Lawyers Should Ignore Social Media Marketing Experts
I recently sat in on yet another lawyer marketing seminar that regurgitated the same message delivered by legal marketers: “lawyers, if you just understood social media as well as I did, you could be as popular on [insert Twitter and/or Facebook] as I am.” The talk goes something like this:
“See all my twitter followers! When I tweet, people listen, they open up their offices to me, they meet me at airports for coffee, they bake me brownies. When I link to my latest blog post on my Facebook fan page, my vast network of friends pass on my witticisms to their vast network of people, all of whom are prospective clients. I’m even more popular than I was in 8th grade and my (ahem) marketing business is thriving!”
I watch the audience with mouths slightly agape, enraptured, scribbling furiously on hotel note pads trying to unlock the mystery of mastering this professional popularity contest. Twitter accounts are opened in real time, facebook fan pages are set up on iPhones. I can almost see the thoughts among the audience: if only I had 10,000 Twitter followers, I could buy that Porsche 911 C4 convertible in Arctic Silver Metallic.
Invariably during the Q/A session someone (usually a recently minted solo practitioner) asks, “how am I supposed to do all of this social media stuff and still bill clients?” The experts pause uncomfortably, say something to the extent of, “well, it’s really easy and it doesn’t take that much time” and then quickly move on to highlighting their number of twitter followers. There are two major mistakes with this line of thinking.
The first falsehood that marketers (or self-proclaimed social media experts, ninjas, gurus and mavens) would have you believe is that the social media popularity contest doesn’t entail a significant investment of time.
How do I know this? I’m a legal marketer and if I’ve learned anything in the past four years its this: social media doesn’t circumvent the fact that building relationships with people takes time. To wit. . . we have a team of people who have full time jobs marketing the largest and most popular legal website in the world. Avvo’s charismatic CEO and a wise General Counsel are both social media savvy and we have no fewer than 10 individual twitter accounts, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Fan Pages and even two Foursquare accounts. Through our investment in social media we’ve built relationships with numerous key influencers (Ambrogi, Elefant), consultants (Merenda), surly curmudgeons (Greenfield), and industry innovators (Port). Social Media has been good to us and we use it effectively, but lets not pretend that we’ve been successful by simply tweeting 5 minutes a day between bites of cereal and at halftime during the Seattle Sounders game.
The second falsehood that marketers would have lawyers believe is that building a legal business is just like building a marketing business. It’s simply not true. Prospective legal clients behave very differently than most marketers, especially when it comes to social media. How many people want to fan their DUI lawyer on Facebook? How many people retweet the 140 character quips from their Divorce attorney? I’m not suggesting that social media can’t work for lawyers, in fact I’ve spoken with many practicing lawyers who are successful with it – but keep in mind the golden rule of marketing that seems to have been forgotten by the marketing experts themselves – know your customer.
If you want to learn how to use social media to build your client list stop listening to self-proclaimed marketing experts who suggest you need to be more like them with legions of twitter followers and jealousy-inspiring Facebook fan pages. Instead, learn from those practicing lawyers (who bill legal clients not lawyers) to see how they connect with their prospects.
Update: Nancy Myrland (social media marketing consultant) responds with a good balance here: Yes, this Takes Time.
Update 2: Still thinking about hiring a social media company? Check out 52 Questions to ask when Hiring a Social Media Company from Outspoken Media.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Great post Conrad!
It’s not about the numbers. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s about connecting with others and building relationships.
June 2nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I hate the fact that this post is so snarky and i’m actually going to write a comment. I hope to add some balance to your opening statement that lawyers should ignore social marketing experts. (That you are so cavalier with your blanket statements makes me assume it is a ploy to get traffic to your blog – or is that just another AVVO tactic?)
I’m a marketing and business development professional for law firms with over 15 years of experience in the trenches – 13 in-house. A little over two years ago I opened a boutique digital media agency to serve the legal industry as it transitions from the static web to the social web. From day one I was clear with everyone I spoke to and every article I wrote or speech I gave (obviously you weren’t in the audience) that social engagement on the web was not a silver bullet, not a short cut. That it took the same stuff as always to develop new business. The good news was these tools were changing the scope, especially where marketing (exposure) was needed.
