What I’ve learned from a year of 22 Tweets

This week marks the one-year anniversary of 22 Tweets. It’s been a great first year. I’ve learned a lot from the interviews, about the lawyers I’ve interviewed, about the practice of law, about how what I hope is a representative slice of the Web 2.0 legal crowd markets themselves and their practices. And I’ve also learned a great deal about communication and communicating, about messages and crafting them, about stories and articulating them. While it would be hard to sum up everything I've learned in a single blog post, a few lessons stand out:

• Everybody has a great story to tell. Most of the lawyers I’ve met over the past 20 years have interesting and engaging stories to tell, the kind that convey their passion, intelligence and conviction, the kind that draw you in and keep you on the edge of your seat and make you glad you heard them, the kind that make clients want to hire them. They tell great stories (when they’re not so busy trying to pitch their services that they forget how powerful their own stories are), just like each and every lawyer I interviewed for 22 Tweets.
  
  
• The medium is not the message. Whether you’re tweeting or blogging or meeting with a client or giving a presentation to an auditorium full of your peers, the medium is not the message. The message is the message. And lawyers need to understand and use the full range of communications channels their audiences are using – with a common message, one that conveys their strengths, their differences, their story – if they want to be heard.
  
  
• The message received is the message. Not the message sent. There are few “do-overs” in real life, and even fewer in communication: what you mean is irrelevant if your audience doesn't understand what you are trying to say. Not because you can’t recover from miscommunication, but because when neither of you are aware that you aren't talking about the same thing, you’re not going to know it.
  
  
• Effective communication is hard work. Part of the challenge (and I hope the fun) of being interviewed on 22 Tweets is responding in 140 characters. Finding a way to say who you are, or what you do, or why you do it, in a single tweet takes time and effort and work. And although life doesn't place the same constraints on communication as Twitter does (though many days I wish it would), the people who communicate most effectively apply the same rigor to all their words across all channels.
  
  
• Value is king. Whatever your message, whatever the channels you use to communicate it, whatever the content you provide, unless it adds value to your audience, unless it helps them do their jobs better, make more money, get smarter or sleep better at night, then it probably doesn't hold a lot of value for them. Lawyers are in the business of providing value. Shouldn't your tweets, your blog, your website, your brochures and your speeches provide the same value as your legal work?

It’s been a great first year. Thank you all, readers and interviewees alike, for making it possible.

Why are we still debating (redux)?

Are you really not yet convinced that you need to develop a more active social networking and social media profile? That you need to understand and use and master social media tools for communicating? Maybe the CEO of Sun Microsystems can convince you:

“As CEO, I need to engage the market, inside and outside Sun, with whatever technology affords me the greatest possible reach. Through blogs, online news, social networking sites, or Twitter, the internet has fundamentally changed how we communicate with one another. Today, we have thousands of employees participating, engaging customers and developers across the world, 24 hours a day. And whether it’s via a half-hour streaming video or a 140-character tweet, we need to reach everyone in the forum and format they choose – not what we choose” (emphasis added)

Jonathan Schwartz in “Should CEOs Twitter?,” Brunswick Review, Winter 2009

Could the message be any clearer? If you want to reach clients and potential clients and journalists and other decision-makers, you don’t get to choose where and how. They’ve already chosen. To communicate, you must do it on the terms of the people you want to reach, in the places they look for information, with the tools they’re using to read it. And if you’re not in the Web 2.0 space, you might as well pack up and go home.

Why are we still debating?

Are you exploring Social Media?

What are you doing to market your practice with social media? How are you telling your story? What are your objectives? Are you meeting them?

There's no doubt that social media is revolutionizing PR, marketing, and internal communications across industries, and that the legal profession finds itself directly in the mix. Are you keeping up with the changes or getting left behind? Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many more social networking tools are out there. Social media can no longer be considered a fad: it is the method that millions of people use to communicate via multiple channels with specific audiences.

But if the tools for communicating have changed, the rules of communication are the same as they have always been. You need a message. You need a plan. You need disciplined execution if you are going to generate value from your social media activities.

