As the legal industry becomes increasingly competitive, legal service providers must expand outside their comfort zones and take a more aggressive – and smarter – approach to marketing. While traditional media relations, websites, advertisements and brochures have become standard components of a firm’s marketing plan, many legal professionals are slow to incorporate one of the most dynamic and cost-effective tools available to them – social media.
Social media encompasses a large array of sites, each with its own functionality, terms and audience. The great unifier for these sites is the social element. Each functions as its own independent community, often with various user-created subcommunities that overlap and intertwine to create a large-scale network.
Being anti-social media is no longer a viable option for an attorney who wishes to remain relevant. The lawyer who opts not to involve him or herself in social networks will lose ground to attorneys who do. While some may make the excuse that they lack the time or the technological acumen, a little bit of patience and practice to become social media proficient can go a long way. This article will explore the business case for social media and offer a series of best practices that lawyers and other legal service providers can incorporate to maximize the effectiveness of their social media efforts.
Why go social?
The three major social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – each claim hundreds of millions of users and, by all accounts, are continuing to grow at exponential rates. Yet despite this incredible growth, the legal industry has historically shied away from engaging in social media.
There are a number of excuses that attorneys have used to convince themselves that social media has little use within the legal realm. These include the baseless assumptions that social media is for the young, that it serves no business function, and that it might negatively impact their reputations.
First, while the early adopters of social media were the younger generation, social networks are not solely relegated to the 20-something crowd. According to a study by Edison Research, 65% of adult Internet users use social networking sites. Furthermore, 55% of 45 to 54-year-olds have a social media profile, while one-third of the 65 and up crowd use social media. These age brackets frequently consist of the key corporate decision-makers who select outside legal service providers, from attorneys to technology vendors.
Second, the idea that social media lacks any sort of tangible business case does not hold true. While Facebook does target a consumer demographic, LinkedIn has grown to become a vibrant network of white-collar professionals and corporations. These individuals and entities can leverage the site’s unique features to distribute information, inspire conversation and engage other LinkedIn members. In fact, the site has amassed a rather significant following among attorneys. According to a 2012 Vizibility/LexisNexis survey, 97.9% of in-house counsel recognize LinkedIn as a directory source for lawyer profiles. The same study also cites that more than one-third of law firms are on LinkedIn and nearly two-thirds of attorneys use the site. When firms were asked whether they plan on using LinkedIn in the future, more than 93% said they do.
Twitter has also become a professional tool. As most reputable reporters and news outlets have moved to establish Twitter accounts, corporate marketers and publicists have begun to use the site for media relations. Meanwhile, some enterprising marketers have even been able to leverage Twitter as an effective business-development tool. According to the site AllTwitter, 34% of marketers have generated leads through Twitter, while 20% have actually used the site to close deals. And while the legal industry has been slower to make use of Twitter, nearly 75% of law firms say they plan to use the site for marketing purposes, according to the Vizibility/LexisNexis survey.
Finally, the notion that social media may negatively impact an attorney or firm’s reputation is not completely unfounded. Much of what an individual shares on these networks is, by default, public. And while there are features that add layers of privacy to an individual’s account, erecting barriers that inhibit people from accessing your profile or the information you distribute across the site can be counterintuitive, especially if the main goal is to network. A good rule of thumb is to avoid posting anything you wouldn’t want the general public to see. Furthermore, firms and corporations would be wise to establish a clear set of guidelines that dictate employee usage of social media as a means to help further prevent individuals and organizations from potentially embarrassing themselves publicly.
Social media best practices
There is no denying that social media presents tremendous potential for the legal industry. But where does one start? And what actions are likely to yield the best results?
The first step is to take the plunge and get involved by building out a social media profile. LinkedIn should be the priority social network for most legal professionals as it has the biggest potential benefit. The following are some recommendations on how to get the most out of your LinkedIn experience:
- Complete your profile as fully as possible. In addition to identifying your job title and your work history, take full advantage of all of LinkedIn’s other sections, such as publications, organization memberships, and honors and awards.
- Do not just copy and paste the bio hosted on your firm’s website. Your LinkedIn profile should have the image of being maintained by you, even if you are not the one maintaining it. Consider writing your LinkedIn bio in first person to give it a personal touch, and mention details beyond the scope of your work life.
- Seek out endorsements and recommendations from colleagues, professional contacts and clients. LinkedIn allows other users to endorse your skills or recommend your services. (Check with your state/provincial bar association’s marketing guidelines to make sure that such actions don’t run afoul of ethics rules.)
- Link your profile to your company or firm’s Company Page. You can do this by listing your company or firm as your current employer within your profile. If your organization does not have such a page, get one created. Besides linking all employee LinkedIn profiles together, a Company Page allows organizations to promote their services, attract followers and advertise job openings.
- Join LinkedIn Groups that are relevant to your practice. Groups are user-generated forums that allow individuals to share ideas and articles on a given subject. They are an excellent way to interact with like-minded people and can help position you as a thought leader in a given area.
- Share interesting links and commentary by posting updates on your LinkedIn homepage. Good content to post includes links to articles you have recently published, links to articles you find interesting, and commentary about current events relevant to your industry.
The other major B2B social network is Twitter. With a vocabulary and functionality all its own, Twitter can take a while to learn, particularly when it comes to grasping the nuances between an ordinary tweet, a tweet @, and a retweet. But once you familiarize yourself with the Twitterverse, you can begin to raise your industry profile, connect with thought leaders and decision-makers, and conduct your own media relations by engaging in online conversations with journalists and publications. The following are some tips on how to use Twitter as a business tool:
- Post regularly. There is no magic formula to determine how much you need to post to be successful on Twitter, but generally, don’t let your profile sit idle for more than a day or two.
- Just as with LinkedIn, consider posting links to content you have written or content you find interesting that others have written. The goal is to become an information source for the type of followers you want to attract.
- Engage those who are talking about topics relevant to you, particularly journalists. Users can conduct keyword searches across the entire network to find those who are talking about a particular topic.
- Consider tweeting @ users or retweeting posts by those you follow to try to get them to follow you back.
- Create lists, which are customized feeds developed around a user-generated topic. You can also subscribe to pre-developed lists through such sites as Listorious. There, you can find lists covering hundreds of topics, from IP law to e-discovery.
Making time for social media
Some legal professionals may see social media as just another time-consuming task to add to their limited schedules. But there are a number of third-party software applications that you can use to help organize and time posts in advance. You can also initially set some very achievable goals for yourself to get your social media participation started, such as limiting posting to a couple times a week.
In conclusion, make time to learn and use social media because it is only going to become more critical as law firms and corporations continue to adopt social media strategies as part of their routine marketing initiatives. Further, make sure you have an enterprise-wide social media policy in place and consider providing group or one-on-one instruction to help your workforce get up to speed. And, finally, the point of social media is to be social; so share your knowledge and seek out those whose opinions you value. By doing this, you’ll reap the greatest return on your investment of time.
Keith Ecker serves as a Vice President of Public Reputation Services at Jaffe PR, a full-service legal marketing agency. Keith regularly works with law firms and legal technology vendors to help move them up the public reputation curve by employing the tactics of Legal Brand Journalism. This White Paper appears on the JaffePR.com website and was originally published by the International Technology Association.