Imagine 10 years ago as a practicing lawyer taking 30 minutes in the morning to skim news headlines from 400 or 500 reliable news sources you selected because they offered news and commentary related to your area of work. You also monitored keywords relevant to your area of law (company names, products, subjects, cases, and the like) for their use in the news and private commentary.
In the same 30 minutes you simultaneously shared 10 or 12 of those headlines, with a very short comment, with thousands of people who looked at you as a reliable authority in your niche area of the law. The people you shared the headlines with included clients, prospective clients, referral sources, and their influencers (reporters, publishers, conference coordinators, civic leaders, association leaders, and the like).
All the while both the reporter of the news story and the subject (person or company) of the news story saw you sharing their story with thousands because you gave them the proper attribute while sharing their work. Within minutes they of course thanked you, opening the door to further engagement and a possible business relationship.
Let’s get crazier yet. Imagine many of the recipients of the information you shared in turn shared the information with their friends, business associates, reporters, and association leaders. Of course they gave you attribution as the source of the original information.
As long as we’re getting nuts, imagine a little button in their attribution to you which everyone knew to push to see what you did as a lawyer and who you do it for. Because of course those second hand recipients wanted to sign up to get these morning blurbs from you. They too saw you as a trusted and reliable source in your niche area of the law.
Imagine if I told my law partners in 1994 I was going to start to do the above as a means of tasteful and effective business development. “Sure, when cows fly. Now go back in your office and take your medicine.”
Well, with the use of a news aggregator, Feedly, Twitter, and Buffer to space out my tweets, the above is not only doable, it’s something I try to do each day when not traveling.
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Not only do I learn by skimming the latest news so as to improve my company’s service to clients, but my brand as a thought leader in my niche continues to rise.
The results of my strategic Twitter sharing is exactly what lawyers are looking for when using the net for business development.
- Blog readership up.
- Twitter following up.
- LinkedIn connections up.
- Facebook following and engagement up.
- Speaking engagements up.
- Calls from reporters up.
- Business from existing and new clients growing — all from word of mouth.
- Sustained and increasing revenue.
This 30 minutes, which some days is more, probably produces a higher ROI than any business development work I do.
I have over 20,000 people who follow me on Twitter. The vast majority of those followers are lawyers (private practice and in-house), other legal professionals (managing partners, CMOs, CKOs, CIOs), business executives, marketing and communications professionals, reporters/editors, publishers, conference coordinators, and the like.
This group has a high percentage of what I’d call innovators, leaders, and influencers. They are go-getters growing their businesses and changing the world. They think outside the box. They spread what they read and hear via social media, email, blogs, newspapers, and conferences.
These folks have come to rely on me for news and commentary I see on social media, legal technology, business development, and digital publishing. I am their trusted intelligence agent.
This is the type of audience a public relations professional dies for. And Twitter puts me in touch with them, each and every day.
As an added kicker, I am nurturing and making meaningful relationships with the people I want to get to know. We’re becoming friends of each other.
Start small. You are not going to have 1,000 valuable followers overnight. Growing an audience interested in news related to your niche area of the law from 50 to 100 to 500 can take time. Know too that some lawyers with a few hundred followers are finding that’s all they need to build a name, to build relationships with the right people and to development business.
As you grow your followers, know that you’re learning, you’re staying abreast of developments in your field, you’re strengthening your brand as a reliable and trusted authority in your niche, and you’re developing relationships with your target audience. All the stuff law firm business development dreams are made of.
Call Twitter mindless babble that’s beneath lawyers. Smart lawyers focused on a niche armed with Feedly, Twitter, and Buffer will bury you.
Kevin O’Keefe (@kevinokeefe) is the CEO and founder of LexBlog, which empowers lawyers to increase their visibility and accelerate business relationships online. With LexBlog’s help, legal professionals use their subject matter expertise to drive powerful business development through blogging and social media. Visit LexBlog.com.
LexBlog also hosts LXBN, the world’s largest network of professional blogs. With more than 8,000 authors, LXBN is the only media source featuring the latest lawyer-generated commentary on news and issues from around the globe. Visit lxbn.com now.