I recently participated with Mike Driehorst of Diamond Communications in a panel discussion for a group of lawyers and legal professionals at a joint Legal Marketing Association-Ohio and Association of Legal Administrators luncheon in Toledo, Ohio. Our goal was to place the basic social media and social networking concepts into the context of the legal profession, and to provide our audience with an overview of what they need to do to get started in social media. How do you think we did? Did we leave anything out? We would love your feedback on how we can make this presentation even more relevant to lawyers seeking to embrace social media. Leave us a comment. Send us an email. Track us down on Twitter. We're all ears.

Embracing Social Media

View more presentations from Lance Godard.

What's wrong with this picture?

"What is the most significant issue currently facing the legal profession?" Here's what your peers are saying when 22 Tweets put the question to them.

David Barrett (@barrettdavid): "The LinkedIn Lawyer"

I think the most significant issue facing the legal profession is transparency …
As consumers get more sophisticated, we need new ways across the understanding gap between lawyers and non-lawyers …
Of course there have been great lawyers forever … and we could videotape them all day and clients would get value ….
But now we are in a new era of transparency … and there are a lot of areas in the profession where light has yet to shine

Kelly Erb (@taxgirl): tax lawyer

Besides layoffs? Image. There are terrible lawyers who have ruined what folks think of us. Most lawyers are good people!

Scott Gibson (@tradesecretlaw): business lawyer

Lawyers need to think differently about how we serve clients. Focus on client needs, solve their problems, and provide value.

Dan Harris (@danharris): international lawyer

BigLaw costs too much. Firms must move from hourly billing. Abt 75% of my firm’s work is flat fee. Better for clients & for us

Erik Heels (@erikjheels): trademark, domain name and patent lawyer

Learning to speak Plain English. The@creativecommons copyright licenses are a good example of anti-legalese legal writing.

Jodie Hill (@downtownlawyer): litigator

Lack of legal representation for those who cannot afford it.

Tom McLain (@tommclain): international corporate and M&A lawyer

Communicating why lawyers are valuable at whatever billing basis is used. How do you value the lawsuit not filed?

Bill Marler (@bmarler): food safety advocate

Maintaining high legal standards for ethics while experiencing more and more competition.

Jay Shepherd (@jayshep): employment lawyer

Hourly billing, overpaid associates, legalese are killing it. BigLaw is like GM, newspapers, record co’s. Change is coming.

Christian Stegmaier (@cstegmaier): retail / hospitality and appellate lawyer

For younger attys, managing their debt. I feel for those folks…
… For mid-levels and partners, maintaining the pace & staying fresh. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Why are we still debating?

Are we really still debating whether Twitter is an effective business development tool for lawyers? I can think of at least five reasons why we should move on:

1. Twitter is not a volume equation. It’s about engaging in a few conversations that lead to meaningful relationships.
   
   
2. Twitter is not just for fun. It’s about exchanging information that helps us get better at what we do.
   
   
3. Twitter is not formulaic. It’s about making the tool valuable for you, not lamenting its inability to do what other tools do.
   
   
4. Twitter is not going away. Whether it’s Twitter or the next great thing, it has changed the nature of business relationships for good.
   
   
5. Twitter is not difficult. It’s easy to do, requires little time and technology, and benefits are quickly realized with minimal effort.
   

Isn't it time to focus our energy on creating value? 

Are you listening to your peers?

To better understand how lawyers can use Twitter and other social networking tools to grow their practices, I began talking to practicing lawyers who were active on Twitter. Not really "talking” to them, in the traditional sense at least. More like interviewing them. Live. On Twitter. And it's been great: the interviewees have been interesting and engaging, the interviews fun and insightful, and the reaction from the legal twitterverse overwhelmingly positive. 

These "twitterviews" provide a great snapshot of what these lawyers do, how they market themselves, where they think the profession is going, and more. The lawyers I've interviewed are witty, smart, determined, adventurous, willing to take risks and step into the unknown. Lawyers I would want representing me. Lawyers, I sincerely hope, that potential clients will think of when they need representation.  

The interviews have also given me a lot of valuable ideas that I will incorporate into posts from time to time. For now, though, I will let them speak for themselves. Visit 22Tweets.com and read what these lawyers have to say. You’ll be glad you did (and will most likely learn something).

Aren't you on Twitter yet?

