Social animal

20 June 2011 - Unique selling point, anyone?

Check out your nearest competitor's website. It will tell you what they do. "We are a specialist litigation practice offering a range of services for private and commercial clients." Some might even throw in the 'how we do it' (aka their USP). "What makes us different from other law firms?"

But how many start with the why? Not the 'why use us', but an exposition of their moral fibre, their purpose or mission?

Just think of Dr Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech. But peel back a further layer and look at social media. Most firms haven't thought deeply (if at all) about the What, How or Why. If anything they are still focused on the technology and understanding the risks (getting close to the What...). Some may have considered the tone of the conversation, away from a Us to Them approach (broadcast) and to Us to Us engagement (being social in other words).

If you are someone who has been tasked with understanding and developing your online or real-time presence, then you should definitely be in the realm of What (is social media) but have you thought about the How or the Why? Call it your primary purpose or strategic objective.

You will have got to grips with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You will have shared best practice. You may even have moved into blogging and have multiple blogs running. But have you given enough consideration to how this plays out in the market? How is the firm now perceived?

My advice is that you should spend time leveraging your How of social media for all its worth. You should accentuate the positive at every opportunity. Your new-found devotion to social media needs to be shown off. You also need to consider if it opens up a new service line.

Don't be afraid to shout about it on:

Your advertising

Your brochures

Your business cards

Your email signatures

Your premises

Now I know this might look a bit cheesy but when so few firms are actively engaged with social media you may be surprised with the number of clients or potential clients who wish to engage the social media way. When I was in practice my first brush with Twitter was with clients who wanted to Tweet me or send me a message on Facebook. They could have sent me an email but the fact is they were willing to explore new media, which is a new window on the world.

Social media offers wonderful opportunities but you have to dramatise it. Of course if the allure isn't backed up by the substance then you may have to work a bit harder on the content. Tell everyone in the firm. They will then be armed with some new ammunition when they are asked at the next networking event to talk about the firm. People will be intrigued to learn how you are using it, for what purpose and whether it is paying its way. Now you can bet that absent social media there won't be the same level of engagement. Once you have told them you offer the same services as everyone else, there isn't much else to talk about.

There you now have your USP or at least part of it but don't let it slip through your fingers. Go shout it from the rooftops.

Social media may not be anything special with the retail market, but it still has a novely factor for law firms. Make the most of this. At the very least social media if done well answers the How point: it is your differentiator or USP.

28 March 2011 '“ Social media: where next?

There is no shortage of material on social media. To put this in context, I have enabled Google Reader (I find it easier than RSS) and in the last week alone have received well over 700 separate posts, although there are a few Twitter feeds which distort the figure.

It seems that everyone has an opinion on which platforms are best, why it is better than traditional outbound marketing, how to manage your time, what to say, what not to say and how to make an impact. If you are not careful, and I have fallen victim to this from time to time, you spend so much time focusing on the here and now that you forget to look at the long-term, strategic implementation for your firm. This is key. In addition, you have to do what is right for you.

Yes, your nearest competitor might have enabled a widget which shows they have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed (or two) and no doubt a company LinkedIn page, but does that mean you have to blithely follow in their footsteps? You need to understand what in addition to or as a supplement to your existing content will touch at the four corners of social media. Meaning: what do you have already (or you can easily use) that can be made part of your social media efforts?

Take something as simple as the offline material that you have lovingly created. It, no doubt, went through endless iteration until you were finally able to release it to the outside world. But apart from leaving it in your reception areas or sending it out to clients with your myriad of retainer letters, what do you do with it?

Could you:

'¢ Upload it up via Slideshare to your Company profile on LinkedIn?

'¢ Do the same for some of the people on LinkedIn?

'¢ Repackage the content for a blog post or two?

'¢ Use it as the basis for a series of YouTube videos?

'¢ Use some of the imagery for blog posts?

'¢ Use one of the social bookmarking sites and upload some of the content and then signpost the content?

If content truly is king then there is no point trying to recreate the wheel every time unless of course the content is so anodyne that you are better off starting all over again.

In addition to repackaging your content, you also need to have a strategy for implementation. Don't think that one platform is the same as the next. If you have got used to sending out a tweet or two with your firm news or latest legal update, then don't assume that you should send it across LinkedIn or some of the groups that you circulate.

If you are doing social media to ape your competitors then that is unlikely to sustain you in the long term. You need to understand where it fits into your firm's marketing, Business development or PR strategy. Or, in more general terms, what are you hoping to get out of social media? If it is a case of syndicating material '“ which appears one of the main drivers right now '“ then it is unlikely to get major buy in.

