Is Social Media Working for You?

No less authoritative a business publication than the Wall Street Journal carried an article today on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of social media efforts by small businesses last year. Having just attended the Legal Marketing Association annual conference in Denver where there were many people discussing the ratio of effort to effect, I know that this is a metric that many seek.

In our own firm, we are just beginning to see anecdotal evidence that activity in social media draws the attention of clients and people who may want to be clients. That arc of engagement for legal issues typically is lengthy and so we are still awaiting some evidence that there is actual income attached to participating in online social media. These will be dependent on some form of critical mass, which to me is related to percentage of firm participation, frequency of participation and breadth of online attention (share of eyeballs).

One thing is clear: there is some shakeout already beginning in the social media world. I wrote about that last fall in this post on Heather Milligan's Legal Water Cooler blog and there is a report in Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim this week about the vulnerability of bebo, the service that AOL paid about $850 milion for last year. In addition, the Google misstep in bringing Buzz to market identifies critical issues of privacy and control as significant to users in the online social media world.

That attention is focused on online social media strategy and measuring its effectiveness at the level of the Wall Street Journal is a confirmation of the current importance of these channels in business operations. We who use them, and evangelize on their benefits, owe it to our firms and friends to mark their success or lack of it. What are you doing to define and calculate the benefits of your own participation?

High on Hashtags

Well, it's over and the verdict is: #LMA10 rocked!

I read with interest the post by my good friend Heather Milligan at the Legal Water Cooler Blog about the Legal Marketing Association 2010 Annual Conference and its strong social media component. Now, Heather and I are are true believers and maybe a little bit fanatical, but her story about Laura Gutierrez from Minnesota illustrates an important point about the richness of social media experience.

I was with Heather and 600 other friends at the Hyatt Regency Denver Convention Center for the last three days. The conference certainly had its social media presentations, Heather, Jayne Navarre and I led one ourselves. But even more present was the community of users through Twitter, Facebook and the other broadcast channels. Anyone who participated in the organized Twitter streams (thanks to Heather for spearheading this, and for the always effervescent Nancy Myrland for being our chief cheerleader and Twitter evangelist) and who then heard the live conversations FOLLOW the tweets, knows how many people watched the #LMA10 hashtag and took advantage of being informed about sessions they couldn't physically attend.

And we can't ignore Heather's point about the non-local listeners. They have been included for the last two years by virtue of the virtual "note taking" by the Twitter reporters in the sessions. Last year's spontaneous stream took on an even richer dimension this year through its intentional coverage.

I also loved Gina Rubel's post about the way social media had transformed her experience at the LMA conference. Boy, am I ever sorry that I missed the intimate dinner of tweet leaders at Roija after the swell Tweet-up organized by Nancy and sponsored by Hermann Communications, JD Supra, Leadership for Lawyers and LexBlog. Classy and convivial colleagues!!!

There's a complete transcript of the #LMA10 hashtag stream here (thanks to Adrian Lurrsen, @JDTwitt, whose retweet of Lindsey Griffith and Heather's archive URL I saw today). Go there, listen in, be there. Let me know what you learn.

Online Social Media Strategy for Small to Medium-sized Firms

In a few minutes, I will head to the airport to fly to Denver, where I will attend the Legal Marketing Association 2010 Annual Conference. Among the sessions on Thursday, March 11, I will join Jayne Navarre and Heather Milligan to discuss how firms who have small marketing departments can enter and use the online social space.

Below you'll find links to my handouts for this session and a few other resources I think are helpful.

The basic premise for the plan at my mid-Atlantic regional firm , Sands Anderson PC, hangs squarely on the lawyer's biography and this page on the internet becomes the centerpiece for the social media utilities we use. The plan focuses on two elements, which are strictly traditional from the professional services marketing perspective, but useful nonetheless in their internet forms.

Networking, the process of coming into contact and staying in contact with people who need legal services or can recommend a lawyer, is expressed in the LinkedIn and Martindale-Hubbell Connected profiles. We use a combination of strategic keyword selection and use, and profile congruence to reinforce the relevance andf visibility of the biography URL.

Knowledge demonstration, the extension of the experience of a lawyer through personal discussions and public appearances, is expressed through blogging and Twitter. Here we enable lawyers to expound on issues within identified niches of law practice or industry, as well as to offer commentary and direct followers to sources of useful content.

Because we have undertaken an aggressive social media posture, we are encountering a great deal of information on the appropriate and effective use of the tactics. A part of our firm's culture has always been strong participation in professional education and Bar groups, so we have started a specific Twitter stream, SocialLawyers, to broadcast our participation and discoveries for the benefit of other lawyers and firms who are interested in or starting to use these media and utilities. I invite you and your lawyers to follow us there.

Please feel free to take these elements and use or customize them as you require:

Catalog of well-developed online social media sites and utilities
Basic schema of the Sands Anderson PC social media plan
Worksheet for social media planning

Some links to visit:

Post on Andy Bea's Marketing Pilgrim about social media policies
Post on Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim about social media strategy flowcharting

A good presentation on Slideshare by Spur Interactive on social media strategy:

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY | Spur Interactive

View more presentations from Steve Latham.

Let me know what more you'd like to know and follow the conference Twitter stream with #LMA10.