Posted on 28 March 2012
Design Planning, Integrated Marketing, Social Media
Just over 2 years ago we published an article on Law firm Social Media, in which we explained how law firms should approach social media with a focus on creating compelling content that others would want to share online. We used the example of the TED conference and provided a model for how law firms could implement the idea using online video.
Last week, we were delighted to discover that City firm Berwin Leighton Paisner has implemented a major new feature of their website that follows our model.
This is how it looks at the time of writing:
BLP Global Perspectives sees the firm’s partners discussing key issues of the day. The videos follow a simple formula with a question displayed on the screen, followed by a talking head style video clip of a single partner or small group of partners providing the answer.
The videos last between 4 and 5 minutes and the production quality is high. The site uses JWPlayer, a popular and low-cost video player, available for commercial use for a one-off license fee of around 59 EUR.
While there is lots to praise about BLP’s effort, we think the firm could derive greater value from their investment by including more features to drive traffic through content sharing and visitor interaction.
Our Top Tips for Future Improvement
Provide a Clear Overview of the Videos Available
We’d like to see the site make it easier for visitors to find video content that interests them. This could be achieved through the use of index page for the Global Perspectives feature showing the full range of videos available, perhaps with the option to filter by practice area, lawyer, etc.
Encourage Content Sharing
BLP could generate quality web traffic by providing easy methods for visitors to share the video content through social networks. Social sharing buttons take minutes to implement so the ROI is huge, and they have the added benefit of providing a metric for measuring the popularity of each video, which could aid the future development of popular content.
Engage Visitors
Providing a comments section would allow deeper visitor engagement and build loyalty. Many firms use the excuse that they are concerned about liability arising from visitor comments, but we suspect the fear that nobody will post a comment is probably closer to the truth! Be brave and spark a discussion. You can always have your own lawyers post a few comments to get the ball rolling.
Recommendations: An Artist’s Impression
1. Make it Personal
Give key biographical details about the person speaking. If it’s one of your lawyers then don’t forget to include contact details as a way of generating leads. BLP have got this under control already.
2. Encourage Sharing
Social media buttons enable visitors to quickly share your content on a wide variety of different websites. Building custom buttons is straight forward for a web developer or use services like AddThis that give you cut and paste code for this functionality.
3. Enable and Encourage Debate
The debating aspect is just like the comments feature you find on most blogs. Most systems allow you to screen comments before they go live in order to keep control over what is said by others on your site.
First write your community guidelines and link to them at the top of the comments section. The aim is to encourage serious intellectual discussion, so it is useful to be able to point to a set of rules if someone steps out of line.
4. Build a Relationship
The reason for publishing the videos over a period of time is that it keeps people coming back to see what’s new. Use an email sign-up form to collect leads and to alert people when new content becomes available.
Posted on 3 August 2011
Integrated Marketing, Practice Groups, Social Media, Thought Leadership
This is the second post in a six part series which looks at how success in digital marketing for law firms is achieved by matching tools and techniques to the personality of each individual in a team.
For me the law is more a calling than a job. I love the intricacies and details of my practice area and although I enjoy clients I have to admit that I often study just for the love of it. The book I wrote on my practice area is considered the leading text on the subject and you would find a copy on the desk of all our competitors - a thought that always make me smile!
My opinion is sought far and wide and I am regularly published in the leading publications for our industry. Although I am not a natural networker, I am well-known within my specialism and at conferences people often come looking for me. Because of this I’ve built quite an extensive address book.
Although I have a lot of contacts, I would feel quite uncomfortable reaching out to people I don’t know well without a good reason. I see marketing as a necessary evil rather than something I really want to engage with, but I do get an enormous sense of achievement when my work spreads. If marketing can help my work reach a wider audience I would probably put a bit more effort in.
Strategies for Thought-leaders
Newsletter
Newsletters are the primary tool of the thought leader. Start by emailing your extensive contact list explaining that you are going to start publishing a monthly newsletter and ask if they would like to receive it. Create a mailing list from all those that say yes. In marketing we call this a “permission asset” but you might like to think of it as a nice way to ensure that those you send your newsletter to really want to read it.
Try to plan your newsletters for the year ahead and write them in your diary. Include the topic of each article and give yourself a target word-count. You may like to write a skeleton outline for each newsletter too, this will give you a head start and help you keep to your schedule even if you find yourself suddenly busy with client work or other responsibilities.
