Law Firm Marketing Consultant : Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, sales training, practice development, training, marketing consultant, legal consultant, individual lawyer coaching, business development, client team, practice development, business development, law firm coach

Nationally recognized law firm management expert Ed Poll, has launched www.LawBizForum.com, an online destination for lawyers, sole practitioners, partners, managing partners, of-counsel and in-house counsel.

www.LawBizForum.com will promote discussions on how lawyers can deliver their services more effectively and efficiently to their clients, such as management, marketing, technology and finance, and others. LawBiz® Forum is a place where the legal community can exchange ideas and techniques in order to improve the personal and professional lives of its members.

“Law is an honorable profession. Only lawyers are given the unique responsibility in the United States Constitution to help those accused of a crime, a fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens,” remarks Poll. “This helping, caring nature of the legal community sometimes is forgotten by the psychological, social, and economic pressures facing lawyers, and I created this forum so that we can care for each other.”

LawBiz® Forum will have several levels of membership. All visitors to the site can review the discussions at no cost. However, members will be able to contribute to the discussions, participate in exclusive webinars, and have online access to Poll’s books and audio products.

In addition to LawBizForum.com, Ed has a popular YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/LawBizGuide), and has also started to use Twitter as a way to reach out to the cybersphere. You can follow Poll at twitter.com/lawbiz.

Ed Poll is a consultant who helps attor­neys and law firms increase their profitability, advising them on issues of internal operations, business development, and financial matters. Ed has 25 years experience as a practicing attorney and has also served as CEO and COO for several manufacturing businesses.

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Carolyn Elefant makes a great point on Nolo's Legal Marketing Blog that you need to pay attention to your Wikipedia entry.  Not sure if you have one? You better check.  I looked up my own name and was surprised.

A Wikipedia entry can help your law firm generate new business. "If you're like most lawyers, you probably use Wikipedia for a variety of purposes.  Some of you may be avid enough users that you may have even registered for a Wikipedia account and contributed to some of the entries.  But chances are, you never considered creating a Wikipedia page for yourself or your law firm," Carolyn writes. 

Most major law firms already maintain pages on Wikipedia.  What's more, the
UK Law Society points out, Wikipedia has enormous reach: 

Wikipedia is one of the largest reference websites -- 684 million visitors yearly. For a sniff of its power, whether you like it or not, cogitate on this snippet from the New York Times 'Bits' technology blog on 30 March, entitled 'Microsoft Encarta Dies After Long Battle With Wikipedia': 'Microsoft delivered the coup de grâce Monday to its dying Encarta encyclopedia, acknowledging what everyone else realized long ago: it just couldn't compete with Wikipedia... In January, Wikipedia got 97% of the visits that web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according to the internet ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with 1.27%.' That's how powerful Wikipedia is.

"With that kind of traffic, a listing on Wikipedia could theoretically bolster a firm's search engine visibility.  So I decided to test my theory and ran a couple of searches on some of the law firms listed in Wikipedia.  Sure enough, the firms' Wikipedia listings came up within the top five to ten front page search results on Google," she writes.

"Many large firms with long histories describe the firm's origins and provide bios of firm founders and well known alumni.  A smaller firm might also link to reported cases or cross reference practice areas described on Wikipedia.  For example, a bankruptcy lawyer could cross link to the entry on Bankruptcy in Wikipedia, thus providing a good resource for clients with basic questions," she writes.

"Ultimately, I don't think that Wikipedia is an indispensable component of a lawyer marketing portfolio," she says. "But for lawyers looking for something different or who can devise a unique use for Wikipedia, it might be a marketing tool worthy of further consideration."

