Law Firm Social Media Revisited - A Review of BLP Global Perspectives

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.

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