This document provides an overview of exploring social media for law firms. It discusses why social media matters for law firms, with statistics showing its impact on business development and brand awareness. It then covers best practices for using LinkedIn, including completing your profile, connecting with contacts, and using features like groups and answers. Finally, it lists resources for legal marketers to learn more about using social media effectively.

1. Exploring Social Media for
Law Firms
June 28, 2010
“Your brand isn’t what YOU say it
is, it’s what GOOGLE says it is”
- Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine

2. Start Your Engines
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3. Today we’ll talk about:
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Why social media matters
Brief overview
Deeper dive into LinkedIn
Getting started
Industry resources
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4. Why Social Media Matters
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5. Lawyers are already
experimenting, even Biglaw
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Leads: 10% of lawyers have had a client retain them as a result of use of online SM,
according to an ABA report
Blogging: 96 of the 2009 AmLaw 200 law firms are now blogging. This number is up
from 39 firms since August 2007
Reading Online: Blogs are most frequently used tool among in-house lawyers at the
largest companies (revenue of $1.5 billion to $9.9 billion) with 35% visiting a blog in
past 24 hours and 54% in the past week
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Nearly 70% of Corporate Counsel aged 30 to 39 expect their consumption of business and legal industry
news through SM platforms to increase within the next six months
Tweeting: 29 of AmLaw 100 firms have a Twitter account, though many “blast” like
@WeilGotshal
Updating: 37 percent of Counsel aged 30-39 have used Facebook for professional
reasons in the past 24 hours, and 48 percent – nearly half – have used it
professionally in the past week
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More than 10% of law firms in the country are on Facebook and more than 40% of attorneys, per ABA
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6. A Part of Marketing
OUTBOUND MARKETING
INBOUND MARKETING
• Direct Mail / email
• Print Ads
• Marketing collateral
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Interruption
Blogging
Social/Digital Media
Public Relations
Website
Permission
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7. Social Media is for Leads and
Sales
Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report - http://bit.ly/aewfHr
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9. What You Need to Know Now
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10. Is your company ranked on the first page of Google?
If not, 3,923,869 sets of eyeballs missed your
website
Source: http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value
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11. Did You Google Today?
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Search is the most performed action on the internet. Email is a
close second.
By 2014, mobile and internet technology will help over 3 billion
of the world’s adults interact electronically
By 2015, online marketing will control more than $250 billion
internet spending worldwide
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Google: 34,000 searches per second
(2 million per minute; 121 million per
hour; 3 billion per day; 88 billion per
month, figures rounded)
Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second
(194,000 per minute; 12 million per hour;
280 million per day; 8.4 billion per month,
figures rounded)
Bing: 927 searches per second
(56,000 per minute; 3 million per hour;
80 million per day; 2.4 billion per month,
figures rounded)
Photo Credit:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2010/03/technologys_dark_underbelly.html Sources: Gartner; http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278413
Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/by-the-numbers-twitter-vs-facebook-vs-googlebuzz-36709
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12. •
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More Tools/Channels = Less Control
Are you and your company being “found” by the right
people?
Do you know what search terms are used to reach your
website?
Do you have a plan to convince the search engines to rank
you more highly than a competitor?
Your digital footprint is your resume
Take Control
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13. Real Simple Syndication (RSS)
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RSS (Real Simple Syndication)
is a format for delivering
regularly changing web content
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It allows you stay easily
informed by retrieving the latest
content from the sites you are
interested in, without having to
go to specific websites
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RSS feeds allow organizations to keep clients and prospects upto-date on news, thought leadership, company updates
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Common RSS aggregators include Google Reader, MyYahoo,
BlogLines, Feedburner, Microsoft Outlook
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14. Get More For Less (Time)
University of Arkansashttp://www.uark.edu/misc/wheat/
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Separate the wheat from the chaff
Archive all the information you want to read…but don’t
have time to
Keep clients, prospects and influencers up-to-date,
without clogging inboxes
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15. •
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool
in which users send and read posts of up to 140characters called tweets.
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Tweets are distributed to followers on a “feed” which
displays the tweets in real time
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Twitter now has 105,779,710
registered users
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New users are signing up at the
rate of 300,000 per day
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180 million unique visitors come to
the site every month
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Twitter's search engine receives
around 600 million search queries
per day
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Source: Huffington Post, 4/21/10

