Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Advice On Law Blogs and Social Media

Speaking with lawyers around the country, I'm always asked 'What's the next big thing?' Like the legal profession has mastered the social media tools that we already have.

My answer is we have enough to handle. Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more. The key now is for lawyers to assimilate these tools into how we network with our target audience for client development.

Shel Israel, a well known writer and speaker on social media issues, had an excellent post yesterday, 'The New Social Media Age of Normalization' driving home the point.

We have gone through a prolonged period of disruption in which social media tools have change a great many aspects of the way modern companies conduct business. I believe that this period is now coming to a close.

We are leaving the age of social media innovation and entering a longer, slower-moving period in which businesses and institutions will absorb and assimilate these tools into their everyday business practices. The novelty of these tools will fade away as the utility of them becomes clearer and more universally accepted.

There was a time when people wrote books and produced conferences to discuss the business benefits of email and fax machines. The telephone got introduced at a public fair and immediately business thinkers warned of the dangers that existed if such a device were permitted into the workplace.

......What I see happening in the near term future is far more valuable than it is controversial or interesting. We have entered into a long, slow, steady, non-disruptive period of refinement and adoption. The tools we have will get better and easier and faster, but they will not be soon replaced by some shiny new thing. The business that have painfully adopted the new tools will feel far less pain and far more results. New people coming into the workplace and marketplace will use social media tools with as little angst or consideration as they use email or phone.

Shel's analogy to the phone and businesses resistance to its use is the same analogy I use, except mine is lawyers resistance of the phone.

A great many executives agreed about the phone, but eventually, business saw that the benefits far outweighed the liabilities. Businesses that continued to ignored  those benefits eventually disappeared. And as the benefits of the phone became clearer to more and more people, the once-heated conversation about the phone's place in business cooled down, became obvious, tedious and would eventually wither.

There was time when the use of phones by lawyers was very controversial. Clearly unethical in exchanging confidential information in a non secure environment. And of course a phone would clearly be an unprofessional means for a lawyer to provide counsel. Lawyers who resisted the use of the phone went the way of the dinosaur.

Client development for lawyers has always been about forming relationships. Relationships built by engaging our target audience of clients, prospective clients, referral sources and the influencers of those three.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the rest are just networking tools. Tools that allow lawyers and law firms to engage their target audience to enhance and build meaningful relationships. In that networking for client development comes natural for good lawyers the use of social media tools will become second nature to good lawyers overtime.

Shel sees a Social Media Age of Normalization and an 'Era about as tumultuous as watching paint dry and as significant as the adoption of the automobile.'

From what I've seen so far, the legal profession's adoption of social media ought to be more entertaining than watching paint dry. But the professions use of social media may be as significant as the adoption of the automobile - or at least the phone.

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Donna Fenn's new book, 'Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success,' highlights the success of 150 CEO's born after 1975.

If you haven't looked, business leaders are getting younger and younger. Their upstart businesses are leading the American economic recovery hiring people while large corporations are laying off people.

A year ago May I was speaking at the Community 2.0 conference in Las Vegas. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, was also presenting. This kid, at least that's the way he looked to me to was sharing one good idea and story after another. Hsieh is 35 and just sold Zappos for $1 Billion. At age 24 he sold his company LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million.

Zappos and other upstarts are the companies law firms would die to have as clients. IP work. Employment and labor matters. Securities and corporate finance. You name it. These companies require a ton of legal work to grow.

How do law firms market to these upstarts? Social media. 96% of Generation Y uses social media. Social media including blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media/networking sites.

Landing upstart companies is not going to come via advertising, law firm websites included. Only 14% of generation Y trust advertising.

I'm a customer service fanatic. Zappos is known for outstanding customer service. So I sent Hsieh a private Twitter message (we're following each other) asking what was his favorite book on client service. Four hours later he replied on Twitter with a link to Zappo's library on best business practices. It was pretty cool though that his favorite was the same as mine, Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.

