Social Media, Technology

A Lawyer's Guide To Social Media (Part 1): Twitter

If you want to use social media to get more clients or to be more visible, there are rules to follow, as technology columnist Jeff Bennion explains.

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There was a lot of buzz (New York Times, CNN, Reuters, to name a few) about how Barack Obama got a Facebook page yesterday. The President said he wanted a place to have real conversations and give people more access to the President, or at least to his 20-person social media team. I guess his new Facebook page will accomplish something that his 68-million-follower @BarackObama Twitter account, his 5-million-follower @potus Twitter account, or his 45-million-follower other Facebook account that he’s had for years could not accomplish. So, with all the buzz about social media, I thought I’d talk about one of the questions I get the most, which is how to effectively use social media.

As I’ve written before, I’m no social media guru, but I can certainly share the tips and tricks that I have picked up in the last few years.

What Do You Want Out of Social Media?

If you just want to use it as an outlet to type whatever pops into your head, have at it. But, if you want to use social media to get more clients or to be more visible, there are rules to follow. The exciting thing about social media is being able to reach so many people. I only have about 460 followers on Twitter, but I have hundreds of thousands of impressions just from the last few months alone from people interacting with me and reading things that I wrote and other people talking about me.

The goal on social media is to get noticed. It’s like when it’s election time and you see all of those “Vote for X” signs in peoples’ yards and on street corners. No one is going to drive to the store and see one of those signs and think, “You know what? I think I will vote for him.” It’s more about being on the forefront of people’s minds and constantly reminding people that you are still relevant. To do that, though, you have to be seen in people’s feeds every so often, not just once a month. Remember posting and being seen are two totally different things. To be seen, you have to stand out from the other garbage in their feeds. You can do that by posting to your own followers, but the power of social media is getting your followers to repost your things, which puts you in front of your followers’ followers, and then some of their followers, and so on. The trick is to say things that are so interesting that your followers would want to share it with their followers. Here are some hints on how to do that and what not to do. I’ll start with Twitter and cover others in later posts.

Twitter

Twitter is not just about speaking your mind in 140 characters or less. It’s also about reaching out to people in an easy way. Let’s say you are a painter (deliberately choosing a non-legal career here for an example) and you want to grow your Twitter presence. Post a few interesting things about your business. Follow industry-related news sources. Sometimes they will follow you back. Retweet their stuff. When you retweet, always add some commentary. For example, if @paintprofessionalnews posts some photo of an expensive paint job on a fence, retweet it and say something like, “The reason it’s important to hire a professional” or something. Mention other industry leaders in your tweets. Reply to their tweets with insightful commentary.

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If you are having a conversation with someone on Twitter, people will only be able to see it if they follow both people involved in the conversation, but if I tweet something and mention someone’s name, any of my followers can see it. Twitter distinguishes between conversations between two people (which only followers of both can see) and a tweet that just mentions someone (which all of your followers can see) if the tweet starts with someone’s name. So, if my tweet is: “@paintstorePro your paint is rad,” only people who follow both of us can see that. If I tweet: “Hey @paintstorePro, your paint is rad,” then all of my followers can see because the tweet does not start with the other person’s username. That’s why you see a lot of tweets that begin with a period. Instead of wasting characters, like I did above, you can just tweet: “.@paintstorePro your paint is rad” and all of my followers will see it because it does not technically begin with an account name.

So, reach out to other people and engage them in a meaningful way, and if their followers like what you have to say, they will follow you too.

Also, stand out from the crowd by using images. Tweet images, and if your followers are scrolling through mostly text, your image post will be more noticeable.

Don’t post just to post. Just because there’s a number next to your name on your profile page with the number of tweets you’ve done doesn’t mean it’s a contest to get the highest number. Tweet meaningful stuff, interact in a meaningful way. Post things that would be interesting to your potential followers and your followers’ followers. For example, if I tweet: “My business opens at 7:00 am! See you in the morning!,” no one will retweet that. But, if I tweet something like: “Court finds hiring a dog to Bates-label documents is not legal malpractice [link to article],” people are probably going to click on that and retweet it, and their followers and followers’ followers are going to retweet it, and I’ll get new followers in the process.

Pay attention to what time you post. I’ve read that tweets on the weekends are more visible. You can use your analytics in your user profile to track how many times people have viewed you in their feed (impressions) and how many people favorite or retweet or click on your profile also.

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The bottom line is that there are a lot of people on social media. If you do not use social media, give it a try. If someone needs a bankruptcy attorney, they are not going to go to Twitter and search for one. They are still going to use Google for that. But, if your name has shown up a couple of times in that potential client’s feed, they are probably going to check you out first before they start looking around.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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