Twitter twits
Just why don’t lawyers get Twitter? This is a website with more than 300 million registered users worldwide, a figure that is growing all the time.
It has extraordinary reach, allowing members to spread their own message or listen into what others are saying. It is, quite simply, indispensable in the modern world of business. Yet the legal profession is curiously unresponsive to the phenomenon.
At today’s Association of Costs Lawyers conference in Heathrow (oh the glamour!), president Matthew Harman announced there was a hashtag for the event. He might as well have announced a particularly juicy fart or that jelly and ice cream was being served for lunch, such was the response.
Most lawyers simply gave a chuckle and rushed off for their place in the buffet queue. Twitter, it seemed, was irrelevant and silly - a haven for geeks and celebs, but not for them. This is hardly confined to costs lawyers - even the biggest firms are curiously indifferent to Twitter. Clifford Chance UK has made just 188 tweets to its 2,660 followers, whilst Freshfields has offered just 65 messages.
Herbert Smith has 788 followers but has not had a single word for them. Neither has Linklaters, which doesn’t even have a company logo on its profile. Of course, there are hundreds of firms and thousands of solicitors that have cottoned onto Twitter and are regular users. They can see this is a wonderful marketing tool. Who needs expensive advertising when you can simply build up a bank of engaged clients and message them instantly en masse?
This is a way to get your message across to thousands of potential customers and to build up your brand awareness (I would venture to guess most people who have not used legal services in this country could not even name a law firm). Best of all, you can get a much better picture of the legal market. This is a chance to spy on your competitors, hear the thoughts of your clients and become aware of the latest key issues (vital in today’s rapidly-changing marketplace).
Richard Susskind (IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and boasting more followers than most top-10 law firms) this week said that people thought he was ‘insane’ for being so enamoured with Twitter.
‘If you use it and you don’t get any benefit, you’re not doing it right,’ he told a Law Society Management conference. ‘In three years you’ll all be using Twitter.’
Twitter is not a preserve of celebrities or lazy media on the hunt for a story. Used responsibly and with finesse, it can be the best advert for your firm you’ll ever need. And it’s free.
Laugh all you want, but law firms need Twitter. If you don’t realise that, you might not have a law firm much longer.
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Comments
Twitter
So Twitter is the panacea? We're all doomed. And I hope Twitter paid handsomely for this piece.
Twitter
Harsh "Me". I'm not sure it's claimed to be a panacea, just a tool...
Brand Power
I think what this really demonstrates is the power of your 'Brand' in attracting followers, regardless of whether you're an active 'tweeter' or not!
Twitter
A tool? Yes. A tool used by people who labour under the misapprehension that people are actually interested in their "tweets". Yuk.
Twitter brings you clients. Yes it does, here's how...
I can completely sympathise with 'Me' and his sentiments. Twitter does appear to be a ludicrous waste of time. Until someone shows you how and why it works.
I can honestly say that Twitter has been fantastic for my business (specialist publishing) but I don't expect anyone to believe that until I patiently explain how we use Twitter + blogs + websites/extranets + newsletters + traditional marketing.
Has Twitter transformed my business? No, it has simply been a great help. And it is SO much more cost-effective than the PR agencies ("we'll get you into the press") that we have tried out in the past. Twitter brings us people who then go on to buy things from us.
The same is true for all the law firms who license our content and use Twitter (75% of them). Their cost of Twitter is close to zero, yet they are able to market themselves to whichever audience they are aiming for (typically local businesses and other local professionals), steadily, five days a week.
Yes, people are interested in these law firms' tweets. They are giving away all sorts of legal insights (an FAQ here, a briefing there, all practical and to-the-point) and businesses lap these up.
For those of you who think that Twitter is Stephen Fry stuck in a lift and tweeting about what he had for breakfast that morning, the business side of Twitter will be a revelation.
Twitter is not something that you do on a Monday and the phone starts ringing on a Tuesday. My company started in January 2009 and gradually found out what works. As time has gone on, it has become more and more productive for us as a marketing tool ... and we have had to do less and less work to achieve the same activity levels.
But most lawyers will skipped this blog in the first place, as they tend to already have their minds made up on these things...
So great he follows just over 200 people...
..maybe there is not quite so much of interest on there Prof S claims. And one Tweet per week hardly constitutes a fan of Twitter.
Separately, good on all the firms that have at least set up Twitter accounts. Even better that so many of their marketing departments show how superficial they are by hardly ever Tweeting but following everything that moves! The lack of understanding of social media by so many law firms is laid bare.