I share my exchange with Hsieh as a an example of the ease of reaching out to a business leader through the use of social media. How else could I effectively do that before social media? A phone call? Email? Letter? I'm not certain I'd have ever heard back.

If you want to start building relationships with upstart corporate leaders, learn how to use social media. Traditional legal marketing and PR is not going to cut it.

Thanks to Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends for turning me onto Fenn's book.

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I couldn't help but feel in reading Tresa Baldas' National Law Journal article on employers limiting access to social media that employers were actually bragging about cutting off access to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

Back-to-back studies, the most recent issued Tuesday, show a big chunk of corporate America is banning communication wonders like Twitter and Facebook from the workplace.

According to the latest survey of more than 1,400 U.S. companies, more than half (54 percent) said they prohibit employees from visiting sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace while on the clock. The survey, by Robert Half Technology, a provider of information technology staffing services, was based on telephone interviews with U.S. companies of 100 or more employees.

Another recent survey delivered even graver news for the social media world. According to an August survey by ScanSafe, a Web security provider, 76 percent of companies are now choosing to block employees' use of social networking -- up 20 percent from February -- which is now a more popular category of sites to block than those involving shopping, weapons, sports or alcohol.

Law firms are leading the way in the blocking craze. Per Baldas:

Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg has blocked all access to Facebook. Twitter is still available, however. Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Fla., blocks Facebook and Twitter for all its support staff, including secretaries and legal assistants, but lets lawyers use the social media tools.

Even crazier are the findings of an informal survey of 231 law firms conducted by Steve Matthews and Doug Cornelius and published in the ABA's Law Practice Magazine which found 45% of the law firms blocking social media. Of those law firms who blocked social media, what mediums did they block?

• Facebook 85%
• MySpace 77%
• Twitter 26%
• LinkedIn 14%
• YouTube 55%
• Blogs 22%

The main reported reasons for blocking:

• Loss of productivity
• Viruses
• Confidentiality
• Bandwidth consumption

What's happening screams ignorance and lack of trust. Neither of which are high on the list of traits for law firms heading anywhere.

Maybe things have changed since I started practicing law almost 30 years ago. Back then law firms got their best work by word of mouth. Both lawyers and non lawyer personnel were expected to represent the law firm well in all they did (some things we were more proud of than others). We knew the more our employees came in touch with other people, the greater the opportunity people got to know them, and when the need for a lawyer arose, the people our employee's met would think of us. Novel concept? Hardly.

Heck, I can remember being pushed out the door to Rotary and Kiwanis meetings. No small feat when they kicked off at 7:30 AM with grown women and men singing from song books that looked like those Sister Mary Rose passed out in the second grade. But the whole idea was to meet doctors, realtors, bankers, and other local business people.

I vividly remember my senior partner, George, asking me to be more like Gerry. Gerry played golf at the country club and hung out in the grill afterwards. He went to all types of civic events. All the stuff I didn't like - and frankly felt uncomfortable participating in. But George wanted me to grow my practice.

Now we have one of the most effective mediums - the Internet - for time and cost effective networking and we're telling lawyers and other legal professionals they can't use it. Can't use it because of fears born out of ignorance. That's nuts.

I don't know about the leadership in your law firms, but in the law firm's I led, I valued three things: 1) Personal growth of my employees (to be better people, for their sake and for their families); 2) professional growth of my employees (I wanted my employees to go anywhere they wanted, I wanted them to chase their dreams); and 3) to have fun (we spent more time awake working than we did at home, so we sure as heck better have fun at work).

Professional growth, personal growth, and fun needed to be based on trust. I wasn't walking around looking over people's shoulders to make sure they were working. My employees knew the big picture of service to our clients. My employees had important things to do. I placed great faith in them. I didn't need to breed distrust by having rules dictating personal behavior in the work place.

To find problem and fault in things you don't understand (many in law firm management have not a clue about social media) and use this ignorance to demoralize employees and hamstring those looking to use the Internet for networking is a step backward.

Leaders in law firms looking to compete in a world that's changing faster than ever before need to adapt, to learn, and to empower the employees who work with them.

