Header graphic for print
Real Lawyers Have Blogs On the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, & baseball

Two questions a law firm needs to ask its blogging and social media agency

Where do you start as law firm when looking for help on social media and blogging? A PR firm, a web design firm, a marketing company, a consultant, or a combination of all four?

Widely respected Internet marketing strategist, B.L. Ochman, says you need only ask two questions when considering a company or agency which says they can help you.

  1. Do they walk the walk? If they aren’t not participating in social media and blogging as thought leaders, then you don’t want them advising you.
  2. Do they have case studies to share with you to demonstrate their success incorporating social media into clients’ overall marketing strategy? If they don’t, they’ll be learning on your dime.

It’s possible there are a few other questions you’d want to ask, but Ochman’s point is well taken.

You need to find a company with street cred. Per Ochamn:

  • Does the prospective agency, have a credible social media presence of its own?
  • How long have they been using social media? If they have only recently established a presence in social media, ask why it took them so long.
  • Do they have a following? Many agencies have no more social media presence than what they pass off as blogs. Many of those are thinly disguised press releases, or are updated every month or so, if at all.
  • …[T]hey need to be there themselves to demonstrate that they understand how new media actually works, and how community is built in real life, not in theory.

Second, you need to find a company with a track record of achieving success for their clients. Ask for stories or case studies of client successes. Make sure the clients are similar to your law firm.

Social media and blogging is not new. Ochman’s correct that “Social media has been part of the online landscape for a more than a decade, beginning with chat rooms and forums, and evolving into its current form.” If your agency or consultant hasn’t been helping clients achieve success in social media for years, keep looking.

Great questions for law firms. As Ochman warns, “Ignore them at your peril.”

  • http://www.rawsthorne.org Peter Rawsthorne

    Great post. Two things that I’d like to add;
    1) I don’t think this should be limited to just PR firms, marketing, consultants… I think it should also be applied to internal staff in organizations (law related firms included). I am often amazed how people with little to no social media or internet presence can be considered to have expertise with social media and the internet. You have to have used the tools for a number of years to understand them.
    2) I think your post should be more detailed in what you mean as social media. There are so many technologies in this area with tagging, wikis, microblogging and the collaborative technologies being the most important. A look at the conversation prism gives insight in to just how many options are available for collaboration; http://theconversationprism.com/1024/.

  • http://theinspiredsolo.com Sheryl Sisk

    Don’t confuse social media with social networking, though. Two very different things – each capable of adding marketing value to a law firm but in different ways. The yardstick by which you’d measure social media expertise is not the same as the one you’d use for a social networking program. (As Andrea Hill puts it, “social media can’t be a place” even though it occurs on a website)
    There’s a fascinating debate going on in many SMM/SNM blogs about accreditation, certification, and training programs – whether certification is needed or even possible, who ought to do it, what the criteria ought to be … not a new debate (same thing took place/is taking place with the coaching profession), but the constantly changing SNM/SMM context puts an interesting twist on it.
    Certification is one method of proof, and I’m keen to see how it plays out — but there are other metrics, certainly.

  • http://www.ingenuitymarketing.com Christine Nelson

    I don’t see how an agency could pass muster as “experts” in social media if they don’t have a track record…unless the professional service firm is not being as strategic in its social media efforts as it is with practice development. I agree that they should check references, ask for case studies and also have some idea of objectives and what social media can do for them before they hire a consultant to implement.
    We find too many firms spending thousands of dollars on the technical side of SEO with no thought to branding, marketing strategy or ROI. Social media is still just one piece of an overall marketing strategy.