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International business development? You may want to use Twitter

October 11, 2013

If your law firm is developing business internationally, you and your lawyers ought to consider Twitter.

Mashable’s Zoe Fox (@zoebfox) reports 78% of Twitter’s users are outside the U.S.

Since 2010, Twitter’s international user base has grown 745% — from 20 million to 169 million users. Its user base in the United States has only grown 390%, from 10 million to 49 million users.

Here’s a graph from Statista depicting the International growth.

Twitter international business devlopment

How do you make a dent business development-wise internationally via Twitter?

  • Get your lawyers doing business development on Twitter. Lawyers can build direct relationships via Twitter the firm as a whole cannot on Twitter.
  • Create Twitter lists of the influencers in the countries and cities you’ll be doing business in. Do it by area of the law and industry to hone your lists. Mainstream media, bloggers, association leaders, business leaders, and community leaders. Follow what’s being shared. Listening first and talking to local business people about local customs on Twitter will be important. Retweet items of value to your followers. You’ll get seen by the influencers. Reply as appropriate.
  • Create Twitter lists of clients and prospective clients and the key contacts within those organizations with whom you’d like meet. Retweet and reply as above. Take it off Twitter into LinkedIn by connecting and then offering to get together.
  • Create RSS feeds of relevant sources and subjects. Tweet from your RSS reader items of value giving attribute to the source by mentioning their Twitter handle in your Tweet. You’ll start to get Twitter followers and have your tweets get ‘favorited.’ Look for openings to connect further and to meet people.
  • Share your own blog posts, but make sure the items of your own that you share are far outnumbered by others’ content that you’re sharing.

Do some of the above and you’ll begin to establish yourself as an intelligence agent, someone who’s giving as opposed to placing themselves first, and someone who likes getting to know other people.

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