Twitter has been very much in the news recently, what with high profile twitterers such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross. But is it something law firms should do?
I have been ‘twittering’ for a few months now. In many ways it is a bit of a timewaster. However I have discovered the following ways it can be usefully used:
- to make announcements about new services being launched
- to keep clients up to date with other firm news
- to make announcements about new legal developments
- to make announcements when you post a new item on your blog (NB there are ways of doing this automatically)
With twitter, you follow other ‘twitterers’ and are followed by others in turn. Often they are the same people, but not necessarily. One way you can make yourself known to other people is to ‘follow’ them (you do this by visiting their profile and clicking the follow button). They then get an email telling them that you are now following them. The hope is that they will then be prompted to visit your profile, and follow you in turn. They will then read your tweets and may end up being a client!
This could happen. However many people seem only concerned to get as many followers as possible. If you are following several thousand people you probably won’t have much time to read everything (or perhaps anything). Also if someone follows you, there is no guarantee that they will always follow you. It is very easy to ‘unfollow’ someone by re-visiting their profile and clicking the follow button again.
Twitter is also a very ‘in the moment’ service. If you log in to your twitter account at 5.50 pm you are unlikely to scroll back as far as to read the tweets published in the morning (unless you only follow a handful of people in which case there may not be many tweets to read). Therefore if you make an announcement about, say, a new service, it will only be read by those who are online at or shortly after the time it is published. One way around this is to ‘tweet’ it again later. However you don’t want to do this too often or you will start to annoy people.
Twitter can also be useful in keeping you informed. Virtually all the newspapers now have twitter accounts and you can subscribe to those which interest you. For example I follow a number of twitter accounts from the Times and the Guardian and a number of legal information services. You can also follow people who write blogs you admire, so you will be informed when they write a new post.
However although my twitter experience has been mainly a positive one, Larry Bodine, a legal marketing blogger in the USA, believes that it is not an effective marketing tool for law firms. He points out that it generates a lot of leads but little sales, can get lawyers and firms in a lot of trouble in the event of litigation, and is a distraction to getting real marketing work done. He goes on to say:
“After months of using Twitter, I’ve learned that it is a shouting post for relentless self-promoters, a dumping ground for press releases and advertising, an ego-driven competition to amass followers, and a target for computer-automated Tweets. It’s always been a good place to learn what sandwich someone had for lunch and when someone changed a baby’s diapers. But Twitter is supposed to be “all about the conversation,” and I see few conversations that lead to new business.”
I have to say that there is a lot of truth in this, and personally cannot put my hand on my heart (at the time of writing this) and point to any new client who has specifically come to me via twitter (although a number of existing clients have joined twitter just so they can follow my tweets).
Although I accept that there is a lot of truth in what Larry Bodine says, I still think that twitter is worth persevering with. However, it is for each firm to make their own decision.
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