is that as Facebook has been trying to keep users in its ecosystem, it’s encouraged publishers to upload their articles and videos directly to the social network, whether it’s video or its Instant Articles feature that began rolling out in May. That means fewer traditional links in news feeds that take people back to publisher sites.

Publishers need traffic numbers to generate advertising revenue. Not the case with lawyers and law firms.

The drop in Facebook referral traffic may be bad news for those legal marketers and lawyers who look at Facebook as just another way to garner traffic to their blogs and websites. They’re looking for users to click on links to their content and go to their blogs and sites to read the content.

On the other hand, for those lawyers who get their work by virtue of word of mouth reputations and relationships, a drop in referral traffic from Facebook means little, if anything. Content is the currency of engagement for these lawyers, no matter where the content is viewed.

Such lawyers use Facebook as a vehicle to build their reputation and build relationships. Facebook represents an opportunity to network with their audience of clients, perspective clients, referral sources and the influencers of these three. Better to be out networking than to passively watch people read your content on your site.

These lawyers know that Facebook users can read excepts of their content or a complete article on Facebook. Leaving Facebook to read content is neither needed nor preferable for an optimal user experience.

These lawyers also know through likes, comments and shares, content posted to Facebook, whether their own or a third party’s, leads to engage with users. It’s this engagement which builds word of mouth and relationships.