I recently wrote a book for Thomson West, social.lawyer, and the first 4 chapters are devoted to fundamental business development and marketing principles. It has always been my belief and that of other marketers I know that the tools are just tools until their in the hands of a skilled operator. No use adding them to your program if you don’t see a need or know how to make them work.
It bothers me that you have lumped social media experts into this snarky mold. (Is it to make you look smarter than everyone?) Well, I happen to know a number of social media experts both in house and with their own consulting businesses that are true business developers, know the fundamentals and do not sell snake oil.
I can assure you that there are legitimate reasons to hire a social media consultant. I can say that my clients are very pleased that someone is out there in the social space experimenting with the new tools and helping them transition. Someone with a strong marketing and biz dev background. It cuts their time in half to have someone who has vetted the process and gleaned tools that can help them do what they already do only further, faster and better.
Please do not take this comment as a suggestion that there are not self professed “gurus” out there selling fantasies of easy pickins. I am saying that there are a host of biz dev, marketing and PR professionals, as well as lawyers turned social marketers, who know the territory. I can say that I know first hand the stress of balancing a practice and marketing and I always take this into consideration when advising my law firm clients and often include helpful tips in my presentations.
Best regards,
Jayne Navarre, LawGravity.com
June 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Nancy Myrland had a similar comment on our Facebook page – my risk for using broad brushstrokes. The thrust of this post is that legal marketing consultants whose primary pitch is “look how popular I am, you just need to be more like me” are dispensers of self-aggrandizing fluff. In some cases it seems the number of twitter followers is the only qualification needed to speaking to a group of lawyers. I consistently see lawyers getting bad advice and being overchared on all sorts of things – don’t get me started on SEO or $2K a year hosting costs for websites. Yes, there are good consultants out there (and from what you describe, you fall into that group), but I’m infuriated by the self proclaimed marketing experts dispensing the “be more like me” snake oil to lawyers who desperately need solid, actionable advice.
June 2nd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Nice post, Conrad.
The section that rings the most true to me is this: “How many people want to fan their DUI lawyer on Facebook? How many people retweet the 140 character quips from their Divorce attorney?” People expect a certain service from their lawyer and don’t have much of an imagination that a lawyer would surpass this purpose. This has been a dilemma for me, while trying to jump start the Twitter and Facebook pages for the civil litigation firm I work at.
I think the key is not to flood social media with quips about your firm’s success or self-serving blog posts about the virtue of whatever type of law you practice. But for each type of law, there are real-world issues that people really care about. If you’re a personal injury lawyer, for example, link to articles about consumer safety on your Twitter and Facebook pages. If you practice divorce law, link to pieces investigating trends of divorce over time, or studies on the impact family splits has on children. When it comes down to it, it’s possible to engage in social media without being boring or self serving.
The only question is if lawyers are wiling to try, and if non-lawyers are willing to listen.
June 2nd, 2010 at 6:26 pm
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June 2nd, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Conrad:
The times they are a changing and nobody knows all the answers. So you develop a strategy and see what happens. It is easy enough to link, but link to where? The route and destination are different for everyone. So you experiment.
Yesterday I sent out an email newsletter containing a tweet I had posted on Twitter to promote a post on my blog. It had turned up in a Google Alert and when I clicked on the url, I thought the way Twitter displayed the Tweet was so nice that I wanted to share it with my friends. So I converted it to an email and sent it to about 100 hand-selected people from my address book. You may have noticed, since you were one of them.
Every person who received it knows me and most of them have never hired me or sent me a referral. But I thought they might be interested. I’ve sent similar email promotions several times and it has always led to something — the exact something is unpredictable.
A small firm or solo practitioner can figure out affordable ways to get attention and promote the brand using social media without hiring a consultant.
Oh yes, what was the tweet? Find it at:
http://twitter.com/PittsburghLegal/status/15127836900
CLT
June 2nd, 2010 at 10:54 pm
I’m in agreement with Conrad – one may have hundreds or thousands of followers, but what’s the conversion event? It’s silly to scale a marketing effort that may not, in fact, pay for itself.
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:24 am
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