Legal Practice Pro» Social Media For Lawyers

The Power Of Now

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:09:53 +0000

Your judge issues a ruling that spells disaster – or a amounts to a blessing – for your clients. You have two choices: tell them now or tell them later. Which do you do?

The answer’s simple. You want to tell everyone this very minute. Get on the phone and have your staff do the same. Get the word out right now, get the clients in the door and help either avoid peril or take advantage of a windfall.

Now. Not later. Not tomorrow. Right. Now.

You could send a letter, but that’s going to take a few days. If the impact is far-reaching, you could call the local paper but that means you’re going to need to sell a reporter on a story and hope that you make deadline.

There’s no time for that.

Now.

But what if there were a way to put the information out there right now without any fuss?

There is. The over-hyped term is, “social media,” but that sounds like people talking about what they had for breakfast and playing Farmville. All worthwhile pursuits, but not in the business context.

We have the power to communicate with people who care about what we have to say. We hold in our hands the tools to speak with them right now.

Don’t pay attention to the tools. Those are just things you can learn about.

Don’t think about the technology. That’s just going to freak you out.

Think about the power of now. And how it can help your clients, your practice, and your bottom line.

How do you feel about now – now?

Image credit: mag3737/Flickr

Lawyers Using Social Media Should Realize Numbers Don’t Matter

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:00:45 +0000

Lawyers getting into social media all shoot for the big numbers. But do they matter?

As lawyer get into social media spaces such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn they are rushing to get as many friends, followers and the like as possible. Every day I get a barrage of requests from lawyers to become a fan of their Facebook page, become friends, and connect on LinkedIn. I get followed on Twitter in droves – sometimes more than once as lawyers use tools that follow mass numbers of people and then un-follow them if there is no reciprocal follow.

They don’t realize this, but numbers simply don’t matter.

If you’ve got 50 really smart and strong people who follow you on Twitter and hang onto every word you utter, that’s far better than having 5,000 people following you but not paying attention at all. Look at it this way: if those 50 people were the most influential people in your field and they were looking to you as a source of wisdom and information, that would be a very good thing.

One thing that lots of people don’t realize is that there is a proliferation of spambots on Twitter. Those who have amassed large following on that platform have also accumulated a huge number of spammers. If having more spammers follow you on Twitter is your idea of a legal marketing strategy then you may want to rethink that.

Another point is that 71% of all status updates on Twitter are never seen. Let that sink in for a moment before we move on. Nearly 3 out of every 10 tweets you send out go into a black hole.

Why is that?

Well, for a few reasons. First, if you’re following thousands of people then updates pass by pretty fast. In fact, by the time my Twitter feed updates there’s a good chance that your pithy remark is long gone. If you’re following thousands of people in an attempt to get them to follow you back then you’re probably missing a lot more than 3 in 10 tweets. That’s a lot of value passing you by.

Second, if you’re being followed by a bunch of spambots they aren’t even there to see your stuff. That’s what a bot is, my friend – someone there in name only. So you could be sending out your best stuff … to nobody.

So you could bang your head against the virtual wall using every possible tool to be followed by so many people you topple Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher. You could spend tons of time chasing a “magic number of followers.”

But if it’s not going to give you any value or further your legal marketing goals then what’s the point?

4 Ways To Find The Right People To Follow On Twitter

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:00:18 +0000

Twitter can be a powerful way to connect with others, to market your law firm, and to form relationships that enhance your life. But as with any other communication device, the right people need to be listening to you in order for you to have any impact.

Twitter has 175 million registered users as of October 2010, up from 145 million users in September. And to see that this growth isn’t a fluke, Twitter has added 70 million users in the 6 months leading up to this statistic alone.

Lots of lawyers are getting on Twitter, convinced that it’s a panacea for combatting the amount of information online. With so much attention heaped on this microblogging device, there must be something there. And so lawyers hop on, sign up, and start pumping out their blog posts and promotional information.

The problem is that there’s nobody listening. Remember that in order for someone to see what you put on Twitter, they’ve got to be following you. And the primary way for someone to know you exist on Twitter is for you to follow them.

