Today's post is a simulcast of a column I wrote on the uses of Twitter as a legal marketing tool (with live links to useful resources), published in the Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers Journal December/January issue. Lawyers in the Boston area may be interested in a presentation I am scheduled to give on January 21 at the Massachusetts Bar Association offices downtown -- Social Media for Lawyers -- as part of the Law Practice Management Section open meeting.
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Lawyers have a reputation for being slow to adopt new
technologies. I’ve been blogging for two
and a half years, and still get quizzical looks from colleagues. I’ve been twittering for a couple of months
now, and the consensus seems to be that I’m just one of those bleeding-edge
geeks with too much free time. I bet I
would’ve gotten the same reactions from fellow lawyers if I had installed a
telephone in my office back in the 1870s.
A recent post at Blawg
Review links to some of the arguments for and against Twitter for
lawyers. Just as telephones -- and now
cell phones, laptops, and BlackBerries -- are ubiquitous tools of the trade, in
the future social media
will be regarded as integral parts of the armamentarium. One of the latest elements of social media to
break through to the mainstream is Twitter,
and it is growing a fast clip. Consider
its potential value to your practice’s marketing plan as we run through the
five or six classic reporters’ questions (though not in the order I memorized
as a kid).
What?
So what is Twitter?
It is a microblogging platform that asks users to post, as frequently as
they like, answers to the question “What are you doing right now?” in 140
characters or less. It allows for an
interactive experience among users who can subscribe to each others' “tweets”
and respond to them publicly or privately, or “re-tweet” them to a broader
community. Some people use it to post
breaking news about the second latte of the day, but many use it as a business
communication channel. It is a powerful
medium to use for communicating with friends, colleagues, communities with
shared interests, clients, potential clients, referral sources and potential
referral sources. There are over three
million registered users, including big business and lawyers from solos to Am
Law 200 firms. It even rates serious
coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
Why?
Before jumping into the “twitterstream” with both feet, it
is vital to formulate a plan for using Twitter.
As an example, my plan is to use Twitter to leverage my existing online
presence through a new channel, by tweeting links to new posts on my blog,
microblogging short items not worth a whole blog post, and otherwise
communicating with other like-minded individuals. It is another arrow in the marketing quiver,
a tool; the medium is not the
message. For me, its value lies in a
combination of “broadcasting” information and engaging in conversations with
others.
Who?
In order to find “tweeple” you’d like to follow, start by
searching on Twellow (a subject-matter
index a la the original Yahoo!). This
tool will allow you to find tweeple in your target market and related sectors. You
may also find a catalogue of hundreds of twittering lawyers at JD
Scoop, the JD Supra blog. Once you set up a Twitter account (with a
username that is your personal brand, your name or other catchphrase; I use my
blog’s title: HealthBlawg), you
should start “following” tweeple who seem interesting. You can then see who else follows them, and
who they follow, and you can expand your twitterverse organically. In order to keep track of all this, I would
recommend using an application other than the Twitter web page, such as TweetDeck.
I also read and post tweets from my BlackBerry, using TwitterBerry. There are Apple-compatible clients available
as well for desktop, laptop and iPhone. TweetDeck
has a tag cloud panel, and useful search and group functionality. Monitter
is another easy-to-use tool that builds feeds of tweets based on user-supplied
keywords.
When?
Now it’s time to start tweeting. Given the informality of the medium, remember
to loosen up, be yourself, and work your professional and personal interests
into the twitterstream. Offer something
of value in your tweets – links to interesting articles or resources, coupled with
miniature comments or insights. If all
your tweeting is crowing self-promotion, or seems like one big online ad
campaign, your followers will “unfollow” you pretty quickly. As in real-world networking, you must give in
order to receive.
Where?
Twitter does not exist in a vacuum. There a number of ways you can integrate it
into other social media. I usually tweet
via Ping.fm, which I have configured to post to Twitter, Facebook
and Linked In. I feed my blog through Twitterfeed, so post titles end up in my
twitterstream with links back to the blog.
This approach simply increases my blog posts’ and tweets’ exposure,
which is a key element of social networking: in a 24/7 online world, it is one
way of being in several places at once.
Ideally, productive professional relationships begun on line can move
into the real world. A discussion of the
legal ethics of twittering is beyond the scope of this column, but a common
sense approach should keep you from establishing attorney-client relationships
and providing legal counsel in 140 characters or less.
And a little more
How?
Many collections of tips on using Twitter are posted on the
web, but the first stop I’d recommend you make is at Darren Rowse’s TwiTips. This blog (along with the
accompanying stream of tweets @ProBlogger)
provides a steady diet of not-law-specific instruction in the use of Twitter.
Welcome to the twitterverse, get used to silly words
starting with “tw,” and please feel free to follow me @healthblawg.
David Harlow
The Harlow Group LLC
Health Care Law and Consulting