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Interesting to see one of the things that interested legal professionals attending law firm business development consultant Lance Godard's Toledo presentation on social media for lawyers was the ability to repurpose content across multiple channels.

Pushing law firm content on people is not what social media, or for that matter, the Internet, is all about. By all means have your content (lawyer articles, newsletters, alerts) accessible to be indexed by Google so it may be retrieved on search, but the Internet is about communicating. Communicating does not mean shouting content at people.

Realize the word 'social' is included in social media. The term 'social' means interaction of living organisms (humans in particular) with other living organisms.

Being social means engaging other people. Engagement requires listening first and then entering into a conversation. It's how we as people build relationships. Relationships drive client development in the legal industry.

Imagine a lawyer getting ready to network with industry leaders representing prospective clients at cocktail party. The law firm's marketing department works for a month in advance on some wonderful content written by associate lawyers. The strategy being to carry a box of content to the networking event, pull out the law firm's bullhorn, and shout the content out to all in attendance. Better yet, have minions push the content at people's chests.

You'd never do it. It defies common sense and would embarrass the heck out the lawyer and your law firm.

Just because social media has proven effective for law firm client development does not mean you should lose your common sense understanding of what 'social' means.

Being social for client development purposes means identifying your target audience, going to where they are congregating, listening to what they are saying, engaging in the conversation by referencing what others are saying, and offering information and insight of value to others.

Get that basic understanding down and you'll be ahead of 95% of law firms. Learning how to engage in social media for client development is then just getting the proper tools and learning how to use them.

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Marketing and media strategist, Kneale Mann, rightly points out social media is a business, not something law firms or other business can dabble in and expect results.

Mann describes what I see in many a lawyer or other law firm professional.

So you've been dabbling in social media. You have a Facebook profile with a few hundred friends and perhaps you're now on Twitter. You aren't interested in blogging or webinars; YouTube is fun to watch but you don't want your own channel and now you wonder if it's time to introduce the company you work for or own to this space.

For law firms already involved in social media and for those considering sticking their toe in the water, here's Mann's advice (with a little editing by me).

• Your social media commitment must be completely in line with your strategic objectives. You wouldn't treat any other part of your company with a haphazard approach.
• Companies can get caught up in their own 'too busy' mentality and let things slide. Social media is not something to do 'when you have some time' - make time for it or you won't see the benefits.
• You'll need human involvement with real business leaders involved. Social media is not something you hand off to the PR, marketing, and advertising team.
• Resist the temptation to use the social web as a giant advertising medium. Social media is not a campaign and your company will not gain millions in revenue after a handful of tweets. If you aren't willing to pay attention to how people interact with your company online, this may be a struggle for you.
• Metrics are helpful but they are not the same as the 'sleep at night' estimates you may receive from other mediums. Just because you put up a billboard at the corner of East and South Streets doesn't mean anyone saw your message. That is the same with social media, it takes time and commitment.
• You need a corporate champion. If someone in your organization is committed to online social networking, you can begin to be a part of the conversation where your customers and potential customers may be as well.
• Focus the funnel. There are many social networking spaces but it's difficult to keep profiles and contact on each because of the law of diminishing results. Pick the channels you want and do them well. Skip the rest.

Social media is an art learned over time through personal involvement. The ROI from social media, done right, can exceed any other forms of law firm client development. But you've got to treat social media like a business.

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Sarah Needleman reports in Monday's Wall Street Journal that big businesses are finding it critical to monitor social media as part of their public relations efforts.

A growing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations problems.

Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They're also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.

Shouldn't law firms being doing the same for matters about their firm and the matters in which their firm is representing clients? In this day and age when it's so easy to set up a dashboard via RSS feeds monitoring names, subjects, and sources it borders on negligence for law firms not to be doing so.

Not only do law firms need to monitor the likes of Facebook and Twitter, law firms need to respond quickly. Per corporate communications pro, Shel Holtz, "Social media [has] magnified the urgency of crisis communication, seemingly small incidents can quickly spread into bigger PR problems via the Web."