Lots of people use programs that automatically follow back everyone who follows them. Others get an email each time a new person follows them. A third portion of users check out the list of people following them, manually review each one to see if they’re worth following back, and act accordingly. For the record, I use a blend of all three methods – you’ll figure out what works for you eventually, and I encourage you to play with the platform until you get something that makes you comfortable.

Who should lawyers follow on Twitter? It depends on where you are located, what type of law you practice, and what interests you personally. Here are my tips.

Follow People In (And Related To) Your Practice Area

If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer then you should follow every consumer bankruptcy attorney you can find, as well as every person involved in credit, debt and related fields. If you practice family law then follow every divorce mediator, guardian-ad-litem, family lawyer, and parenting blogger. These are people who are talking about stuff you should be interested in, things that concern you. Lawyers need to stay on top of the latest news, and Twitter is a great way to get the pulse of the field.

Follow People Near You

Lawyers are local creatures. We market locally, serve local clients, and socialize the same way. You want to connect with people who are near you for the following reasons:

you want to know what is important to local people;
you want to know how people nearby are talking;
you may want to strike up a business relationship with someone in your area.

LocaFollow is probably the most powerful of the local Twitter search engines. You can search four ways at the same time: location, bio, name, and tweet content (i.e., keywords). Lawyers can hop on and do a search of people in Los Angeles on Twitter, narrow it down to people who talk about certain topics or have specific words in their bios.

Follow People Who Like What You Like

This is a mind-blowing experience for pretty much every lawyer I know, but get this: the world does not revolve around the law. You go home at night, watch TV, play poker online, take your dog out for a walk, have a glass of Chenin Blanc … whatever. These are the things you like to talk about in your spare time. I’m betting that if you were a big fan of Family Guy and someone in court started talking about the rerun they caught last night on Adult Swim, you’d get involved pretty quickly. That’s how it works on Twitter, too.

Follow People Who Others Follow

If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer and so am I, there’s a reasonably good chance that you’d be into at least some of the people I’m following.

Tools I Use To Help Me Find People To Follow

Some of the services I’ve used to help me find people to follow are:

Listorious, which is a search engine for Twitter Lists;

Wefollow, which also allows you to search for people based on keywords. What’s very cool is that it returns two tabs – Most Influential and Most Followers;

Twitter’s Advanced Search lets you search for tweets in a particular location, on a particular topic, and containing specific keywords;

Who Should I Follow?, Twiangulate. HiveMind and Tweepi all let you find out who specific people are following so you can do the same;

Google allows you to search by site delimiter. Type in “lawyer bankruptcy site:twitter.com” to come up with all of the tweets and profiles on Twitter that mention these terms. Change it up to suit your tastes.

Do not follow indiscriminately, or user tools that allow you to follow hundreds or thousands of people at a time. People who just follow others on Twitter for the sake of bulking up their numbers end up looking like spammers.

Image credit: wonder_j (Flickr)

FleischmanFollowFriday #1: People For Lawyers To Follow On Twitter

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:23:08 +0000

There’s this thing on Twitter called Follow Friday; it developed as a way for people to find new people to connect with and follow on Twitter. When I was starting out on Twitter I found it pretty useful. Even now I find new and interesting folks each Friday.

The problem, however, is lack of context. The typical Follow Friday tweet just lists names of users to follow; there’s no reason why you’d want to do so. This means you’re taking someone’s word that the people they like will automatically be people you’re going to like as well.

It’s a crap shoot. And when you’re a lawyer dipping a toe into the Twitter waters, that sort of thing doesn’t really help.

So in the spirit of helping lawyers use Twitter more effectively (or at least in a way that minimizes the potential waste of your time), I give you my version of Follow Friday – which I’m calling the FleischmanFollowFriday.

Each week I will choose five people who I follow on Twitter and tell you why it might be a good idea for you, too, to listen to what they’ve got to say. The list is totally random, so people I pick today aren’t necessarily more of less worthy of your attention than those I choose next week. Everyone I highlight will be fun and interesting.

Today’s entrants are as follows:

Gwynne Monahan (@econwriter5): Gwynne Monahan, based in Chicago, educates the legal community on the practical uses of open source applications. She frequently engages with people who follow her, and is a tremendous resource.

