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The first session of Social Fresh, Portland that I attended was “Real Facebook and Twitter Results Panel.”  Since I know many law firms are hesitant to get involved with Facebook and Twitter, the comments from this panel might be especially useful for you in evaluating whether these platforms will work for your firm.  The panel featured Justin Kistner of Webtrends, Carri Bugbee of Big Deal PR, Kevin Tate of StepChange, and moderator and panelist Shauna Causey from Comcast. 

After each of the panelists introduced themselves, they focused on their experiences using Facebook and Twitter for themselves and their clients.  Tate said, about starting a Facebook page, that a company can often learn as much from its failures as its successes.  Kistner agreed with this, saying that his company had thought about starting a new blog, separate from their original one, and quickly realized that it would make more sense to leverage their existing web presence and audience, because they already have put their trust in you.  But in addition to thinking about the external audience, when deploying a social media strategy, it’s just as important to bring your internal audience in and show them the value. 

Tate used the Travelocity gnome campaign on Facebook as an example of a successful use of social media to engage the audience (the panelists agreed that audience engagement should be a key goal when using a social media tool like Facebook or Twitter).  Facebook users could become a “Fan” of the Travelocity gnome, and were able to interact by voting on where he would go next.  This was very successful and continues to see fan engagement.  Tate pointed out that once people feel that they have ownership of something, you have to be careful about taking it away – an example of this from my own experience was when a Facebook user created a Fan page for the Norwegian curling team’s pants.  The page was not endorsed or created by the team, but during the Olympics, it suddenly grew very popular and attracted a lot of fans and activity.  Facebook realized that the page wasn’t created by the team (even though they had contacted the user who started it and invited him to their next match) and they took it down, citing their fan page rules.  But because so many fans were attached to the page, they launched a campaign to get Facebook to bring it back.  After a few hours, Facebook relented because of the outcry. So even though the Norwegian curling team didn’t start the page, the fans were invested in it and didn’t want to lose it.  Tate also pointed out that even when a brand creates the Facebook page, the fans really own it and define the content and interaction.  Continue Reading Recap of Social Fresh Portland: Real Facebook and Twitter Results Panel

Today, I attended one of the Social Fresh conferences, which took place here in Portland, Oregon – for those of you wondering what Social Fresh is, it’s a conference about social media, focused around case studies, and it takes place in some “underserved cities,” as the conference website describes them.  Although it’s not a conference focused around the legal field, I felt that broadening my social media education to find out what other companies are doing and what works for them would be useful in my own professional social media efforts, as well as for the law firms we work with.  

Like LMA 2010, I’ll be posting re-caps of the valuable sessions that I attended today over the next few days, but I wanted to get a quick post up about my thoughts and the key takeaways from today’s conference.  
The theme that I took away from today’s panels and presentations was two-fold – 1) know your social media objectives and 2) know your audience.  In terms of the former – it’s not just enough to jump into social media, to create a Twitter profile or a Facebook fan page (in terms of your company or firm’s brand – I still think there’s utility in experimenting for yourself to learn about the tools).  You have to ask yourself why you’re on there, what you want to get out of it, and what you’re prepared to do with it – have a strategy.  There were a lot of comments that although marketers may be handling a company or firm’s social media efforts, customer service is still a large part of the job.  So even if you enter into social media for the purpose of getting content out there, you must be prepared to answer questions and deal with customer service-type issues.  This is true even in the legal industry – for law firms getting involved in social media, you have to be prepared to deal with questions coming up that border on a client-attorney privileged relationship, possible issues with complaints against the firm, etc.  The overwhelming answer on how to deal with these issues today was “have a plan.”  Before entering into social media, decide who will be behind the efforts, what happens if a person or group starts flaming your Facebook page, what steps are taken if a crisis arises – think about the possible issues that may arise before they happen.  Everyone agrees that social media is just another channel for the same types of marketing that companies and firms have always been doing, so some of this will just be an extension of an existing crisis communications plan your firms have, but it’s essential to discuss strategy and possible roadblocks before releasing a corporate social media strategy.

Continue Reading Social Fresh – What Did I Learn About Social Media?

