Lawyer marketing with Twitter has arrived
Lawyers using Twitter for marketing? Yes, it’s true.
This micro blogging tool with posts or ‘tweets’ limited to 140 characters, which I was afraid to admit in public that I used, is generating some discussion among legal marketing professionals.
First, Twitter broke into a legal marketing listserv discussion last week. ‘What is it? Does anyone see any value to using it?’ Then today, legal Internet marketing expert, Steve Matthews, comes out with an excellent intro to Twitter for lawyer marketing, including 7 steps for test driving Twitter.
Don’t expect Twitter to take the legal industry by storm yet, but take note of what Steve says you ought to now.
…Politicians in the current US election are levering it, news outlets like CNN & Canada’s CBC are offering headlines that can be mixed into your reading stream, and companies like Southwest airlines are using it to interact with customers & take feedback.
It’s widely considered the fastest growing tool of web influence, and will at some point have a trickle down effect for the legal industry.
And though this may sound absolutely insane, LexBlog may pick up some very good work through Twitter – with larger law firms. And until a month or two ago, I thought Twitter was just a distraction. Let me share 4 stories.
- Working one night last week I was ‘tweeting’ about the Mariners game while I was listening to it on MLB.com. A lawyer in DC who owns a piece of a minor league team, who had been following me on Twitter, replied back with a direct message about baseball first, which then led to his request to discuss doing some blogs for a number of lawyers back there.
- I ‘m regularly exchanging comments via Twitter with a person in IT & Business Development in a top 5 law firm. Very good chance of leading to work with that firm.
- A week ago Sunday Robert Scoble, one of most widely followed bloggers in the world, ‘tweeted’ to his 21,000 followers on Twitter that he liked following my blog and following me on Twitter. Robert said he liked what I wrote and said and that I was a smart guy (take that for what it’s worth). Anyhow, it brought a huge immediate increase in people following me on Twitter. Where that goes I don’t know, but a lot more people are following me on Twitter, including some reporters and lawyers.
- I expanded my relationship with high profile PR person via Twitter which led to a speaking engagement at a major national blogging and new media conference.
Interesting thing about Twitter, and I don’t think most lawyers or firms are ready to use it, is that the people who may follow you are heavy influencers of others. They are people who blog and otherwise virally spread what they hear. If you are providing incite on a niche through Twitter, word can be spread very rapidly.
You can benefit from Twitter in three ways, that I see today. First, a way to socially network with people, some of which networking may lead to work, speaking engagements, and the like. Two, a means to amplify your message, i.e., spreading what you what you may be blogging, writing, or speaking on. Three, if you blog, you are going to get news from other bloggers whose content you may want to reference in your blog or work.
By the way, if you are going to experiment with Twitter, use an application such as Twhirl. It makes things much easier to understand and follow than using the Twitter home page alone. And if using Twitter on a mobile device there is m.twitter.com.
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