Erika Napoletano (@redheadwriting): Erika Napoletano is a copywriter with emphasis on search engine optimization. Her blog writing style is kick-ass, witty and thought-provoking.

Huma Rashid (@huma_rashid): Huma Rashid describes herself as “Law student, aspiring novelist, Labor law fan, root beer connoisseur, Muslim, member of the cult of Henry James and Slavoj Zizek, bespectacled and short.” The subtitle of her blog is “A Bona-Fide Purchaser of BlackAcre,” which means that she’s got a sense of humor about being a budding lawyer.

Adrian Dayton (@adriandayton): Adrian is a a legal marketing guy who primarily works with BigLaw, so he’s got an uphill battle. He’s based in Buffalo, which means he knows for a fact that Duff’s wings are better than Anchor Bar. Oh, wait – that’s my opinion. His may differ, but that doesn’t make him any less of an interesting guy.

Edward Wiest (@erwiest): He went to Harvard Law School, worked in BigLaw, and then joined the ranks of the solo practitioners. Edward provides litigation and ADR services to businesses from his office in Boston. He’s got three kids and always shares good information about business, the economy and other useful tidbits of life.

Frederic Abramson (@fredabramson): He’s a NY Business Law attorney who also likes good food, good books, and culture. He routinely talks small business, blogging, new media and law. A good guy who regularly engages with other lawyers to help and be helped.

There will be more entrants next week (this is a random sampling of some of my favorites).

Until then – who are YOU following, and why?

Image credit: monkeyworks illustration (Flickr)

Are You Even At The Party?

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:00:48 +0000

Once upon a time, a man walked into a party. He found out about a party from a sign on a streetlight in his neighborhood and decided to check it out. Here’s what happened to him.

This party we’re talking about took place on a Saturday night when Steve’s wife was away with the kids visiting family members. So Steve’s bored, sees the flyer and heads over to the house. What he finds is incredible. The house is full, the front yard is littered with people chatting and hanging out, and from the sound of it the pool area is hopping as well.

In fact, it looks as if just about everyone in his town is at this party.

As he walks by clumps of people he realizes that there are a million little conversations going on. Some people are talking gardening, others debating the finer points of politics. In fact, within the first few minutes he manages to hear snippets of conversations on a wide range of subjects.

Why did I not know about this before? Steve asks himself as he winds his way into the house.

But Steve doesn’t know anyone, so he’s a bit out of place. Nervous, he fidgets with his cell phone and begins to review his emails. He’s trying to be open, but he hasn’t been this uncomfortable since his first job interview. So he reads an email and casually turns to the person closest to him in the hopes of striking up a conversation.

“Hey,” he says to a woman sipping a glass of white wine, “did you hear Congress is working on a fix to the mortgage mess? If you ever need help, I can get you a modification. My firm’s had a lot of success, in fact.” He’s trying his best to be chatty, but new friend moves away pretty quickly.

Feeling even more awkward, Steve moves on in hopes of finding someone – anyone – he knows at this shindig. But he’s lost, and after a few minutes he gives up.

As the front door he drops a stack of business cards on the table. Then he’s gone, back home to the safety and quiet of his own home.

A Total Waste Of Time

Within moments, however, the cards are knocked off the table and never seen again. Neither, for that matter, is Steve. He knows the party is a total waste of time, and the rest of the partygoers … well, they never got to know Steve.

The shame of it is that lots of these people would have found Steve to be an immensely interesting, likable guy. And had our hero taken the time to listen to what some people were talking about, he would have had a fine time as well.

Chances are pretty good that he wouldn’t have made a ton of new business contacts, but he would have walked away with a few friends. Maybe a new tennis partner or fellow Springsteen fan. Someone with a kick-ass recipe for chili, even. At the very least, someone to talk to when the days at the office get long and tedious. Whatever.

Serendipity Lurks Beneath The Surface

For each new friend Steve met at this party, he would have forged a new relationship based on trust and mutual respect. He would have had the chance to meet someone new and let them know a little more about him. Out of that personal bond may have grown a ton of opportunities for his law practice. New people to meet, new professional opportunities, new ideas for growing his practice. Perhaps a casual introduction to a journalist on the hunt for a good story, a colleague with a client to refer, or even a professional in a related industry.