To sustain interest in your firm, you need to make sure that you can demonstrate a clear ROI. In simple terms, have you been successful in getting more instructions? If you can't point to some demonstrable results, then you are unlikely to get firm-wide buy in.

Always be prepared to justify your sudden zeal and enthusiasm for social media. If not, don't expect to get very far and you may end up being the lone voice forever ploughing a lonely furrow.

25 January 2011 '“ Back to the future

Social media is a hot topic for 2011, alongside legal process outsourcing and cloud computing. But in a sense there is a (huge) sense of deja vu. If you strip the social media platforms back to basics, what emerges is:

1. A collective, tribe or group with a shared interest or passion.

2. Intra-tribe communication and a means of facilitating high-level communication.

3. The spirit of cooperation and giving.

4. An ability to scale.

In other words there is something which the group coalesces around which is so memorable that they feel obliged to share the information.

If you think back to some of the early viral experiences before the dawn of the web and the socialisation of information, then how did we get to find out about the next big thing or the Christmas present that was hot property? Good old-fashioned word of mouth. In a sense all that the internet has given us is a way to speed up this process and, allowing for any language or cultural barriers, to spread the information across broader/extended boundaries.

But one thing is certainly different: us. We now demand more, we have shorter attention spans, we want more for less, we have less loyalty, we won't hang around for as long - if the services don't live up to our expectation on the first go, we will jump ship and there is far more choice to distract us.

Our connections are not as strong and therefore it is much harder to influence people - oh yes you might have 500 plus connections on LinkedIn, but how many of those people have you done business with over a sustained period?

One sure-fire way to lock in social media is produce something that is truly remarkable or as Seth Godin said in his book The Dip "the best in the world" (meaning the world you inhabit right now). And that doesn't mean a better version of the 'me too' firm that you were trying to create. No, it means standing at the very edges of mainstream legal service and looking to offer something that is so way out it seems positively wacky. If you don't then you will have very little prospect of differentiating your firm.

Indeed, as more firms decide to jump aboard the social media bandwagon, and continue to populate it for completely unremarkable reasons (please no more legal alerts on Twitter!) then what might have started out as looking novel - perhaps by just being on Twitter - will get lost, and clients or referrers will pay no attention. They will only be interested if you can add value and that doesn't just mean providing them with the same information as all the other firms, even if you have the latest piece of software that makes your content look pretty. It will involve a r-a-d-i-c-a-l rethink.

And one of the key issues will be to consider how you can safely give away information for free. That doesn't just mean an article like you do at the moment. It means producing content which is so rich and full of value that the client might ordinarily pay for it. Ebooks will be a start but so will free subscription-based services that provide information that is tailored much more closely to the client's problems.

It might involve Q and A platforms similar to Quora. It might involve interviews with industry legends. It might involve other clients talking about real issues and how they benefited from the latest, cutting edge advice. The list of options is unlimited and in fact the market is so fluid right now that trying to carve out a 12-month programme will be almost impossible.

If all this sounds like commercial suicide then maybe social media is not for you. Perhaps you should encourage all lawyers to get out from behind their desks and spend at least half a day per week with a new or prospective client. But of course lawyers being lawyers they will look for any reason to get out doing something that makes them feel uncomfortable or pushed into unnatural surroundings. Give them a computer and some free platforms and they will relate to that in a much more focused way.

It is your choice, but, whatever you decide on, doing nothing is not an option. 'Engage or die' is the clarion call of Brian Solis the author of the excellence social media book, Engage. Extreme perhaps but in this super-competitive world not that far off the mark.

15 December 2010 '“ Have you got the web bug?

Is social media catching on? No. There's a list of reasons why this might be: fear, control, time or lack of innovation. It is also put down to generational gaps, technophobia or a disagreement between the firm and the employee's 'brand' dichotomy.

There might be a few more people now on Twitter than there was six months ago, but check out a few websites near your firm and have a look around. How many have actually made their 'web presence' ambitions work?

Of course some of these technologies will stretch a lot of law firms and, when your resources are being funnelled into generating fees, who wants the distraction of working out a policy for Facebook or Twitter? Not many. Let's face it, controlling a website is far easier because in the majority of cases the firm remains in control and the content, given its general paucity, is manageable.

