The only lawyer in town?
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 2:04PM I joined LinkedIn in 2007. It wasn't very exciting.
The scope to use it for business development seemed minimal as I rarely came across anyone who used it.
Fast forward to 2011. LinkedIn now has 100 million members, with over 6 million in the UK (source:- LinkedIn Press Site).
Surely there must be some potential clients out there now? Of course there are, but for me LinkedIn is still mainly a (very effective) outsourced CRM system.
There is an exception to this though:- LinkedIn Groups.
I set up a group a while back aimed at our local business community. It now has four hundred plus members and it's a good forum for promoting events and discussions and for members to plug their businesses.
So far, so unexciting. Along with answering questions on LinkedIn Answers this is one of the ideas that internet marketers have been plugging for a while to make the most of LinkedIn.
What hadn't occurred to me until recently though was the difference, for a professional advisor, between being a member of a group like this and being its "owner".
As a lawyer, you expect competition from other law firms in the local area.
There are forums like BNI where you can "buy" exclusivity within a group (at a price), but in the local press or at open networking events you are one of several lawyers competing to get their message across.
If you put up a billboard there is nothing to stop your competitors following suit.
The same thing applies in most social media spaces; any local lawyer can set up a Twitter search for "moving house" and plug their services to potential conveyancing clients (you shouldn't though as it is horrible, spammy behaviour and won't win you any friends, let alone clients).
With LinkedIn Groups it doesn't have to be this way.
If you own a group you can have total control over who can join and post.
You can refuse to let any lawyers join... you can kick them out if they start to step on your toes... or you can just set their membership so that anything they post has to be moderated by you.
You can build a microcosm of the local business community where you are the only lawyer in town.
There is nothing to stop the other lawyers from setting up competing groups, but if you have critical mass (the LinkedIn Liverpool group has nearly 3,000 members for example) then a new group will struggle to gain traction.
If there isn't a LinkedIn group in your area (geographical or practice sector) then this is all the reason you should need to get one started. It's a landgrab, and as LinkedIn membership grows (at the rate of two members per second!) having staked your claim at this stage will look like an increasingly smart move.
Is this all a bit "unseemly" for lawyers to engage in? Some people may think so, but a LinkedIn Group is not a democracy. Provided you aren't breaching the LinkedIn TOS then it is up to you how you use it. There is quite a bit of work involved in promoting and moderating a successful group so why would you let your competition piggy-back on it?
Why not just be the only lawyer (or accountant or IFA) in town?