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a socialmediatoday webinar on “Social Media in Asia: Where are the Emerging Opportunities?” (For the webcast and slides, visit: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/webcasts/184500) What follows is a re-cap of the highlights, but the key takeaways that came out of the webinar are the following:

– Culture is hugely important – In order to succeed in Asia, you must have people on the ground who understand the social meda ecosystem for that country and can help you to navigate it.

– Mobile devices will be the primary source of access for a lot of people because broadband access is not always available.  So compatibility with mobile devices is hugely important.

– Face-to-face interactions are still paramount.

The speakers for the webinar were Thomas Crampton, Asia Pacific Director of 360 Digital Influence for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Peter Auditore, head of SAP’s Business Influencer Program and a Senior Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research, and Robin Carey, CEO of socialmediatoday.  They began with comments from Crampton on scale – he said there are 338 million “netizens” (citizens of the net) in China versus only 62 million in France (as of a report from 2009) and also greater than the population of the United States.  However, the top social networks in China are not the familiar ones in the West - Qzone has 183 million users, Xiaonei has 40 million, kaixin001 has 30 million, while Facebook only has 0.4 million.  Crampton observed that the government is very savvy in China – Twitter is blocked, but Google Wave is not.  He also noted that Friendster used to rule Asia, but now Facebook is “romping across the nation.”Continue Reading Social Media in Asia: Where are the Emerging Opportunities?

The second social media panel of the day was one that we tweeters had been waiting for, since our friends and fellow “tweeps” (as people who tweet are often referred to) Heather Milligan, the Director of Marketing for Barger & Wolan LLP, Jayne Navarre, the Director of Law Gravity LLC, and Russell Lawson, the Marketing Director at Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, P.C. would be presenting.  The topic was Social Media Strategies for Small to Mid-sized Law Firms.  Jayne began by introducing the attendees to the term “social web” as a catchall for technologies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and blogging.  Russell commented that entering social media is “like drinking from a fire hose,” echoing sentiments from the earlier panel.  Because of this, he said that he did research before engaging online.  Jayne asked them what their greatest challenge in social media has been – Russell said that it is getting people to engage frequently and Heather answered that it was finding champions in her firm who are willing to speak up in and about social media.  She added that legal marketers would be surprised at who the champions at their firms can be.  Laura Gutierrez commented via Twitter that educating attorneys about social media and time are her biggest challenges. 

In terms of strategy, Jayne advised that social media should be part of your day – it’s important to integrate it into your work flow and carve out the time needed to make it effective.  She said that social media tools are things that lawyers are already using, just reinterpreted through technology.  The role of the legal marketer is to help them transform what they’re doing into the 2010 version.  At the heart of it, social media is about engaging people, and if you’re not doing that, you’re wasting your time.  The panel pointed out that social media doesn’t require that lawyers stop other kinds of business development, like attending alumni events, only that they consider it as another tool they can use.  Russell talked about his firm’s use of social media, saying that he is having a tool built that will allow him to feed attorneys topics daily, which they can then write about on the social web in blog posts.  He already sends a social media tip out twice a month to his attorneys, and his firm has started @sociallawyers to help educate other lawyers as to what his firm thinks works in social media.  To get buy-in from the attorneys within his own firm, they write an internal document called “Look Who’s Famous Now,” which shows the exposure that  lawyers are garnering online.  He said, “We think clients want firms who understand social media.”  Continue Reading LMA 2010 – Social Media Strategies for Small to Mid-sized Law Firms

One of the most well-attended panels of the conference was “Leveraging Social Networking – Real World Applications of Web 2.0 That Have Led to New Business.”  On the panel were John M. Byrne, Director of Communications at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP and John J. Buchanan, Chief Marketing Officer at ILN member firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin.  The panel was moderated by Darryl Cross, Vice President of Client Profitability at LexisNexis. 