Carolyn Elefant, on Nolo’s Legal Marketing Blog, just posted another piece on why lawyers should be on Twitter: “To Twitter or Not To Twitter? That is the Question for Lawyers” (you know where I stand on this from this post and this one). Elefant gives a very useful overview of what Twitter is and how you can use it to market yourself and your practice. Get on Twitter, position yourself as an expert amongst your peers, develop relationships with people who can help you grow your business, have fun engaging others in conversations about things for which you have true passion that have nothing to do with your professional activity. That sounds easy, doesn’t it? It truly is. But do we Tweevangelists really believe that there is value in that? Real value, the kind you can endorse on the back and deposit into your account?

In a recent post, I asked whether lawyers shouldn’t be using Twitter to engage clients rather than other lawyers. I don’t ask the question because I think engaging other lawyers does not have value. It does. I don’t ask it because I think using Twitter to validate your expertise does not have value. It does. I don’t ask it because I don’t think establishing relationships based on non-work interests does not have value. It does. All of the ways that lawyers are currently using Twitter have real value that can lead to real work.

But I cannot believe that there isn’t more. That we cannot move Twitter from being an effective networking tool to being a practical communication tool. That you can’t use Twitter to communicate directly with your clients in real time, taking advantage of the immediacy and directness and responsiveness and crowd-sourcing and all of the other benefits of Twitter to help you do your business better, make your clients happier, provide better service and add greater value. Others are doing it, such as @scottymonty and @zappos. Of course selling shoes or selling cars is not like selling legal services. But can't we learn from them? Can't we apply what they are doing and how they are doing it to what we do and how we do it?

I don’t know the answer to this question, and I’m not even sure I could come up with it on my own. But I am sure that someone will, and while the rest of us are still trying to figure out why a client would want to communicate with her lawyer in a public forum, that person will move the game to the next level. 

Three related points. 

First point: in my last post on Twitter I asked for ideas on how lawyers can use twitter to communicate with clients. I got some good comments that are worth reposting here:

Bruce Carton said

“Lance, I have gone with the Trojan Horse method. I re-branded my @SecuritiesD Twitter feed as a "news wire," and have it identified and piped-in via RSS to my website (securitiesdocket.com) as such. Lawyers understand what a newswire is and like it. They didn't pay much attention to it as a Twitter feed.”

  Doug Cornelius said

Lance -

I think there many be some over-enthusiasm for Twitter as a client development tool for lawyers. I think there is a big variation depending on your practice. Chris Brogan gets lots of clients through Twitter because that is the nature of his business. He is a social media consultant. Kevin O'Keefe gets lots of business through Twitter because he is in the social media business.

As a commercial real estate lawyer, none of my clients use social media. They do not read blogs. They do not use Twitter. Only a handful were even in LinkedIn. Even in my new area of compliance, there are very few people in the industry using blogs or twitter. If I were an IP lawyer or dealing with tech start companies. The opposite would probably be true.

The other concern is the future Twitter business model. Right now, the company has zero revenue. That cannot go on indefinitely. Something will change. It may just put Twitter in the junk-pile (anyone remember Friendster?)

I am a big fan of Twitter. But I am less sold on evangelizing it to clients. I would not spend the time in a pitch talking about Twitter. The focus should be on the client and solving the client's need not on your twitter habits.

I like the idea of putting your twitter username on your business card. (That leaves out bigfirm lawyers. Their marketing department would never allow it.) I assume you would also want your blog URL on your business card. If the client notices, then spend some time talking about it.

Melanie Green said (via Twitter)

Get your marketing folks to put Twitter "follow me" links on your web site in areas where people are providing content.

Second point: Does anyone recall how email was received when it first started to become a widespread communication tool? Did lawyers resist it because clients weren't already using it? Did lawyers try to convince clients not using email that it was a great tool for which they should sign up? 

Third point: Please tell me what you think. Can lawyers move Twitter to the next level of client communication? Should they? What are you doing to make your Twittering valuable to you and your practice? Do you think Twitter can be more than what lawyers are it for today?

Shouldn't lawyers be tweevangelizing to clients?

I can't stop thinking about Chris Brogan's comment that 40-60% of his opportunities come from Twitter (mentioned here yesterday). That's a great commercial for Twitter. When will lawyers be able to say that? Five years? Ten? What will it take? 

