Law firms mistakenly focus on social media tactics over strategy
Seth Godin's post this morning, 'When tactics drown out strategy' may as well have been directed to law firms' flawed use of social media, including blogging.
New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much approval and support to launch them.As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.
The problem is that all of these opportunities are just tactics, not a strategy. Per Seth:
'Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time' is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy... and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.
Seth also nails why law firms are all over tactics, not strategy.
Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, 'I'm going to post this.' If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)
I presented at a webinar hosted by a law firm marketing company earlier this week. I emphasized how important it was to develop a strategy before beginning to blog. Identify your goals. Identify your target audience of clients, prospective clients, referral sources and their influencers. Identify how you are going to listen to this target audience. Identify how you will engage them in a meaningful way.
A number of lawyers in the audience wanted nothing to do with strategy. 'Show us how to blog effectively by telling me how to post content on a blog.' 'Blogs are just for frequent content updates causing the blog and law firm website the blog links to to get high search engine rankings.' 'Using RSS feeds to monitor sources and subjects so as to listen to relevant discussion by area of law and industry has nothing to do with writing a blog, you're aren't telling us what we need to know.' There was no talking sense into these clowns.
Even large law firms with sophisticated marketing, communications, and client development professionals focus on tactics before strategy when it comes to social media. Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Martindale-Hubbell Connected, Legal OnRamp, YouTube, and God knows what else. 'We have to find out how to use this stuff and we need to start to using this stuff now.' And when we do start using this stuff we need to see immediate returns in the form of web stats and clients.
Geez. Did you ever slow down and ask why you would would want to use these tactics? If it's to engage your target audience, by first listening to them, to cultivate meaningful relationships so as to further enhance your stature as a reliable and trusted authority in a niche area of the law, you're warming up to strategy over tactics.
If you're mapping out a plan as to which of these tactics make the most sense and in what order to deploy the chosen ones, you're headed in the right direction.
If you're willing to allow such relationships to flourish, knowing that lawyers get their best work by word of mouth and to acknowledge that word of mouth marketing can take a little time before it generates new clients, you're now focused on acknowledged scary, but meaningful, benchmarks to measure the success of your strategy.
You are taking the road less traveled by lawyers and law firms when it comes to social media. You are willing to do the right stuff and take responsibility for it.
But if you're looking at all these new social media tools like a kid in the candy shop looking to do 'anything social media' while measuring success by mere deployment of this 'anything social media,' you're focused on tactics over strategy. Wrong road.
I agree. Figure out your strategy and then see what tools might help you to achieve that. I get driven mad by lawyers who add bells and whistles for the sake of looking innovative. On our own site, OUT-LAW.COM, we're more Web 1.0 than 2.0 because we believe that's what clients want. I wrote about this recently so I'm really just summarising that rant here.
This is one of the best commentaries on professional services marketing I've seen in a long time. As marketing consultants, we often hear marketing tactics erroneously called strategies - and we rarely see strategies associated with meaningful metrics. From our perspective, the best strategies are directly tied with business and financial objectives, and can be measured in monetary terms.
Kevin nails it with a great reminder for all of us to not put the cart before the horse. There is a real opportunity through these mediums to expand and enhance relationships - but strategy & time investment up front in identifying your goals and return expectations is necessary for true success.
This is a refreshing and insightful way to look at the use of social media. Personally, I think Canadian firms & lawyers have been much slower than their American counter-parts to even consider the benefits of social media. Hence, far from having any tactics or any over-arching strategy, they (we) haven't taken much action at all!
Very useful commentary. Thank you. Personally, my primary goal for learning and using Twitter arose from the need to understand what my clients, many of which are arts or nonprofit organizations actively using all forms of social media, are doing, how they are doing it and what legal issues may arise for them. Sure enough, client questions are coming up on issues related to Facebook and Twitter. It helps tremendously, both practically and for my clients' confidence, that I actually use Twitter and Facebook. Happily, I also found that Twitter is a great way to keep current on developing issues and share information on legal and marketing issues relevant to my practice. I use Facebook strictly for personal use. For now, that has been sufficient for my purposes, or maybe I have just not figured out a way in which Facebook makes sense for me strategically.
I think you really hit the nail on the head in a much larger sense as well. Many people, not just firms, sign up for a social network site because they've heard about it on TV or want to see what the "cool thing" is, without ever bothering to figure out if the people they want to connect with, are there. Then, when they don't see anything that interests them, they declare it all a waste of time.
It's a bit like deciding TV advertising is where you want to spend your marketing dollar and not figuring out which shows your customer demographics are likely to watch. You need to figure out where your potential clients are, and how to reach them before you decide you want to use Twitter, or a blog, etc.
Wow guys, I think I'll get up at 4:30 AM and blog again. ;)
I seem to have a point that legal professionals and other business people saw as well. Maybe I'll cull some of the excellent points you make and weave them into another post on the subject.
Kevin, read this straight after Seth's post and have to say I think you've both nailed it. I've had many conversations similar to one you mentioned above re blogs and not just with lawyers but, unfortunately, marketers too (which is why I second Heather Fitzpatrick's comment).
Spot on, Kevin.
I work with professionals and service practitioners and this post is quite accurate. It's definitely easier to choose tactics before (or, in lieu of) an overall practice marketing strategy. But it's a costlier choice to make. Without a coherent strategy in place, there's no differentiation or point-of-distinction that any tactic can communicate or reinforce. As a result the 'empty' tactics become just so much more 'white noise' in an overcrowded and increasingly undifferentiated landscape. Bravo on your post.
Great post Kevin and helpful comments posted too. I call this phenomenon "doing what the kids are doing," when businesses jump on the bandwagon trying to get into new media b/c they think that is where they need to be. It reminds me of the difference between my first and second blogs. In my first one in 2004 I blogged just to try it b/c I saw the tech as a growing medium, but soon got board and stopped. M second blog, in 2005 focused on video game law; I was still in law school and had the strategy of learnng more about IP by writing about it in the context of my favorite hobby. The result was a blog with over 75 posts for the semester, relationships built with some o the top lawyers in that field, and an intership at a boutique firm that specialized in this area. In writing about my passions with a strategy to learn and brand myself, I reaped great benefits. Just my experience with this. Thanks again for the great post.
I see this problem all the time. Too many people who self-proclaim their internet-savvy don't actually understand what they're really doing. There's a lot of circular reasoning with social media. The focus absolutely should be to use these tools as a method for reaching existing goals, not to use them because they're popular.
The mentality of "I will tell you how to make money on Twitter! Just follow as many people as possible and tell them you can make them money on Twitter too!" needs to go. It needs to go hard. Into that long night. No credits should roll.
Have something to say. Preferably something useful. Don't just hop on the bandwagon because all the 'kids' are doing it and you don't want to be stuck at home babysitting your little sister and watching reruns of Taxi all night crying into your popcorn.
If you have something to contribute and a passion for doing so, the rest will come naturally and these tools will aid that. Someone told me this once, or I saw it somewhere recently. I don't claim credit for it at all, but the basic sentiment is don't go buy a screwdriver when you don't have anything to use it on.
Now I get it. I just read this article. I have been trying to figure out what tactics to employ and how with a vague idea of what I wanted to do with it. You nailed it right on the head. I want to engage consumers in a conversation to better educate them so that they know when they need a lawyer and to call me when they do.