But that wasn’t the point, was it? The point was to get out there and mingle, have a good time and expose himself to new people and ideas. In doing so, he would have left himself open to the possibility of something really cool happening.

That’s serendipity.

But without allowing himself to be exposed to serendipity, Steve’s just going home to watch reruns of Saturday Night Live. Without opening himself up to the sheer joy of being among smart people and having a conversation with someone new, Steve’s limited his professional and personal world.

Go To The Party, Not Just To Leave Your Business Card

Lawyers are flocking to Twitter in droves, lured by the promise of new business and online legal marketing opportunities. They’re not taking the time to learn how any of the platforms work; instead, they’re using services like SocialOomph, Twitterfeed, HootSuite and others to automate their presence. They pump of a steady (or not so steady) stream of entreaties for people to call them for legal assistance, blog posts and promotional statements. But ask them a question and you’ll find that there’s nobody there to respond. That’s alright, though; these attorneys haven’t taken the time to interact with anyone, so nobody’s listening to them.

Meanwhile, other people are having quite a nice time. They’re socializing, interacting and learning a thing or two. There’s no grand strategy here, so don’t look for one. It’s simply a case of being present for a little bit of time, getting to know the lay of the land, and bothering to connect with people they don’t know.

You may like them, you may hate them. You will probably disagree with them now and again (I know I do). But you’ll be engaged, widen your circle, and get exposed to others.

Will it lead to business? For some, yes. For others, not directly but you never know who you’re going to meet or what you’ll learn that might come in handy.

The goal is, as with Steve and the party, serendipity. Being there and being present – not spitting out advertising and marketing stuff to a bunch of people who don’t know you enough to give a crap about anything you say – is what opens you to serendipity, that wonderful ability to trip over something really cool and, potentially, useful to you in your business.

Take a look at this video by Chris Brogan, which highlights my point:

I’m not telling you that automating part of your Twitter presence is bad – far from it, in fact. But have you ever wondered whether the real reason you’re not getting any value out of it is because you’re not putting anything of value into it?

Questions? Comments?

Photo credit: Ross Tucknott (Flickr)

Should Lawyers Fear Google Sidewiki?

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:02:59 +0000

Google WHAT? Before we get into the whole “fear,” thing, let’s talk about what Google Sidewiki is and is not.

Sidewiki is basically an add on to the Google Toolbar that lets you comment about any site, directly on that site, via the Google Toolbar. Once you download and enable Sidewiki you’ll see a little bubble on the left side of every web page. It looks like this:

See that little note bubble in the corner? That lets you know that Sidewiki information is available. If you click bubble or the >> tab, the Sidewiki panel opens up like this:

Check it out – what you’re looking at are comments placed onto the web page. But not all comments are shown, and the ones that do show up are denoted by a special Google algorithm. For example, some of the signals that Google uses for ranking comments are (according to our friends at Search Engine Land):

Use of sophisticated language: “This page sucks” isn’t sophisticated; think complex sentences and ideas. Apparently, Google has a language sophistication detector now, and one that works in the 14 different languages that Sidewiki supports.

User’s reputation: Are your comments being voted up or flagged down?

User’s history: How long have you had a Google Profile? How long have you been commenting?

So Should Lawyers Fear Google Sidewiki?

Sidewiki is a powerful way for people to comment on websites even if there is no place on the actual site for comments to be put in. That means a lawyer with a website may be deluged with negative comments from clients and other members of the public. What’s even more interesting is that the lawyer won’t even know about it unless that lawyer has installed and activated Sidewiki on his or her own computer.

Without having Sidewiki installed and activated on your computer, you won’t know if a site has any Sidewiki comments. So if you keep your head in the sand, you may miss the opportunity to see and respond to negative comments on your online reputation.

For more information, check out this video on Sidewiki:

Making A Difference With Social Media – Go Global 24

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:00:57 +0000

I am proud to announce that I have decided to sponsor Go Global 24, which is being billed as 24 Hours of Global Fun and Frolic in aid of Doctors Without Borders.

