State of the Twittersphere
The picture tells the story: Twitter’s growth has fallen from a high of 13% in March 2009 to 3.5% in October 2009, the most recent month for which data is available, according to HubSpot's third ‘State of the Twittersphere’ report.
The Twitter ecosystem reaches about 60 million people, with 20 million coming from Twitter.com and 40 million coming from elsewhere, like bit.ly, Tweetdeck and Twitterfeed, according to TechCrunch. It's tricky to sort out the trend for Twitter by itself, but the chart below shows that Twitter's membership peaked in July 2009 and has been flat, at best, since then. Click here to see the chart full-size.
Furthermore:
- 53% of users have completed their profiles by adding bios and only 41% include a web address.
- 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers
- 81% of Twitter users are following less than 100 people
- 10-11 pm is the most active hour on Twitter, when most businesses are closed.
Quite a leap of faith to say that these stats support your position that Twitter is not effective for law firm marketing. I and other lawyers have met and further ennhanced our relationship with other bloggers, reporters, editors, publishers, association leaders, and conference coordinators than we ever could have without Twitter. Those folks influence our clients decisions. We're also futher enhancing our relationships with clients by using Twitter.
The leading source of traffic to my blog other than search is Twitter. And it's the best source of traffic because it's coming with a tacit endorsement of me as an authority by people sharing my blog posts with their Twitter followers.
Law firms, including some of the largest in the country, are streaming out niche focused news and updates on Twitter every day.
Your short sighted view that Twitter is a waste of time is really a disservice to lawyers and law firms who could find it very helpful. Some lawyers will find Twitter effective. Some lawyers may not. But that's just like anything else.
But getting lawyers and law firms to brag that they do not use Twitter because it's a waste of time is like advising them to say they are afraid iof technology and innovation. That's ashame.
You just keep saying that and maybe some day it will be true. All I know, however, is that I have been invited to bid on two pieces of substantial business via Twitter and brought in three really good clients through it. And that totally ignores it as a source of referrals. It's like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it and your own abilities to use it effectively will determine how effective it is for you.
Twitter has been an incredible resource to broadcast my blog content to a worldwide audience. In fact, out of 18 referrer sites that send traffic to my blog, Twitter is No. 2. And Google? It came in at No. 3. The Blog itself took the top spot because of self-referring links. This is an incredibly powerful endorsement of how lawyers and law firms can use Twitter even more effectively than Google. The results speak for themselves.
That Twitter is no longer growing as furiously as it used to — does that make it useless as a sales/marketing tool?
Suppose we charted the number of attorneys starting blogs over time. If fewer and fewer attorneys start blogs, does that mean blogs are useless?
Some attorneys might find Twitter pretty useful; I suppose most will find it a waste of time.
I think most attorneys are better off working the phone than telling us a bunch of strangers (half of whom seem to be 'social media experts') what they’re having for dinner.
Twitter is dead, long live twitter?
I can only speak to the last four months since I joined. I can say concretely that I was able to hook up a good connection with a very tasty expert referral through a twitter connection. I have been able to refer three separate matters to good connections through twitter relationships. It has also helped us jump start our blog and we can see a big difference in page hits to our blog when we discuss our posts via twitter versus when we do not.
Then again, I do not talk about what I am having for dinner on there either.