By Jim Calloway
Director, OBA Management Assistance Program
Some of you may think you have no interest whatsoever in Twitter.
But if you read through this entire article, you will learn of several
ways to use Twitter, even without registering for the service and you
will also have my answer to the question in the title.
Can a lawyer use Twitter to market a law practice? This simple-sounding
question has generated a bit of controversy which seems to have heated
up recently as notable lawyer marketing consultants Larry Bodine
(www.lawmarketing.com) and Kevin O’Keefe (www.lexblog.com)
took opposing positions in various online forums, with Bodine being
anti and O’Keefe being pro.
Twitter is a quite interesting phenomenon. By now, most everyone
has heard of it. Over 7 million people have registered Twitter accounts.
And the phrase “follow me on Twitter” is now more likely to be heard
from TV personalities and celebrities than early technology adopters.
A Twitter posting is called a tweet. Twitter is an interesting writing
exercise for lawyers as the tweets are limited to 140 characters.
Late night comedians have lampooned Twitter. Recently I was in a
room where a respected lawyer unleashed a tirade about Twitter and
the egotistical nature of its users messaging about where they ate
and other trivia. He didn’t know, of course, that several of the lawyers
in the room did use Twitter.
So what’s the truth about Twitter? Is it a great technology advance
or an utter waste of time? And, more importantly, can a lawyer use
Twitter to market the lawyer’s practice?
To really examine this concept you have to look very briefly at
the nature of online information today. Just because Twitter appears
to be one of the hottest things right now does not mean it is the best
for everyone.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently broadcast an episode
of the Kalb Report on the state of American journalism. Panelists included
the chiefs of the Associated Press and CNN, among others. One of the
topics covered was the challenge presented to newspapers and other
traditional media by the Internet.
As many of you know, the rise of blogs, personal Web sites and social
media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been referred to as citizen
journalism. Today’s Internet tools allow anyone with the time and inclination
to create the online equivalent of a newspaper, radio station, wire
service or video broadcast service. This is referred to the democratization
of the Internet. Gaining an audience is, of course, another matter.
President of CNN Jonathan Klein may have made a larger point than
he intended on the Kalb Report when he said:
“The world is changing. There are many other ways evolving for humans
to commit journalism. You know, journalism, it's not really a profession,
it's an obsession, you know? It's not really an occupation; it’s a
preoccupation for people who want [to do it.]” kalb.gwu.edu/2009/0323/transcript.pdf.
So the question is not whether one can build awareness of practice
areas or market one’s law practice through Twitter or other social
media. The answer to that question is an obvious “yes,” in my opinion.
The real question is whether the individual lawyer or law firm has
the inclination, time, talent, writing ability and understanding to
open an outpost on the frontier of citizen journalism and to support
it once it has been opened.
Let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion that a media source,
even a modest small citizen’s journalist outpost needs more than “once
a month” posting of content.
So what’s your public information output currently? By that I mean
information someone outside of the law firm might read. Many small
law firms would truthfully have to answer that question with an answer
of one (or less) press release, article or speech per month. My opinion
is that if you do not already have new content that you are generating
at least a few times per month, it is difficult to see how a law firm
would gain any value from opening up a new social media outlet even
though it is certainly true that having the outlet would encourage
one to produce more content.
This does not mean the once (or twice) a month content producer
is precluded from online marketing activities—quite the contrary. A
new feature added each month to a “traditional” small law firm Web
site or a blog can build great value over time and would put the small
firm lawyer among the elites in online marketing compared with the
online presence of many other small law firms. Many law firms are likely
better served by a traditional law firm Web site or blog for online
marketing at the present time than leaping into Twitter or Facebook.
Do not take this statement the wrong way. Using social media can
be great fun and even somewhat addictive. If you enjoy it, by all means
use it. It could be great if your hobby generated a little business
for you.
It should also be noted that the issues are very different when
applied to large law firms as opposed to solo or small firm lawyers.
Even a 30-lawyer firm will likely have some lawyer or staff person
with the ability and inclination to become a social media conduit and
even if each of the 30 lawyers only produces “publishable” content
three or four times per year, that aggregates to a lot of content.
And, of course, if a law firm is large enough to have a marketing/communications/PR
department; those staffers will be looking at communicating through
all forms of social media.
