Lawyer Gets New Business Using Twitter for Law Firm Marketing
Back when Twitter became a sensation in January 2009, the data had shown that Twitter was not yet an effective as a business development tool. I said if the facts changed, I would change my mind and it's happened: lawyers are getting business via the popular micro-messaging platform. You can indeed get new clients by using Twitter.
There have been random reports that a lawyer connected with a potential client with a Tweet. But it took blogger and online social networking expert Adrian Dayton to find Fort Lauderdale, FL, lawyer Robert C. White who methodically works Twitter. White tweeted about an article on mobile advertising and got calls from two different mobile companies as a result.
You can listen to the 30-minute podcast conference call between the two at "Think Twitter’s for Kids? Think Again"
The social media guy
"I’m taken it upon myself to be the social media guy within the firm," said White, aka @soflatechlawyer on Twitter. "I spoke at a recent meeting of our lawyers on social media. I try to be a leader by example and it doesn’t take a lot of time." White is a shareholder at Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A., where he practices business, corporate and technology law. Gunster is the oldest commercial law firm in Palm Beach County, with 140 attorneys and 200 staff in eight Florida locations.
"Everyone needs to determine who their clients and referral sources are. I’m a technology and entrepreneurial attorney, so my clients use Twitter. For other areas of law, Twitter might not be as efficient. Very few of my clients are active Twitter users, but from a branding standpoint Twitter can be useful for referral sources. They key is to touch people so they can touch other people with you and mind," he said.
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I think it's an essential skill for any lawyer to be able to look at a new technology and figure out how you can make it work for you. Twitter is certainly a fad. It's popularity flared not long ago, and in very little time it will fade into obscurity. But for this period of time, it can be used as a great tool.
The important lesson in White's story is not how you can make Twitter work for you, but how you can make any new technology work for you. If you can quickly learn the new technologies and develop uses for them, then you'll be far ahead of your competition.