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Like CB radios, Twitter is turning out to be a fad that has peaked.  Check the facts:

• The number of Twitter users has started to decline according to Quantcast.
• At best, Twitter’s growth suddenly stopped in May, according to Compete.com.
• 55% of people who signed up for an account never posted a tweet, according to HubSpot's State of the Twittersphere.
• 56% of people with a Twitter account are not following anyone, according to HubSpot.
• 53% of Twitter account holders have no followers themselves.
• 76% of users have not entered a bio in their profile,
• There is a huge drop in use of Tweetdeck (an application many Twitters use to organize tweets) dropped from 915,000 to 476,000 between April and May, according to Social Media Insider.
• 10% of Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets, according to Harvard Business School.
• The average Twitter user tweets once and never again, according to Harvard.

Twitter is "just another wacky trend, like pet rocks of "Baby on Board' signs,'" says Catharine P. Taylor of Social Media Insider.

Twitter has enjoyed a steep, steep curve of increasing visitors since January 2009, and it was obvious that it could not go on forever. "However, seeing Twitter’s growth flatline with only a 1.47% increase (up to 19,728,619 monthly visitors) is surprising, especially since Twitter-mania has all but stopped," says Mashable.com

Is Twitter dead? "Yes, Twitter as the Facebook-competitor, the sweeping cultural phenomenon, the Google killer and all the rest is dead. Or, more accurately, never existed. It was a media mirage, a product of the echo chamber," writes Mike Elgan of Datamation.com.

The evidence continues to support my article, Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing.
 

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I have seen the future of the Internet, and it will be viewed on a 2 by 3-inch screen.  New research shows that most people will view the web on their smart phones and PDA -- instead of computer monitors. Accordingly, visitors to the LawMarketing Portal can now see a special mobile version of the site specially designed for their handheld devices.

Like CNN.com, the New York Times online and Google, the LawMarketing Portal displays neatly on the screens of iPhones, Blackberrys, Treos and other handheld PDAs that can access the web. By simply visiting www.LawMarketing.com on your handheld, you'll see all the articles on the home page in a minimalist display that includes text, links and graphics.

No downloads nor special software is required. Simply open your device's browser and point it to www.LawMarketing.com. Your PDA will automatically pick up mobile.lawmarketing.com, the address of the handheld-friendly site, allowing you to see all the latest articles on the home page.

Mobile devices will be primary web viewer

Mobile technology has reached an inflection point where the mobile Internet could be another viable consumer resource for online shopping and purchasing. According to PriceGrabber.com’s Mobile Shopping Behavior Survey, 58 percent of US online consumers already own a Web-enabled mobile phone. Furthermore, of those consumers that own a Web-enabled mobile phone, one in 10 has purchased products and/or services with their device.

Of the online consumers with web-enabled phones:

• 21 percent own a smartphone
• 8 percent own an iPhone
• 29 percent own another type of web-enabled phone
• 42 percent of survey respondents said they own a non-Web-enabled phone capable of using voice and text service plans only.

For the entire article, visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com

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Reed Smith LLP, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, has deployed the Concep Campaigner e-mail marketing communications across 23 of its offices globally.

The product is an interactive e-mail marketing communications platform, designed specifically for busy law firm marketers to deliver content-rich, company-branded e-mails to target audiences.

The firm engaged with Concep to provide the Campaigner technology because effective digital communication is a major component of Reed Smith’s marketing strategy. Concep’s extensive expertise, honed from working with 15 of the global top 30 law firms over the past seven years, appealed to Reed Smith.  Campaigner was necessary  to help support the rapid growth the firm has experienced following a number of mergers and acquisitions.

With lawyers across the U.S., U.K., continental Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Reed Smith is known for its experience across a broad array of industry sectors. Reed Smith clients include 28 of the top 30 U.S. banks and 10 of the world's 12 largest pharmaceutical companies.

"We need a way to capture client attention and cut through competing channels and cluttered in boxes. In order to do this, we have to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, in a consistent, compelling and user-friendly format,” said Mike Scherpereel, director of branding & communications for Reed Smith. “The powerful reporting features of Campaigner enable us to evaluate how successful our campaign has been and to gather data for business development purposes.”

