May 24th, 2011 by Mark Britton, CEO

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I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the attendees, speakers and sponsors that made Avvocating 2011 such a resounding success.  I so enjoyed spending time with all of the Avvo-faithful and better understanding which marketing channels are working for you and which are not.  Not surprisingly, I had many conversations relating to social media and how to make it work for the busy practitioner.  A number of themes developed, and I wanted to get some of them on paper to reinforce their importance.

Social Media is Only a Medium

In my opening remarks, I spoke a lot about looking at social media as a medium for communication and no more.  Too many people believe that, because the Internet is involved, they need to take on (if not hire . . . see the next section) an alter ego that makes them entertaining to the Internet masses.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I thought we figured this one out in high school:  The more we pretend to be someone we are not, the more we are going to look like a fool – sometimes at the most inopportune of moments.  Being genuine in social media is everything – just like in real life.

Avvocating speaker Brian Tannebaum spoke to this quite eloquently during his ethics presentation.  He offered that the Internet is ironically returning us to a simpler time where business owners speak directly to their customers and live and die by their relationships and reputations.  “Wow,” I thought, “he is so right”; and that is why you are reading this blog post and see me so active in places like Twitter and Facebook.  Maybe it is the Montanan in me, but I love being Avvo’s shopkeeper and having our customers stop in and say hello.  I love when they reach out to me to tell me why they are happy or frustrated with our products.  All of that interaction energizes me, and also helps me manage the Avvo shop so much better.

Social Media is About You

As a business owner or marketer, you should be looking for personal interactions with your customers.  It’s important to focus on the “you” in that sentence.  YOU are the key to your social media success and no one should be blogging, tweeting or friending for you – not a marketing consultant, not your paralegal, not your teenage daughter.  You.

 Video

During the conference, video came up over and over.  At Avvo, we are big believers in video, and that is why we offer video Legal Guides and allow lawyers to upload videos to the “About Me” section of their profiles.  However, some lawyers are still dumfounded by it.  They either find it excessive – maybe even vain – or just the thought of being on camera makes them want to hurl.

But here’s the reality:  People love to hire real people – it’s that human connection that is so vital to every important (and ultimately successful) relationship.  Video makes you more real because it allows prospective clients to see you in action – hear your voice, watch your body language, hear your accent, etc. 

Time

Social media should not take a lot of time.  If you want to be the most prolific blogger of the new Internet world, well then yes that could take some time.  However, if you are blogging 2-3 times a week or answering questions in a Q&A forum like Avvo’s or tweeting regularly, you are looking at a couple of hours per week at most.  If you are spending more time than that, you are probably being too much of a perfectionist (aka “a lawyer”) in your social media writings.  You could also be trying to be someone you are not because, when you write conversationally and from the heart, things just flow out.

Money

Just like spending too much time, you can spend way too much money on your social media efforts.  We are now in an age where almost every platform is free – Avvo, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc.  Take the time to experiment with free options before buying some big customized solution.  Blogging is a great example:  As we discussed at the conference, you can build your own blog – a very professional looking blog – for little time or money these days.  People will try to sell you expensive solutions up front; but you only need the customized solution if blogging works for you – i.e., it is returning more in marketing value than the time and money you are putting into it.  Figuring that out will take time and some trial and error.  Work the kinks out bf getting your wallet out. 

That’s all for now; but again thanks to everyone for their participating in Avvocating.  We hope to see you at Avvocating 2012!

Mark

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 4:50 pm by Mark Britton, CEO and is filed under Mark Britton Posts, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.