Blogs
Many of the thought leaders we work with have trouble making the transition from writing books and long articles to the typically shorter form of a blog post. We encourage you to think of a blog as a form of sketch book. It is a place to write and develop ideas which might later become full articles, perhaps combined with several other post on a similar topic. They are a great way to get feedback on you thinking and they a very effective way of optimising your website for search engines.
Social Media
Thought leaders can make good use of social media as a broadcast medium. Don’t worry about engaging you followers too much initially; you are an expert and it is OK to be a little aloof. Focus on creating compelling content that other people will want to spread. If you have conversationalists or avid networkers in your team, ask them to help get your material out in the wider world. Services like Twitter can also be useful for monitoring your industry and providing ideas to inspire your writing.
Working with Others
If you are marketing a firm alone, choose the tools that suit your personality and pour your effort in to using them the very best way you can. However, you can multiply your own efforts and those of members of your team by working together.
Working with Presenters
Presenters need material and thought-leaders produce material. Share your content with presenters in return for subscriptions to your newsletters and credit that will help to raise your profile. Presenters can also be a good source of customer feedback that can help you write material that meets customer needs.
Working with Conversationalists
Of all the personality types, the conversationalist is closest to the customer. Conversationalists can use your content to start a discussion and can return valuable client feedback and ideas for new content based on the real concerns of the market.
Working with Veterans
Veterans are a rich source of contacts and can usefully help to build an audience for your material. Someone who has been around for a while may also be able to give historical context, adding richness to your work.
Working with Rainmakers
Rainmakers are always making contact with potential clients and your content gives them an excuse to pick up the phone. Opportunities that don’t result in an immediate sale can be added to your mailing list, increasing the likely hood of future in-bound enquiries.
Posted on 2 August 2011
Integrated Marketing, Practice Groups, Social Media
As an individual lawyer the secret to choosing the right digital marketing tactic for your legal practice is to choose a tool that suits your personality, commit to it, and sustain it over a long period of time. The merits of any particular digital marketing or social media tool matter less than the degree to which it plays to your own particular strengths.
We’re writing profiles for five kinds of legal marketer, and we’ll be publishing them every so often. Watch out for the posts over the next few months and see which one you identify with most. Once you’ve chosen a profile, follow the advice to choose a digital marketing tactic that best suits your personality.
So who will you be:
We’ll link this list up to the corresponding post as each profile goes live.
Posted on 28 June 2011
Innovation, Integrated Marketing, Social Media
I was really excited when I saw a tweet pop up on the Legal Week feed that announced: “Mishcon de Reya launches three digital TV channels http://t.co/aEPmYLD”. As last, I thought, a large law firm sticking their neck on the line and doing the work that matters. How wrong could I be.
Back in 2010, I wrote an article called Law Firm Social Media, in which I set out a model for law firms that would allow them to capitalise on the currency of the modern internet - attention. I suggested that instead of spouting out marketing cliches, firms should focus their attention on creating compelling content that other people would want to share. I suggested that video was one of the best way to do this and even provided a sketch layout that firms could adapt for their own uses. Mischon’s new ‘Digital TV channels’ could have been like that.
Mischon de Reya have decided to implement their TV channel in partnership with yourBusinessChannel.com. The format is blog style with short clips from a wide variety of business personalities. There are some seriously high-profile people giving tips and advice on a range of business issues. All the videos are tagged by subject, company, and person and the clips can be filtered by clicking on the categories names. So far so good.
We all know that a good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We need to have the scene set for us in the form of an introduction and we need a summary to helps us consolidate what we have just learned. The Mishcon’s effort gives us only the middle. The clips dive straight in to a topic without giving us the wider picture and, as viewers, we have to work hard just to understand what we are seeing. A TV channel should be a curated experience. We need an Evan Davis to pull it all together.
Obviously running a TV channel is not part of most law firm’s core business and Mishcon’s effort should be viewed in that context. Marketing budgets don’t stretch to hiring high-profile BBC presenters or long days in the edit suite stitching videos together. There needs to be a compromise that respects the operational needs of the firm’s marketing budget but still brings value to viewers.
Mishcon’s have made some attempt to organise clips into distinct channels: Deal and Dealmakers, Digital Economy, and London Influence, but I think they need to go further. Although it may be too expensive to edit the clips into a single cohesive film, ‘programmes’ could be made by creating pages that hold groups of clips which together tell a story. Lawyers could be set the challenge of curating videos from those available and producing written narrative that explains how they work together. This result of this human involvement would be a true expression of the firm’s expertise and deliver real value to viewers.
