yet another h/t to @colmmu
Lawyers and social media
The interesting thing when you drill into memberships for the likes of Quality Solicitors or firms that utilise the DirectLaw platform is their social profiles.
Very few have a high social media presence beyond the standard issue stuff. You could not call them ‘active.’
It intrigues me that some of these firms are ‘low profile’ compared to the noise found on social media. By now social media has become embedded yet, it seems, less so in the legal sector and especially within those firms who are building their futures.
In a funny way they may avoid the (current) ‘grind’ of establishing social media in the sector and then turn up when it has calmed to extoll their value, leap frogging the firms that have done the hard work.
Quite ironic really.
I am fascinated as to why lawyers spend so much time talking about non-lawyer things; marketing, social media, branding, cloud, blogs etc…but never, or very little, about delivery of the legal ‘thing.’
Yet it is the delivery bit that is broke. It is the delivery bit that needs fixing. You can call it document automation or customer service or whatever. Either way it needs sorting ASAP. If you want to influence your market that’s what I would be talking about.
Measuring
Measuring stuff seems to be a big debating topic when lawyers look at social media. There is an irony in this as most lawyers don’t measure most things very well period.
Customer feedback, what the client wants etc I don’t see a lot of (valuable) measuring going on there. Even if you do measure it that’s just half of the story…what do you do with that data? If the answer is nothing then why did you bother measuring in the first place?
Does social media work…um yeah, take a look around you or go surf Kickstarter for some powerful uses of social media. It’s working 24/7 with or without you. Ideas start and then get momentum because people connect up and start to share. If you fraternize in other areas and industries you will find less mention of ‘measuring.’
Social media is a tool to promote the building of better things faster with other people who want to build them with you. But you and others have to do the creating, the building the collaborating etc…all social media (or tech generally) does it makes that more possible, more efficient.
Think about what you are trying to build together, with others (I can’t emphasise the word ‘together’ enough).
When you have built it and are happy with it…feel that measure love.
Pain
You can always wait until you feel the pain. But in a digital era pain is usually the symbol of ‘too late’ or ‘missed opportunity.’
Borders felt the pain. GONE
HMV is feeling the pain. GOING
John Lewis saw the pain coming. THRIVING
This is interesting because JL are the long established ‘traditional’ brand. They were just simply smarter than the rest. To be blunt…they thought it through rather than believing in their own vanity.
Panic will follow pain. Panic when you realise you have to respond and change.
Panic to get everything in position.
Then time becomes critical. Time to train, time to implement and deploy, time to market…that’s a big heap of time and by then you may not have much.
