Outsource your tweets?

Does it make sense to outsource your tweets?

A simple enough question, but it has started some heated debates on Twitter.

As I wrote in my I am not a social media expert post a couple of weeks ago, there are social media experts out there who advocate outsourcing your tweets. In fact (surprise, surprise...) they will create them for you.

My view? There are two basic ways for law firms to use Twitter. I wrote about this in Tweeting in Convoy so I won't repeat it all here, but you either:-

• use a "corporate" Twitter account almost as an alternative to an RSS feed to give information about the firm, news, events etc


• allow individuals within the firm to run their own Twitter accounts to interact with clients, prospects and others in a more personal way and build up relationships


• adopt the "convoy" approach with a corporate feed, but also individual accounts.

I can see how the production of content for the first type of account could be outsourced. After all, it doesn't rely on social interaction or personality.

My only question would be why a firm would spend good money paying a social media guru to do this.

All it needs is a free TwitterFeed account to pick up the RSS feeds from the relevant part of your site and feed it to Twitter.

Tweets about events, firm news etc. which don't feature on your site are going to be produced by your marketing team in any event. They can tweet them as easily as email them to the social media consultant.

I don't see how the second kind of account can possibly be outsourced. Your Twitter followers want to have a relationship with you, not with a marketing company.

Look at the debate on the other side of the Atlantic about legal ghostblogging (triggered by Mark Bennet's rent a brain with Ghostbloggers post on his Social Media Tyro blog) to get an idea of the strength of feeling about this. I particularly like the graphic comment on the original post from The Trial Warrior:-

"It’s like getting a rectal exam at the doctor’s office and then finding out that the doctor was away that day."

If you outsource the creation of your firm's tweets to a third party (without suitable disclosure) then you risk this kind of reaction from people who believed they were tweeting with someone from your firm.

At a deeper level, how is a social media marketing firm going to know enough about your firm to produce interesting, engaging content without your input?

How are they going to deal with replies and conversations? Are you happy for them to run with these and come up with a response on your behalf… or should they call you up every time to get your comments?

There are a few arguments which have been floated to try to justify this outsourcing approach:-

Lawyers are busy people... they don't have the time to use Twitter

My glib answer:- if you are so busy that you don't have time to use Twitter for businesss development then you don't need to use Twitter for business development.

Nobody has the spare time anyway - it has to be diverted from the time you would be spending on things. A lot of the time I spend on Twitter is the odd minutes when I couldn't fit in a whole lot else anyway.

You don't do your own printing, you send it to the printshop. What's the difference?

Last time I checked, the printers didn't produce the content for your business cards and brochures. They print what you tell them.

Outsourcing your tweets isn't like using a printer; it's like sending the social media guru in your place to a client drinks event you have been invited to. Sound like a sensible idea?

Marketing is my thing... I will be able to do it better. You concentrate on the lawyering

Quite possibly true, but we are not talking about "marketing" in terms of email campaigns, cold-calling, advertising or public relations. In these areas, the marketers are the experts.

But when it comes to chatting with potential clients one to one, building up a rapport and showing them that you could help them? There is only one person who can do this… you.

If you have money to burn then outsource your "corporate" RSS-style tweets. I doubt anyone will be too bothered, and this isn't really where the value lies in Twitter anyway.

And if someone suggests you outsource a Twitter account with any kind of personal element to it (your individual account or simply a more "chatty" & personal corporate account)?

Just keep in mind that image of the social media guru turning up at the drinks reception and picking your name badge off the table...

Comments

[Jon Busby]

I think this is a really interesting debate and thanks for opening it up Jon.

My feeling is that I am uncomfortable with someone else managing my messaging, and whilst some may think me extreme for disconnecting with someone who uses a third party, that is my view, right or wrong.

You could say "so what." But I think that is too easily dismissive and if we are going to compromise core principles then why bother at all?

Of course I accept that major corporates and celebrities do this all the time, but the point is that I know that. But if I have a problem and tweet a service provider I like to know I am communicating with someone who actually works for them, is part of the culture.

You rightly point out that social media is not like other forms of marketing, social media by it's definition is about the individual who at times collectively become the crowd.

I, as you know, was originally, @directlawuk and regenerated into @jonb1966. I have never gone on record as to why I did that but it kind of connects in to this discussion. Sometimes I want to say things, (sometimes they are spats with my wife or shouts about music and film). At the same time I am acutely aware that there is a blur between what I say with my Epoq hat on and what I am saying as Jon Busby.

As social media grows I just thought it appropriate to define those edges better which has also spun out in to Legal 2.0, which, (certainly going forward), does not push Epoq or DirectLaw but just reports my personal take. I fund the whole enterprise myself etc.

I am happy for people to talk to me and see my eccentricities and more human(ish) side as that is me and i like me, and if you like that then we will find it easier to engage. If you don't like it then you can choose not to engage, bearing in mind this is a two way thing.

The @directlawuk account will follow the @mailchimp model, a tool for news, product and development updates and product specific debate.

@directlawuk is not written by a 3rd party it is written by a Epoq employee and in fact we may start creating accounts for say our finance, product, marketing etc departments because, and this is the real point, if you are going to tweet to a service provider you want to make sure you are tweeting with the person you think you are tweeting with.

Finally, social media is all about language and the exquisite beauty of language is that it makes us individual. My concern with 3rd party tweeting is that their messages can become dumbed down, soulless and generic.

Tweeting moves fast, you can't exactly get a quarterly update from your 3rd party supplier. Consequently employing someone else to do your tweeting could be very counter productive

[@jonathanlea]

Great post Jon! I've noticed the more 'antisocial' type of outsourcing or non-personal practices decreasing recently - perhaps these will all but disappear soon as etiquette changes accordingly

[Peninsulawyer]

Thanks for the comment Jon - it is useful to get another perspective from someone who is very much involved in using social media for business development.

I'm hoping that this will open up a debate as I know there are some marketers who disagree - and to be honest I would be quite happy to see some solid, reasoned argument as to why outsourcing would work. It is easy to be too dogmatic about these things, but if somebody is able to demonstrate that they are doing it and it is working then I am happy to listen.

I agree with you that it doesn't have to be as limited as saying "I will only tweet with identifiable individuals"... it is more about authenticity and transparency so that if I tweet Directlaw support I want to know I am communicating with someone from there, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be the same person every time (by the way if Twitter bring in the promised business accounts with "bylines" to show which individual user is tweeting it would be very helpful for this).

Likewise, if a Twitter account purports to be from XYZ Law LLP then I only really expect that the tweets will be from one or more people within that firm (but not an external PR agency).

If you are looking at an account which appears to be from an individual then I personally don't think there should be any leeway at all... it should be written by the supposed author.

I guess celebrities are different, but I don't follow any (apart from Stephen Fry and a few Ubergeeks who I am pretty sure write their own material). I guess as many of them don't write their own autobiographies you wouldn't expect much more on Twitter, but I don't think there are many tweeting lawyers who fall into that category.