Scarier yet for law firms is not having all communications go through the law firm's traditional communication channels. Per Needleman:

Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts. At Ford, Mr. Monty plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.

Coca-Cola Co. is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will be authorized to post to social media on Coke's behalf without checking with the company's PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke's first head of social media in March.

We've already seen how woefully unprepared law firms are for this type of monitoring and rapid response. Embarrassing emails from law firm management leak to blogs or main stream media. Virally passed across the Internet, without any response from the firm via social media, these things take on a life of their own.

I heard from one national law firm communications director that stories spreading across the Internet about senior partners thinking of leaving the firm, whether true or not, all but put the firm on a path leading to its demise.

For lawyers doing litigation, there's little question news and information about matters in dispute are going to be spread across Twitter and Facebook. A gag order is going do do little to quash discussion effecting the news, your bargaining position, and the views of a fact finder - judge or jury.

No one's got the perfect answer on how to monitor social media and how to respond yet. All we know is that not monitoring social media is a dangerous proposition and not responding in a timely fashion via the same social media is even more dangerous.

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Pacific Northwest-based law firm Lane Powell, is hosting dual Social Media seminars I'll be speaking at next week.

Billed as 'Social Media: Expect the Unexpected,' we'll be in Seattle at the Washington Athletic Club on Tuesday, July 7, and in Portland at the Portland Hilton & Executive Tower on Wednesday July 8. Running from 8 to 10 AM with 1.5 hours of CLE, topics include:

• Social Media - What is It and Why You Need to Consider Using It; Kevin O'Keefe, CEO, LexBlog Inc.
• Technology and Intellectual Property Issues - How to Manage Risk; Craig Bachman, Intellectual Property and Technology Attorney, Lane Powell PC
• Issues for Public Companies and First Amendment Rights; Mike Nesteroff, Chair of Lane Powell's Sustainability and Climate Change Team, Lane Powell PC, and Former KOMO-TV Journalist
• Employment Issues that Follow Social Networking and Practical Guidance to Help Minimize Risk; D. Michael Reilly, Director of Lane Powell's Labor and Employment and Employee Benefits Practice Group, Lane Powell PC
• Panel and Audience Discussion: Sea Change or Flash in the Pan; What is Really Going on Here and Why is it Important to You and Your Company

You may register for the Portland program here and the Seattle program here. I hope to see some of you there.

Hosting social media educational programs such as this offer law firms an excellent opportunity. Not only does the firm put itself at the forefront of innovation, but large corporate audiences starved for credible information on the topic provide excellent relationship building opportunities.

I participated in an event with a Manhattan firm that brought an excellent turnout. I'm honored that Lane Powell thought enough of what I could offer to invite me for their program.

Looking to host a similar event? I'd be honored to take part.

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We just wrapped up the latest installment in our monthly Client Webinar Series, this one on Social Media, specifically LinkedIn and Twitter. 

For those who missed it, or for attendees who want to revisit the Webinar, you can view the Social Media Webinar recording. You can also view this and past Webinars on the LexBlog Support site.

Today's Webinar drew with over 90 LexBlog clients with a LexBlog team presentation on how to use LinkedIn and Twitter. We actually ran over by 30 minutes, thanks to a constant stream of questions about these social media tools.

Since there's so much to talk about for both LinkedIn and Twitter, we're considering breaking up the two into separate Webinars of their own. We could easily spend an hour talking about how to get a Twitter account, what applications to use (like TweetDeck, Twhirl, and Twitterific) and how to get the most out of Twitter.

LexBlog client webinars dedicated to best blogging practices and keeping LexBlog clients up to speed on effective ways to leverage their blogs occur monthly on Thursdays at 9am PT/12pm ET. Coming up:

• March 12: Creating Effective Blog Posts
• April 16: RSS: The Secret Sauce of Blogging
• May 14: Social Media

We'll post information on how to register shortly before each Webinar.