But there hangs the (commercial) dilemma: am I going to invest time in a new media platform that is still so unproven? And I suppose that is where the rubber meets the road for most law firms. Listening to a recent talk by Professor Stephen Mason he articulated something that I had long since suspected: that law firms are poor at innovation and tend to follow each other. Social media is no different to the lack of differentiation point among law firm websites.

This reminded me of a quote about success from Seth Godin in his book The Purple Cow: 'What all these companies have in common is that they have nothing in common. They are outliers. They're on the fringes. Super-fast or super-slow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Very big or very small.

'The reason it's so hard to follow the leader is this: the leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken '“ it's no longer remarkable when you do it.'

I am not suggesting that social media is the sine qua non to being remarkable '“ but it would mark you out from the crowd and if nothing else would give you a marketing edge.

At an even more basic level it would give people something to talk about and perhaps go some way to dispelling some of the rather pejorative slogans that permeate about solicitors. And taking things to the next level wouldn't be that hard. All it requires is trying to generate consumer or buyer persona content '“ so it is easier to talk about you and your firm.

Do I have a message? Yes. Just do something. Pick something that the firm is good at and see how it would integrate further with a social media presence.

25 November 2010 '“ Social media: small is the new big

Social media gets its fair share of air time and you might think that everybody has adopted one platform or another. But the legal profession is a late adopter '“ some would place it in the laggard category.

The main issue at the moment '“ which is distinguishable from the heightened awareness of the need to build and adopt a website '“ is that few people are willing or prepared to move beyond the spectator stage. Yes, they may read a blog or two, watch a bit of video and engage on LinkedIn, but there is a distinct lack of adoption at the creation end of things. You know those firms that have a blog and post to it every day, have remarkable video content '“ and not the dry as sawdust variety that talks about 'us' '“ or even the odd ebook or white paper.

Firms are being talked at almost daily about game-changing issues arising from the Legal Services Act or the next super-brand appearing on the scene, but apart from the largest players most firms will probably play a wait and see game '“ after all that's what most of them have done in the past.

I hate to sound preachy, but for goodness sake do something to embrace the enormous power that social media brings.

I am sure most of you will have heard about the capability of social media to leverage your brand, but it is more than that. It gives you a foothold in the market where the uber brands may not be able to go. Seth Godin wrote a book called Small is the New Big and that is how it feels to me. If you could identify your market, reach out to them and earn some attention, then you have just as much chance, perhaps more so, of capturing the hearts and minds of your buyers. Yes you may not be as cheap as that new kid on the block, but if you get in early your buyers will have understood your proposition, built up some trust and you will have hopefully delivered on your promises.

Ask yourself what is holding you back. Do your SWOT analysis if you must but don't dismiss all this Facebook chatter as meaningless. It isn't.

As Seth Godin says in his ebook, Brainwashed: 'Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it's a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It's a choice... up to you.'

28 October 2010 '“ The dark art of Twitter

For those of you who have spent time in and around Twitter you will, I suspect, come across this rather euphemistic saying. It means only a few of *us* understand how to use Twitter.

For those of you who still don't know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging platform that allows you to send, to a defined group of followers (no more than 2,000 until you have equalised the numbers), a message, link, photo or video, limited to no more that 140 characters.

Importantly you cannot send the same message more than once as Twitter blocks you. This is just one of the mechanisms that Twitter has enabled to try and stop spam, and, more than that, to try and stop too much of the broadcast news that is so prevalent in direct marketing or paid advertising campaigns.

Much has been made of Facebook's super impressive number of 500 million, and Twitter is some distance behind that at 190 million. But don't think this means that Twitter will forever languish in its big brother's shadow or it is irrelevant. Even if you are not active on Twitter but have an account you will see, much like Facebook, that it has become a powerful tool across certain platforms like LinkedIn. In other words, to get the most out of LinkedIn, which is primarily a B2B tool, you would benefit from signing on to Twitter and integrating the two. You will then have the ability to update your profile on a daily basis with news and features that you think your connections on LinkedIn might be interested in knowing something about.

If you are going to make the most of Twitter here are a few simple tips:

1. First, check that you are allowed on Twitter for work purposes. If there is no strategy or policy yet in place then don't let that stop you but just be careful that you do not go off on a frolic of your own and then have to answer for your actions.

2. Encourage your firm to adopt Twitter as part of its marketing programme. Integrate the appropriate Twitter name (preferably yours) into your firm's website. This simply means that for those putative clients they will see that you have a presence on Twitter and will then be able to follow you.