16. Why should legal marketers care?
• Generational shifts: Older attorneys may be reluctant, but
younger folks are increasingly curious. Are you positioned
to respond to that? Further, participation by younger
attorneys puts the firm’s best foot forward without the “risk”
of putting the face of the practice on initiative.
• Content distribution: We are each being taught to consume
information “on the go” through our phones. Won’t our
marketing strategies ultimately need to reflect that trend?
• Dying Outlets: Do you believe The Wall Street Journal can
drive leads? If so, do you know what will happen when
internet ad revenue overtakes newspapers by 2014?
• Your own future: Even if the attorneys don’t want to
change…should you, just a little?
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17. If it works for other firms, what kind of
potential could it hold for yours?
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Sullivan & Cromwell partner Frank Aquila, who was named a Legal Rebel by
the ABA Journal in part because of his use of Twitter (@FAquila). He now
writes for BusinessWeek, too.
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Dr. Lisa Haile, Partner and co-chair of DLA Piper’s global life sciences
sector uses Twitter extensively to demonstrate her thought leadership. It
netted an inquiry from a general counsel of a large target company
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Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer set up an internal wiki to encourage
collaboration and knowledge sharing among its top rainmakers
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18. Mastering LinkedIn
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19. •Global: LinkedIn has over 65 million members
in over 200 countries
•Fortune 500: Executives from all Fortune 500
companies are LinkedIn members
•Focused: LinkedIn is the world’s largest
professional audience
•Influential: Users are younger, richer and more
powerful than Wall Street Journal, Forbes and
Business Week readers
•Powerful: Your LinkedIn profile automatically
shows high up on Google’s first page
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Needed to Play: Your peers and competitors are already there
66% of LinkedIn users are decision makers or have influence in the purchase decisions at
their companies
Responses to questions posed can be ranked. Over time, rankings create another community
of respected experts based on the helpfulness of their advice.
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20. First Step: Get yourself off to
the right start
• Establish your profile: Complete 100%, add a picture
and leverage the “summary” section
• Use your own name to create a “vanity profile:”
www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethsosnow
• Customize your website links: Match search phrases
that you know your prospects use
• Invite your contacts to join the network: Remember
bigger is better and you are never “done”
• Update your status several times a week: Every time
you act, it appears on the home page of your 1st degree
connections
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22. Second Step: Take advantage of LinkedIn
tools and features to deepen connections
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Shared Connections: Find potential clients/employees — and then
see what connections you have in common
LinkedIn Answers: Establish authority and expertise by
participating in ongoing discussions
LinkedIn Groups: Interact with other business professionals on
relevant topics, add your own RSS feed
Ad campaigns: Identify highly qualified targets by seniority,
industry, job function, company size, etc.
Events: View at a glance all of your network’s upcoming events
Recommendations: Market your business by having your
colleagues and clients share your expertise
Create a Group: Potentially the most powerful way to use LinkedIn
– build your own community
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23. How can your firm get started?
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Recognize that you don’t have to start by getting “social”
– Combat distrust & cynicism with competitive intelligence and emerging insights
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Audit online activity on at least a quarterly basis
– Radian6, Techrigy, Scout Labs
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Construct “early warning” systems on key issues, competitors &
conversations
– TweetBeep, Backtype, BoardAlerts
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Harvest your existing contacts on LinkedIn, even if the lawyers are not ready
– Flowtown
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Benchmark & monitor clients/peers using social media & LI report
Consider targeted SEO project, perhaps for an up and coming practice
Construct recruiting SM strategy to demonstrate that firm is evolving
Harvest analytics from website and current email blasts
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24. Resources
• Legal Marketers
– Jayne Navarre: Virtual Marketing officer, upcoming
book on SM case studies for lawyers
– Nancy Myrland: Myrland Marketing, former in-house
– Heather Milligan: The Legal Watercooler
– Adrian Dayton: Marketing Strategy & The Law blog,
“Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition”
– Nicole Black: “Social Media for Lawyers: The Next
Frontier”
– Mailing List: Both the LMA and Larry Bodine’s mailing
list offer good SM nuggets
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25. Legal Networks: Leads or…
referral sources?
• Legal On Ramp: invite only community with in house counsel
& attorneys
• Martindale-Hubbell Connected: just won an award for “Best
Closed Community”
• JD Supra: “cross-share” lawyer contributed articles (Mintz
Levin has given nearly 600 documents)
• Civile.IT: has more than 100,000 users per month (Italian)
• ACC listserv
• LexBlog: is blog publishing platform used by 65% of AmLaw
bloggers (incl. Russell Jackson’s)
• Avvo: has free lawyer profiles and a “content network”
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26. Questions?
Please contact me:
Email: elizabeth@blisspr.com
Twitter: @elizabethsosnow
LinkedIn: Elizabeth Sosnow
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