Go Global 24 is being billed as 24 Hours of Global Fun and Frolic in support of Doctors Without Borders, and is organized by Henie Reisinger as a 12for12K event.

About 12for12K

The 12for12k Challenge is the combination of social media awareness and fund-raising that aims to change the lives of millions worldwide. Founded by business consultant Danny Brown, its aim is to raise awareness and funds for 12 charities over the course of 2009, with a new charity being supported every month. The concept is simple:

* 12 months of the year
* 12 charities, a different charity each month
* $12,000 per charity

12for12K uses social media to spread the word – from Twitter to Facebook, blogs to social media newsrooms and more. All the partners in the 12for12k Challenge are offering our time and services for free.

About Doctors Without Borders

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971 MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. In other words, doctors who help sick and injured people no matter who they are or what they believe in. If someone’s injured, MSF steps in and helps. That’s pretty cool.

About My Involvement In Go Global 24

On September 29, 2009 from 11:00am-12:00pm (Eastern time), I will be hosting a live call-in radio show to answer questions about personal finance issues. Among the topics I will cover are:

* bill collection harassment
* foreclosure-related issues
* consumer bankruptcy
* credit reporting issues and identity theft

How You Can Benefit From My Involvement In Go Global 24

Just come back to this page on September 29, 2009 at 11:00am Eastern time or go to Blog Talk Radio, where you can listen live, call in with questions, and get all of your most pressing issues answered. It’s that simple.

Click here to go to Blog Talk Radio

When the show is live, the player below will be active – all you’ll need to do is click the “play button”.

Don’t want to call in? No problem! Just go to Twitter and ask a question, making sure to put “#GG24″ in the body of the tweet (that’s a hashtag, and it’s how I will be able to identify a question for me during the event).

What If You Met Your Client Yesterday?

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:27:37 +0000

As lawyers, we focus on building our business by seeking out people in need of help. We market our legal practice with whatever means we deem appropriate – websites, TV, radio, newspaper, even social media tools – and focus on getting out the message that relates directly to our practice area.

We talk about bankruptcy, divorce, criminal law, estate planning, whatever. But we talk about our solution, hoping that our audience needs that which we are selling.

People who sell hammers look for people who have a bunch of nails. Makes sense, right?

But what if you met your client yesterday? Before the marriage started to crumble, before the job loss or unexpected medical condition, before taking that fifth shot of whiskey and getting behind the wheel of the car on a dark and stormy night?

If you had met the client yesterday, they’d already know about you and trust you by the time they needed your help. You’d be a friend, a trusted resource. And because you met the client the day before they needed you, the relationship would have been built on something other than marketing your law firm.

Consider this:

A consumer bankruptcy lawyer offers free budgeting seminars to residents or his or her community, offering information on personal finance (no pitch for bankruptcy services). At the end of the seminar, the lawyer offers attendees the opportunity to get on his mailing list to receive a freebie newsletter about personal finance issues. Among the topics covered are debt problems, but this is just one of many subjects discussed in the newsletter.

The seminar is marketed through local schools, houses of worship, and community centers. For an hour each month, the lawyer stands in front of a room of strangers and gives a standard (though informative) presentation about personal finance. Gives a few tips, shares some resources, and collects names.

Over time, the seminars begin to attract attention. Maybe the lawyer tells a news reporter about them (failing to do so would be a bad idea, in fact). The lawyer takes the presentation and uploads it as a series of videos on YouTube so people can share it with friends and family members who aren’t able to attend in person.

Next, the lawyer creates a fan page on Facebook for attendees to gather and ask questions. The lawyer puts up more information over time, including links to blog posts of interest. Before each seminar a tweet goes on on Twitter, alerting the world of this upcoming, free, no-pitch seminar.

Maybe 4 people show up in person each time. Maybe 5. Maybe even 10. And perhaps a few people view the videos on YouTube, passing them along to a few close friends.

One day, someone loses their job. They’re in trouble. Who do they call?

The lawyer who’s been talking with them about money all along, who hasn’t tried to pitch them on bankruptcy, who’s become a trusted and reliable local source of information.

All because the lawyer met the client yesterday.

So let me ask you, dear reader – how could you meet your client yesterday?