3. Don't be tempted to open an account in the name of the firm as your starting point. By all means go and register the firm's name on Twitter and upload a background with the firm's logo (try Twitback) but discuss matters with the marketing department and to use your name allied with the firm's. For instance, if your name is Jane Smith and the firm is called Brains then the name may look something like this: JSmith_Brains. As long as there is consistency it doesn't matter what you go for but remember that you only have a maximum of 14 characters. You may have cottoned on to this already with some of the truncated names that exist on Twitter. Remember that with the large number of users you may not be able to register your preferred name and so you will have to play around with things until you find that one that is not taken.

4. Make sure you spend some time putting together your profile. Again the word count is limited but don't be tempted to cut and paste part of what is on your firm's website. Think like a buyer and not like a lawyer for once. If you do IP tell people but don't assume that everyone knows what the abbreviation stands for. There needs to be consistency across the firm. Don't be tempted to a draft according to a stilted policy that has lots of dos and don'ts. Just make sure that what you write is accurate and authentic.

5. Ok, so you're up and running. What next? You may be comfortable working off the revamped Twitter platform but I still find it very cumbersome and when compared to the competition it just doesn't cut it. I have used Tweetdeck and now run Hootsuite. Both are free. Tweetdeck runs independently of your browser, whereas Hootsuite will need a browser to run.

6. Twitter will recommend certain people to follow but most of these will be irrelevant to your practice area. You need to consider who is likely to be interested in the material that you propose to distribute via Twitter. Your most important task is to consider what you want to use Twitter for:

a. a sales channel;

b. a news distribution platform '“ as an extension of your website;

c. to promote your or the firm's blog;

d. to distribute news and key issues that are found on other websites and via your RSS feed or Google Reader; or

e. to promote you.

7. The key point: whatever you decide on it has to be authentic. You are far more likely to cultivate a following if you write about things that you are passionate about, you believe in and you are qualified to express an opinion on. I won't embarrass those large law firms who insist on tweeting only under the firm's brand name and then tell me what I can read elsewhere. I would be far more interested in something that was remarkable and was likely to make a difference to my business.

8. Be consistent. Don't tweet one day and then leave it another week; worse still if someone sends you a message make sure that you respond to it in a timely way.

9. Think *Remarkable*.

10. Don't get sucked into thinking that the more tweets you send the more followers you will attract. It doesn't work that way. Are you in a position where you are likely to earn attention?

11. Be patient. Engaging with Twitter is not a five-minute wonder. Think of it like an old style of networking; and contacts are not going to be made instantaneously.

12. Monitor your results at least once a month.

You will get out of Twitter precisely what you put into it. It is not mystical or difficult to grasp but does require a new mindset for most lawyers.

30 September 2010 '“ The curse of interim billing

Month end for all solicitors brings the same (splitting) headache: interim billing.

The alacrity of emails ("We only have x days left and we only have £x billed") as month end nears is overwhelming and the delete key is probably the first one that lawyers reach for ("not another one of those wretched emails from finance!").

You sense the crescendo of desperation building and those finance people who you never hear from at any other time seem to relish the process. It feels like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed until the plastic begins to creak.

Now interim billing is a very sensible way of managing cash flow and in many ways is a good discipline for lawyers, but it also creates a plethora of issues:

It is soul destroying.

It wastes time.

The impression is that billing is the only thing that counts.

It removes any notion of being a professional and you could just as easily be working in a factory making widgets.

It is not client friendly, particularly if you are dealing with clients who previously have had minimal involvement with solicitors. Why should they expect to receive an interim bill when the job is not yet complete?

It stores up possible complaints where the client receives a bill that is either unexpected or, more likely, they are unclear how the costs have been arrived at.

Some clients are billed prematurely and all the hard work of the lawyer building up a strong working relationship is lost.

It very often contributes to poor credit control because the client feels inclined to make the firm wait because of the way billing is dealt with.

But perhaps the biggest gripe that I have is that the yard stick of success - how much a solicitor has billed - takes no account of the qualitative aspect of the job. This is looked at in a slightly perverse way in that as long as the client doesn't gripe about the bill or work then everything must be OK.

Much more attention should be focused on exceeding the client's expectations and building into the billing process some aspect of reward or gain.

Just think of a situation where you delegated the assessment of value to the client and asked the question "How much are you prepared to pay for the job given the I spent x hours on the job but I got it completed in three weeks rather than five thus allowing...." Or saying to the client that for every 7* rating you get you will deduct x per cent of your bill and give that to charity. Sounds radical I know but you can rest assured that with the development of the legal market more customer focused companies will come up with more ingenious billing, payment and discount structures than traditional law firms.