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Can social media kill your law practice?

January 3, 2010

Lawyers can spend a ton of time using social media and not bring in new legal work. Lots of activity doesn’t necessarily equate to progress.

John Jantsch goes so far to ask ‘Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

Some small business folks equate busy with business. The problem with social media usage is it can keep you really, really busy, without producing a dime of business…….It’s all too easy to get sucked into building a big blog readership or twitter following and then wonder why your phone isn’t ringing.

Social media for the small business is a catalyst, a tool, a way to create awareness and deeper engagement – it’s not a way to take orders.

At some point you’ve got to take orders. If you can’t convince someone face to face of the value of your proposition, don’t expect to do it in 140 characters or less.

This post is not for the social media legal luddittes who think social media has no place in the law. They’re in more trouble than the lawyers spending too much time on Twitter.

For those of you using social media just keep some things in mind.

  • You need to be focused in your use of social media. Large blog readership and Twitter followers are not the goal.
  • You need to focus on building relationships with your clients, prospective clients, referral sources, and their influencers.
  • You need to keep track of the people you meet through social media via LinkedIn and/or your law firm’s client relationship management (CRM) system.
  • You need to get out and meet the people you’ve met through social media for coffee, lunch, or a beer.
  • You need to ask industry groups whose members you’d like to represent to speak at their luncheon meetings or conferences.
  • You need to follow up with the people you meet, relationships aren’t built in one meeting.

You can be a social media rockstar, but you still need to deploy real world client development skills. And God forbid, you may even need to ask someone for their legal work.