Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog
Internet on Fire about Social Networking Article
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For a passionate response by renowned blogger Kevin O’Keefe to the article, read Twitter for client development for lawyers : Being an intelligence agent as good as it gets |
Shucks, I didn't mean to cause a fuss when I wrote the article Where to Focus With Social Networking for Marketing the Law Firm Newsletter. It was a typical piece with nuts-and-bolts how-to practical advice that I usually write. Everything exploded when Law.com put it online at http://bit.ly/vHnX9 on September 22.
The next thing I knew it was all over Twitter, being discussed in blogs and commented on by readers. In the 1,455 word article, what set the flames afire were the 184 words I devoted to Twitter. I dared to contradict the relentless hype that Twitter is great for business development -- even though a brand new study found that only 4% of in-house counsel (i.e., the customers) use it.
People tell me I've "created a brand name" as the Twitter-basher. Golly, folks, I'm not carrying water for any brand of technology. I just read the studies, research and reports and set forth the facts. I can't help it if Neilsen Wire, Harvard Business School, Marketing Sherpa, the New York State Bar Journal, Business Week, Quantcast, Compete.com, Social Media Insider and Mashable.com publish statistics that make Twitter look bad.
As always -- you be the judge. The chart below shows that Twitter peaked last July. It's your time that you are investing or wasting. As for me, I'll stick to LinkedIn and in-person face-to-face networking for new business.
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Larry I stand proud when I say that twitter has absolutely no benefit as a marketing tool for lawyers! I am stunned by the close minded offense people take to your opinion. After all, it is simply your opinion. So what if you don't drink the twitter kool-aid. I suspect the people that are most worked up by your statements are the same people who profiteer from the internet, such as marketing firms, social networking consultants, etc. Theirs are hardly objective responses.
I tweet occasionally, but it is for pure entertainment, and nothing else. Hear this world: I have better things to do with my time then tweet that I am having a delicious cup of coffee!
If there is a lawyer out there who can confirm for me that he or she landed a real, fee generating client solely from a presence on twitter I would love to hear about it. To date I have never encountered anyone who can.
Keep up the good work Larry!
I think the jury is still out on Twitter. I will admit that my opinion on it has changed 3-4 times this year alone ... and in the sense that Facebook has exploded among those 30+ yrs or older in the last year -- once those folks figured out how useful it could be -- I think the same could be said for Twitter and business development.
It really is a great repository for industry-related articles (although some is bogus) ... and if you make information easy to find, people will find you eventually. So I could see in-house attorneys using it more once they discover that opinions on case law or news related to their practice area, etc., can be stockpiled and presented well.
We haven't generated any business from it yet, but it's still a young service. I say the jury is still out.