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Twitter and LinkedIn ready sources of competitive intelligence for law firms

It used to be that law firms bought access to competitive research on other law firms and market trends. Today law firms have ready access to perhaps more authenticate and reliable information from social media.

For companies at large, LinkedIn and Twitter are the social media and social networking platforms of choice for gathering intelligence on competitors and industry trends.

Pursuant to Digimind’s Market Intelligence Survey Report 2012 here’s the breakdown on the social media/networking platforms decision makers monitor on a daily business.

  • 69.4% monitor LinkedIn
  • 62.5% monitor Twitter
  • 47.2% monitor Facebook
  • 35.2% monitor Google+

You’re likely not alone as a law firm if you are not monitoring social networks. 21% of companies, per the Digimind Survey, are not harnessing the benefits of social media as a source of valuable insight and intelligence.

Per Digimind’s associate director, Patrice Francois (@patricedigi):

A small proportion of companies remain cautious about the potential value of social media monitoring but the vast majority see it as a complement to the full spectrum of intelligence gathering.

There is a tendency for some people to view social media monitoring as something which solely benefits B2C environments but it’s fast being adopted by a wide range of businesses and organisations for unearthing valuable intelligence insights.

For lawyers engaged in business development themselves, which you really need to be to build relationships through networking, LinkedIn and Twitter provide ready access to competitive intelligence.

Viewing LinkedIn Today, using LinkedIn advanced search, following individuals, and following companies are all easy to do on LinkedIn.

Twitter is a lay up for following what people and companies you’d like to work with are interested in. It’s also easy to set up searches for companies, people, and terms on Twitter and view those searches in lists or columns on Twitter applications.

Many law firms and lawyers are apt to say it’s too hard to use social media and social networks for intelligence and to have others do their ‘dirty work’ for them.

In the long run those firms and lawyers will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as compared to those willing to use social media and social networking.

Thanks to Dublin’s John Kennedy (@MrJohnFKennedy) of Silicon Republic, whose report on the survey was my source for this post.