There's been a lot of talk lately about lawyers on Twitter, how many are joining, what they are saying, how they are trying to make Twitter work. What about the clients?  If you want 50% -- or even 5% -- of your opportunities to come from Twitter, don't you need to increase the number of clients and potential clients that use Twitter and follow you? The type of clients that have legal issues and hire lawyers? Shouldn't you stop convincing other lawyers to get on Twitter, and start convincing your potential client base to take the first step? How are you going to do that? Some thoughts:

• Put your Twitter username on your business card, above your email address
  
• Let contacts know that you share a lot of information on Twitter that might be of value to them
  
• Devote five minutes of every pitch to show your potential client how Twitter works and what you use it for
  
• Ask new contacts to join Twitter and follow you
  
• Organize structured tweetversations with colleagues on hot legal topics (à la Super Bowl ads discussion organized by Tom Peters)
  

What suggestions do you have?  Tweet them to me @lancegodard.

Now what are you going to do?

You did everything the experts recommended. You became active on Twitter, developing a healthy set of followers. You started using LinkedIn, put all the right keywords in your profile, got stellar recommendations from clients and colleagues, asked and answered questions brilliantly. You regularly post to your blog, and the analytics tell you that more and more people read your work every day. So why aren’t you getting more business?

Maybe the “getting work” part never really changed because your workflow doesn’t depend on the tools you use. Don’t get me wrong: Twitter, LinkedIn, law blogs, and many other great resources are here to stay, and participation has become a must-do, like having a website or a firm brochure or business cards. But you don’t get business by just being smart, by hanging out at the cool parties, or even by being #1 on Google searches for lawyers in Phoenix. You get business by being responsive, by solving problems, and by helping clients sleep better at night. You get business by providing good service. You get business by listening. You get business by adding value. You get business by doing the same things that people getting business have done for generations, and that’s not going to change. So get on it. Talk to people. Find out what they need. Deliver it. And most importantly, add value. That’s what I’m going to do.

Are we asking the right question?

Are we asking the right question about the value of legal blogging? Carolyn Elefant on Legal Blog Watch asks: "Does blogging generate business?" It is a reasonable question, one that has been raised with respect to nearly all forms of lawyer communication -- newsletters, articles, public speaking, PR, to name a few. After all, understanding the return on investment for every type of marketing activity (think advertising, conferences, cocktail receptions, golf outings, etc.) is an important part of developing a meaningful business development and marketing program for lawyers and firms alike. The hard part is linking specific activities with specific results, and while history and experience allow firms to evaluate the ROI on much of their marketing spend, there is little history and no objective experience that allow them to apply the same analysis to legal blogging.

The question that lawyers and law firms should be asking instead is different: "is blogging the right way for us to communicate with our clients and potential clients?" For some clients, it probably isn't. But for an increasing number, legal blogging (and micro-blogging) is a vital way for lawyers and firms to establish strong relationships and communicate significant information, be it about legislative developments, legal analyses, firm news, or anything of relevance to their clients. The process isn't new: firms have been pushing information in myriad forms to their clients for years. What's new is the tool that allows lawyers and firms to establish true two-way communication with their clients, solicit their feedback and incorporate that feedback into future communications. Isn't a blog an important part of a communications program that is truly client-focused?  

Are you still waiting to see if blogging generates business before you start your own?

You say you want a revolution?

I love Twitter. It’s a great tool for all kinds of communication, formal and informal, broad and narrow, business and personal, smart and, well, not so smart. But is it the ne plus ultra of professional communication? Will it revolutionize the world of legal marketing? Kevin O’Keefe thinks so. Scott Greenfield seems to think not. In many ways it already has, if only because it allows me to communicate directly with people who are interested in the things I find important, people I would never have an opportunity to know without Twitter.

But Twitter isn't 'enry 'iggins or Richard Avedon, transforming the ugly duckling into a supermodel with the click of a mouse. Your 140-character witticisms and deep thoughts and pearls of wisdom don't pass through a clever or intelligence filter between your keyboard and the screens of your followers. Behind every tweet you still need substance, you still must have something to say that others find valuable. If you don’t, Twitter isn't going to help. So lawyers (and accountants and PR flacks and sales execs) that didn't have value to share with the rest of the world before Twitter are most likely not going to have much value to share with the Twitosphere. That’s really the bottom line, isn't it? You have to bring something to the table if you want Twitter to change the way you market your services. Twitter is revolutionary because it provides access – to ideas, to people and professionals, to cultures and beliefs, to just about anything that exists.  It's up to you to find the good ones, and to make sure that your tweets add value to the conversation. Like it's always been done.