Dumping content on an audience without explanation reduces it to data. Law firm marketing should deliver knowledge, value, and intelligent insight, for which there is no shortcut. Congratulation to Mishcon’s for trying something new, but now it is the time to do the hard work of turning a good idea, and a bold move, into a great one.
Posted on 15 March 2011
Marketing Research, Social Media
The UK has a lively and thriving legal community on Twitter, but if you are new to the social network it can be difficult to know who to follow. We used FollowerWonk to build a list of UK Lawyers and Law Firms who might interest you.
The list is not exhaustive nor is it completely accurate. Individuals who decide not to mention their profession in their biography are not included, and some overseas users will have slipped through the net, especially where their listed location is named after a UK city. Despite it’s short-comings, it does paint an interesting picture of Twitter use among UK lawyers and law firms and offers a good starting point for new users.
Access the complete list here
A list of lawyers and law firms on Twitter
Method
Followerwonk is an online service that lets you build lists of Twitter users by searching the name, location, and biography sections of their Twitter profile. We searched for the following terms in combined with the names of the countries and major cities in the UK:
- lawyer
- solicitor
- barrister
- attorney
- paralegal
- counsel
- QC
- GC
- law student
- law school
- legal practice
- law firm
- law tutor
Posted on 30 January 2011
In-house Lawyers, Marketing Research, Social Media
When I worked at Big Law LLP, one of my responsibilities was the acquisition and distribution of client marketing research. Despite being personally responsibly for blowing thousands on the stuff, I can’t ever remember reading an insight that I couldn’t have worked out with a colleague on the back of an envelope. I’d hand over the corporate credit card details in return for a password enabling me to download several thousands words and a few pie charts that almost always concluded along the lines of “do more and charge less”. Hardly the earth shattering insight our partners were hoping for.
On particularly slow days, I used to imagine my perfect market research report. I say report, but it probably wouldn’t be a report at all. It certainly isn’t some crappy password-protected PDF report that the senior partner can’t even work out how to open. There is no executive summary, no methodology, no pie charts, and no reams of appendices. My perfect client research is personal and transparent and it comes straight from the horses mouth. It goes a little something like this:
About once a week, General Counsel at a leading FTSE 100 company writes to tell you exactly what is on his mind. He writes about what he likes about external lawyers and what he wants to change different. One week, for example, he’d write to tell you that he always hires lawyers, not law firms, and you’d be able to plan your campaigns accordingly. Another week he’d write and tell you that it would really make a difference to his relationship if you’d hire legally qualified account managers to look after his account, instead of the out-dated notion of the client partner. On this occasion he wouldn’t just float the idea and leave you to figure the rest for yourself, he’d actually list the pros and cons for your consideration, and spell out how to make a decent profit. His letters are full of the sorts of insights you could build a marketing plan around. Sounds valuable doesn’t it? But it doesn’t stop there.
Although interesting, one man’s view isn’t really scientific enough to bet the firm on, so our ever helpful advisor also circulates his views to a raft of other GCs. These lawyers are not only from his own employer, but also at other large companies with whom you’d almost certainly like to do business. Over the course the next week this team of busy, experienced, intelligent, and commercially astute in-house lawyers will debate the issues, documenting their discussion verbatim for your benefit. You can dip in at any time, and even ask questions if you feel so inclined.
How much would your firm be willing to pay for a subscription to such a service? £100k perhaps?
It sounds like a fantasy, but it already exists and those that take part don’t pay a penny for it. Leading in-house lawyers are blogging, and tweeting, and engaging with each other and the firms that serve them. It is a genuine opportunity, but so many big firms are missing out through shear ignorance. Reach out and engage with these people. Don’t try to sell to them or spam them with updates, but listen and respond to what the have to say. Invest in these relationships and you’ll never have to buy another crappy client marketing research report again.
I’ll try to maintain a list of in-house lawyer web presences on this page. The entry criteria is to have both a blog and active twitter account. Please let me know in the comments if you know of someone I should add.
UK In-house Lawyers
Tim Bratton
http://legalbrat.blogspot.com/
@legalbrat
Melanie Hatton
http://in-house-lawyer.blogspot.com/
@in_house_lawyer
Tom Kilroy
http://gcseyeview.blogspot.com/
@kilroyt
Anon
http://legalbizzle.wordpress.com/
@LegalBizzle
