The Use of Websites in law Firm Marketing
"Martindale Connected" Social Network Grows 10X in One Year
Martindale Connected, an online social network for lawyers, has grown from 3,000 lawyers when it was launched one year ago to 30,000 members, including members from more than half of the Fortune 500, lawyers from 98 of the Am Law 100, and 10 Alliance Partners from prominent legal organizations and associations.
To date, almost 700 active groups have formed within the community, where members collaborate and share ideas on a number of legal issues, and 2,500 members have participated in community-hosted webinars.
From my own personal experience I can tell you it's a lively group of people led by energetic community leaders. LinkedIn may be 100 times bigger, but the discussions don't go anywhere. In contrast, the discussions on the more intimate Connected are 100 times more active.
Among other things, Connected has led me to:
- Have a live video interview using Skype with community leader Mike Mintz, who was 5,000 miles away in Jerusalem.
- Get the opportunity to lead a live online discussion of virtual law firms on Twitter.
- Met the wonderful people in the Virtual Law Firms group, including Richard Granat, Stephanie L. Kimbro, Joseph Walsh, Alan Wernick, whom I knew "IRL" (in real life), Donna Seyle and many others.
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Martindale Connected Membership More than Doubles
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