It's encouraging to see so much interest in social media from lawyers and law firms large and small, and we hope today's Webinar was beneficial to you. Drop us a comment here or email me with your feedback.

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Twitpic is a website that allows you to easily post pictures to Twitter. It's often used by citizen journalists to upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event is taking place.

You may post pictures via an iPhone or other mobile device by emailing a picture to a twitpic email address you are assigned. The caption of your picture, which you put in the subject of your email, will accompany a link to the picture in your twitter post.

You may also use twitpic to post pictures to Twitter from an application such as a TweetDeck.

Why is twitpic an effective social media tool for lawyers? Because it lets those who follow you on Twitter get to know you a little better.

Face it, as lawyers we are not only not the most interesting people in the world, but people downright dislike us. However, people are interested in what you're interested in. Your sharing your personal interests with people builds relationships that grow your network, a network that grows business over time.

I asked Heather Milligan, Director of Marketing at Barger & Wolen in Los Angeles, why she thought Twitter may be an effective client development tool for lawyers. She told me something to the effect of 'Clients are not interested in lawyers per se, but they are interested in what the lawyers are interested in.'

Twitpic by its very nature lets people know what you are interested in. You're sharing things you see and value enough to not only take a picture, but to share the picture with others. As more people following you on Twitter find you interesting, they mention you and what you blog or twitter about to others - both on and offline.

Nikki Black twitpics her gourmet touch each evening, tweeting a picture of what always looks like a pretty good dinner. Any given evening, Nikki may have 50 or 60 people look at a dinner plate from her kitchen.

The result? Nikki has over 1,500 followers on Twitter who are getting to know her even better. Those followers in turn talk more about Nikki. And people across the country remember Nikki is a lawyer in Rochester, New York. She's got a growing network and reputation that lawyers with huge PR budgets would kill for.

I twitpic about various things. Arriving in a new city, pictures of my kids, or my family at a baseball game.

This summer I shared a picture of roaring fans at Wrigley Field after the Cubs' rookie catcher just drove in his 3rd run of the game. Des Moines lawyer Rush Nigut direct messaged me on Twitter a minute later saying his kids had their picture taken with Geovany Soto when they threw out the opening pitch at a Des Moines Cubs minor league game the summer before. Received a call from Rush the week I got back from vacation regarding new 2 new blogs for his firm.

Are you sharing too much of your personal life with twitpic? Not really. When you sit down with a new client or business associate, the conversation starts off focusing on personal items. You're more apt to talk about your kids' soccer games or who won last night's NBA game than to lead off with 'I'm a no nonsense guy, give me just what I need to start work on this matter.'

To give you a further idea of how I use twitpic, here's a number of pics from the last two days followed by some responses I received.

From a law blogger meetup in Toronto on Friday evening.

I shared that it was great to be back in New York City with this pic upon walking out of the subway.

I shared some pics while out for a beautiful run through Central Park this evening. Yes, I tweeted while running. The first is from Columbus Circle entering Central Park.

Here's upon reaching the reservoir running loop at the North end of Central Park. (yes that's ice)

Looking back at the Manhattan skyline from the North side of the reservoir before heading back into a cold wind.

And back at the ice skating rink on the South end of the park, where I pointed out the Trump sponsorship signs you can't see in the picture.

I find sharing photos like this a lot of fun. Turns out some of my followers on Twitter thought so as well.

• UK's Mike Semple Piggot (@CharonQC): Hi Kevin... I'm watching you as you wander through `North America! Great stuff. Enjoy NYC. Keep the bulletins going. :)
• San Diego copywriter Beth Ziesenis, (@AvenueZ): So beautiful... My run was through an industrial park today. And very hot.
• New York lawyer John Hochfelder (@johnhechfelder): What the heck Kevin, are you literally tweeting while on the run?
• Columbus Social Media Account Manager, Anna Young (@ayoungone): Loving your pictures of NYC. It makes the cold snow look so much nicer.

Give twitpic a try. It's a lot of fun. And though you may not see the business development side, client development begins with strengthening relationships.

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