Though the irony of attending a panel on social media at a conference without any wifi for the attendees was not lost on those there, we made do Tweeting from mobile devices and using internet cards on laptops.  The panel started by saying that social media is a way to collaborate, and firms should do it to serve their clients and get closer to them.  Cross gave some statistics that lend credence to the idea that social media is a “trend” that is not going away: there are currently 400 million people on Facebook, 60 million on LinkedIn, and 50 millions Tweets per day.  91% of the users of social media connect through their mobile devices.  Though many lawyers are reticent to join social networks for privacy concerns, Cross pointed out that there is Sermo, an online community of 130,000 physicians who share and deal with highly sensitive medical information thorugh social media.  The message was that if doctors can do this, surely lawyers can figure out how to engage with social media. Cross also mentioned Martindale-Hubbell Connected, which is an online network for legal professionals (If you’d like to connect with me there, you can do so here).  Continue Reading LMA 2010 – Leveraging Social Networking – Real World Applications of Web 2.0 That Have Led to New Business

It’s that time of year again – the LMA Annual Conference rolls around in just a few short weeks!  It’s a great opportunity to make new friends and renew relationships, so I thought I’d keep a list of those attending as I’m advised, as well as their Twitter names (so anyone interested in the conference…

In Part I of this two-part series, I introduced my thoughts on the first half of the Ten Golden Rules’ webinar – “Thought Leaders Forum – What’s Next in Internet Marketing.” Presenters on the panel included Ten Golden Rules CEO, Jay Berkowitz, semantics expert and Bintro.com CEO, Richard Stanton, Facebook Goddess and Relationship Marketing Specialist, Mari Smith, Biz Web Coach, Jim Kukral, iClarity Founder, Maria Harrison, PeoplePond Founder, David McInnis, and author Rohit Bhargava. The following is Part II of my thoughts on the session:

5) Maria Harrison: Video is changing online advertising. In November of 2008, there were 12.7 million views of videos on YouTube, up a third from the same period in the previous year. The current use of video is mainly for entertainment, but this focus is changing as Generation X catches up. The reason this has taken so long is broadband access, but now that this is becoming less of an issue, video is becoming more important and useful. Maria noted that successful video advertisers will look to engage their audience, instead of interrupting their experience, so users will see things like in-page ads and self-service ad platforms, such as Google Video. She cautioned that return on investment is still key.

** Legal industry takeaway: With such strict advertising rules, I don’t think there will be too many law firms using online video for advertising purposes. However, there may be opportunities for educational videos produced by law firms. Firms should also think about innovative ways to introduce the use of online video, similar to Holland & Hart’s use of video on in their five-minute television shows featuring innovative clients, which aired on Frontier Airline’s Wild Blue Yonder network and online in 2007.Continue Reading Thought Leaders Forum – What’s Next in Internet Marketing Part II

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Ten Golden Rules’ webinar – Thought Leaders Forum – What’s Next in Internet Marketing. Presenters on the panel included Ten Golden Rules CEO, Jay Berkowitz, semantics expert and Bintro.com CEO, Richard Stanton, Facebook Goddess and Relationship Marketing Specialist, Mari Smith, Biz Web Coach, Jim Kukral, iClarity Founder, Maria Harrison, PeoplePond Founder, David McInnis, and author Rohit Bhargava. In a fast-paced webinar, chock-full of valuable information, I was able to glean a number of tips from these passionate industry experts, which can be of use in the legal industry. Following is Part 1 of 2 of my thoughts on this session.

1) Jay Berkowitz: The internet is becoming a place of microcommunications, where we get our news in bits and bytes. Jay used Twitter as a great example of this, a place where people can get sound bites of what other people and companies are saying. He gave us his three “E’s” for using Twitter:

  • “Educate:” Use Twitter to teach people something, both by providing valuable content and re-tweeting (essentially re-broadcasting another Twitter user’s tweet to your own Twitter followers) useful information.
  • “Entertain:” Jay used @the_real_shaq as an example of someone who effectively entertains his audience through his tweets, which keeps them interested and increases his number of followers.
  • “Engage:” Reply to tweets you find interesting or thought-provoking and listen to what other Twitter users are saying. Jay mentioned @ChrisBrogan as a great example of someone who engages on Twitter.

** Legal industry takeaway: Twitter can be used to educate current and potential clients about your law firm or legal service, with links to relevant articles, comments on changes to laws or high profile cases, and retweets of valuable information from your colleagues in the field. Letting your personality come through on Twitter and engaging others helps to build your network. For more of my thoughts on Twitter, take a look at my post, “To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Why Lawyers Should Pay Attention to Twitter.”Continue Reading Thought Leaders forum – What’s Next in Internet Marketing Part I