Campaigner allows Reed Smith to gauge e-mail effectiveness through an advanced reporting utility.  Speed of deployment was a priority, and Reed Smith’s 23 global offices were up and running quickly because Campaigner is a web based, SaaS solution. Additionally, as the platform has an emphasis on templates and simplicity for the user, Reed Smith marketers were able to use the solution immediately with minimal training.

Concep delivers marketing services and technology globally through offices in London, New York and Sydney. For additional information, please visit www.concepglobal.com.

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A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review reveals that most Twitter users don’t actually use the service much, or even at all. In fact, 10% of active users are responsible for over 90% of all Tweets.

According to the research, conducted on a random sample of about 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009, 25% of Twitter users don’t tweet at all, while 50% of users tweet less than once every 74 hours. Active users, on the other hand, tweet a lot, which makes Twitter a lot more like Wikipedia than an average social network (see graph below, courtesy of HBR).

Although this may sound strange at first, Twitter really is more like Wikipedia than, say, Facebook. Twitter is not so much about connecting with your friends, it’s about broadcasting information. Although it doesn’t necessarily take much creativity to create a tweet, only the most creative users actually persist in tweeting every day over a longer time period.

A separate study by Twitterati, young people don’t like Twitter.

They prefer social networks. The survey by Pace University and the Participatory Media Network found that 22% of people between 18 and 24-years-old had a Twitter account while 99% had a social network profile.

Of the young folks using Twitter, 85% of them follow friends, 54% follow celebrities, 29% follow family members and 29% follow companies.

"It may mean that younger people get their “micro fix” from text-messaging and SMS as opposed to Twitter. It could suggest Twitter hasn’t trickled down to this particular demographic just as it took some time for Facebook to gain traction among older people after being the hot platform for university students."

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According to Nerino Petro’s Compujurist.com, as Twitter becomes more popular with lawyers, it becomes a larger target for people with malicious intent to use for their own nefarious purposes. The latest round of attacks has been occurring in the form of a worm which attacks when users click the shortened URLs in a Tweet. 

Ryan Meray of TechNibble said the worm began on May 31 compromising the accounts of people who clicked on a link to a video on the juste.ru domain. These zombified accounts were then used to post another link to the video. “Best Video: http://juste.ru/?…” tweets began to spread across the twittersphere.

It appears that unlike previous twitter worms, this one doesn’t work off of cross-site scripting (XSS) but instead installs some sort of malware to compromise your account details. Further, it appears to be able to grab Facebook login information as well, and it has begun to propagate on that network as well.

There is no defense against this worm. Firefox users have a tool that can be used to expand these shortened URLs before they're clicked but it isn't a cure because you need to know that the URL is in fact beforehand. If you use TweetDeck (or one of the other Twitter readers) as your primary reader, you're out of luck.

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As of today, there are approximately 7,500 members of Martindale-Hubbell Connected.  When I joined back in March there were 3,000 members of the company's online social network.
 
Granted, it's far from the 563,000 lawyer members that LinkedIn has, according to Steve Matthew's Stem Blog. Yet Connected's growth numbers are impressive for a site that launched officially two months ago.

Martindale launched a beta version of Connected last May, 2008 with about 20 members.  The beta grew from 20 to about 3,100 over a period of about 10 months until official launch.  
 
Also interesting are Connected's international community statistics.  Over 16 percent of the Martindale community members are international (non-US) lawyers, representing 111 countries.

What lawyers like about Connected is that (a) it's for lawyers only and (b) all members are authenticated to be who they say they are.  Any lawyer can join at http://www.martindale.com/connected

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I wrote Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing and it's got Twitter defenders in, well, a twit.  The evidence shows that: 

• 60% of Twitter users drop out after one month, according to Nielsen Wire. 
• It is the least effective way to boost traffic to your website, compared with SEO, email promotions and blogs, according to Marketing Sherpa.
• Twitter will generate leads, but not necessarily sales, according to research for the Social Media Success Summit.
• Twitter can get lawyers and firms in a lot of trouble in the event of litigation, according to Jones Day partner Steven C. Bennet, writing in the New York State Bar Journal. 
• Twitter is a powerful distraction from getting real marketing work done, according to Business Week writer Linda Stone.