Twitter is certainly hot. We hear about it all the time. There are
several ways to “consume” information from Twitter. Most with an
interest have a Twitter account. They follow those other Twitter
users with content that interests them. (Subscribing to receive the
content of another is called “following.”) One could follow only
those you know personally. One could follow celebrities. One could
follow news outlets or particular journalists. One could follow only
those who tweet about your favorite sports team. One could register
with Twitter and never post a single tweet, but just use it to read
what others have posted. You can learn more background information
about Twitter by reading a pair of articles we published on our Oklahoma
Bar Association Web site earlier this year at www.okbar.org/news/onlineexclusives/twitter.htm.
If you do post tweets, then people will follow you so that they
can read all of your tweets. I tweet primarily about law office management
and technology issues.
You can follow me if you like. I am @jimcalloway
But you can also use Twitter without ever registering with the service
because, by default, Twitter content is published to the Internet.
So in your web browser, @jimcalloway can be found at twitter.com/jimcalloway.
The Oklahoma Bar Twitter feed, @OklahomaBar, is found at twitter.com/oklahomabar.
OBA Continuing Legal Education’s Twitter feed, @obacle, is twitter.com/obacle.
But that’s not the only way one can use Twitter. Earlier this year,
the Twitter home page, twitter.com, was changed to make it look a
lot more like Google and other search engines. It has a search box
and displays the most popular topics of the last week, day and minute.
You can click on a popular topic to read the most recent tweets or
you can search through what the millions of Twitter users are posting
about right now. Tom Mighell, @TomMighell, gave a good example of
how that would be useful when he spoke at the OBA Technology Fair.
His Gmail account wasn’t working and he wondered if it was system-wide
or just something with his account. He did a search on Twitter for
Gmail, found many recent complaints and new ones being posted every
second and knew it wasn’t just him. As opposed to Google or Bing,
Twitter search is more about what is popular right now than links to
comprehensive or authoritative information.
Certainly a lot of what is tweeted to Twitter is nonsense or of
interest only to one’s close friends.
Lawyers who wished to promote their law practices via Twitter would
be best advised to tweet about something related to their law practices
and profession, in my view. Others would disagree. Certainly a lawyer
who loved archery and tweeted about it frequently, mentioning he or
she was a lawyer only infrequently, could pick up some legal business
or referrals from other archery enthusiasts who use Twitter. But that’s
not really using Twitter as a law marketing tool. That’s enjoying Twitter
and picking up some business as a result just like one might do from
coaching little league or participating in a civic organization.
My view is that you are not likely going to convince anyone to hire
your law firm tweeting every mundane detail of your life. And those
who follow you may soon un-follow you.
I know there are many ways to market, but here’s one concept of
how a small firm lawyer could use Twitter to market his or her practice.
-
Set up a Twitter account using either your name or your law firm
name, possibly with the word law included. Post your picture and a
link to your law firm Web site on your profile. Twitter accounts are
personal and you need a picture.
-
After you have posted several tweets, send an e-mail out to your
tech-savvy friends announcing that you are on Twitter and giving them
the web address, e.g., twitter.com/myfirm. Those already using Twitter
will understand they can follow you at @myfirm. Those who don’t use
Twitter can click on the link.
-
Do some searches in Twitter to see those who you might want to
follow. When you find them and follow them, also look to see who they
are following and who might be following them for more prospects for
you to follow.
-
Try to tweet at least weekly, but no more than 4 or 5 times a day.
(The Twitter evangelists have given me grief over this expressed opinion
before and others are free to use a different business method. To
me, there’s a great danger for a practicing lawyer to give the appearance
on Twitter that they are not all that busy and have lots of free time
to tweet.)
-
Follow almost everyone that follows you. (Many people view this
as a hard and fast rule of Twitter etiquette. I do not and I do not
do that personally right now. But for this business model, I believe
it makes sense.)
-
Check your followers every now and then and block the few with
inappropriate profile pictures or other salacious content.
-
Be very, very, very careful not to violate attorney-client privilege
or your client’s privacy with tweets. Don’t post negative things about
opposing counsel or judges. You will regret it later.
What do you tweet about? News relating to your community, your practice
areas and the legal professional in general. The people I follow on
Twitter are those who provide me links to great articles online that
I might otherwise have missed. To me, the best thing about Twitter
is the fact that it provides me with a large group of friends, professional
acquaintances, some total strangers and some technology superstars
who all voluntarily serve as a clipping service for me with links to
news articles, blog posts, product launches and more. They also toss
in their own unique and personal content.
But the main thing to remember is that Twitter is a tool. There
is more than one way to use a tool. If you have fun following everyone’s
comments about your favorite sports teams and never post a tweet,
that is great, and if you build a national practice representing archery
enthusiasts, that’s great, too.
Originally published in the
Oklahoma Bar Journal Oct. 10, 2009 - Vol. 80; No. 26.
|