Add to that, Knowledge Networks states: "While 83% of the Internet population (ages 13 to 54) participates in social media – 47% on a weekly basis – less than 5% of social media users regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions in any of nine product/service categories."

The Twittersphere retweeted Peter H. Berge's blog post Response to Larry Bodine on Twitter most frequently. I respect him and his experience online, but Peter kind of missed the point.

>>The first point is true but irrelevant [that 60% visit Twitter and never come back after a month]....but that doesn't mean it isn't a tremendous marketing tool for those who remain and are part of that community.<<

Oh no, it is relevant. Would you devote effort to a magazine that loses more than half of its readership in a month? Would you join a club that only 40% of the members returned to? I don't think so.  As I stated at the Total Practice Management Association meeting in Chicago, Twitter with worthwhile to lawyers only if they actively marketing face-to-face, have a website that generates leads, write a blog, send out e-newsletters, and have a brand in the marketplace. Once all that's in place, use your remaining time for Twitter.

>>The second is flat wrong in my experience.  My Google Analytics numbers tell a completely different story. Twitter has been the major drivers of traffic to this website.<<

I'm glad to hear this. Let Marketing Sherpa know, because their research says that the main drivers of website traffic are search engine optimization, email, viral video, blogs and profiles on online social networks. I like Twitter, have a few hundred followers, but I read the research and act upon it.

>>I just don't get the argument about leads and sales - you need the former to get you the latter.  Why would one turn down qualified leads from the very group one is trying trying to market?  If those leads aren't turning into sales that's not Twitter's fault, it's the laywer's fault.<<

Lawyers are not great marketers.  That's why they hire them. Research for the Social Media Success Summit says Twitter will generate leads, but not necessarily sales. Leads are nice, but sales are what counts. This tells me lawyers need business development training, not Twitter.

>>I haven't heard of a lawsuit yet, but litigation trouble can be found in emails, telephone calls, letters, and words shouted in anger - I don't see how Twitter is different<<

Twitter is different because it creates another discoverable record, just like email.  E-discovery is a monster can of worms that is tying the legal profession into knots. Your Twitter posts can be cited against you in a brief by an opposing lawyer.  But why take my word for it when you can read Jones Day partner Steven C. Bennet, a partner at Jones Day writing in the New York State Bar Journal.

>>Mr. Bodine's last point assumes its conclusion, that Twitter is not the real work of marketing.  I simply have found the contrary, that Twitter is the real work of marketing.<<

I disagree; Twitter is an add-on.  Real marketing is getting face-to-face with people, building referral networks with people you have met in person, visiting client offices, asking questions about a client's business problems, joining trade organizations of clients and getting on the board of directors, picking business development targets and pursuing them. 

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We've all been sucked into the black hole of buzz about Twitter, which attracted 32 million global unique visitors in April, 2009 according to comScore.  It's even surpassed Digg (23 million), LinkedIn (16 million), and the NYTimes.com (17.5 million) in monthly unique visitors. 

But that doesn't make Twitter an effective law firm marketing tool. Consider that:

• 60% of Twitter users drop out after one month.
• It is the least effective way to boost traffic to your website, compared with SEO, email promotions and blogs.
• Twitter will generate leads, but not necessarily sales.
• Twitter can get lawyers and firms in a lot of trouble in the event of litigation.
• Twitter is a powerful distraction from getting real marketing work done.

After months of using Twitter, I've learned that it is a shouting post for relentless self-promoters, a dumping ground for press releases and advertising, an ego-driven competition to amass followers, and a target for computer-automated Tweets.  It's always been a good place to learn what sandwich someone had for lunch and when someone changed a baby's diapers.  But Twitter is supposed to be "all about the conversation," and I see few conversations that lead to new business.

Research from multiple sources reveal that Twitter is a lot of things, including being a time-waster.  But it's little help in business development.  For the full story visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com

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