Social Media and the Law Society

I don't have time to do this justice over the Christmas break, but my first post of the New Year will be an analysis of the Law Society's new practice note on social media use.

This slipped under my radar as it was released just before Christmas, but there are a number of very interesting points for blogging and tweeting lawyers.

I really want to have the chance to read any analyse it properly though rather than just posting a quick comment so this will have to wait until after the holidays!

Say hello to CubeSocial

Holidays and post-holiday work mountains have curtailed my blogging recently, but I wanted to post a quick review / plug of a new Social CRM service I have been beta testing called CubeSocial.

It has recently (today?) come out of beta and is worth a look for anyone using Twitter for business purposes (lawyers or otherwise).

The concept is simple, but well executed. You simply plug in your Twitter account and the CubeSocial web interface pulls in your Twitter contacts and matches up any other social profiles or services they use like YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging platforms. Statistics show what percentage of your contacts use the various platforms (useful for deciding where to focus your social media energies) and you can also add other contact information and notes if you want to use it as more of a CRM system.

CubeSocial also archives the history of your conversations with your various Twitter contacts so you can refer back to them (which is useful as the history which Twitter provides is fairly limited).

You also have the ability to have multiple users on the account, which seems to be a great way to coherently manage a number of Twitter accounts Tweeting in convoy without having to resort to a corporate account with multiple authors which can seem rather anonymous.

Contacts can be tagged with categories (or whatever you like) and there is also a social search function to help monitor social media buzz about your brand. At the time of reviewing this only covers Twitter although I hope it will be expanded in due course to cover a wider range of platforms.

I have been following the Connectegrity team who are behind CubeSocial on Twitter for quite some time and it is great to see their Social Business Intelligence project emerge into the light of day.

I'm not sure what the pricing structure will be, but you can sign up for a free trial on the CubeSocial site.

Altruistic or parasitic?

Yesterday I was asked to speak at a "social media marketing for lawyers" conference.

I won't give details of which one, but it would have involved a full day out of the office and significant travelling time.

A number of social media and branding "gurus" are lined up to speak and I was very kindly recommended by one of the other speakers on the (maybe misguided) basis that I have some valuable insights to share on using social media to grow your law practice.

Attendees are paying £1,500 or more for the two day conference (not revealing any confidential information there by the way - it is all on the event website), but apparently speakers can attend for free.

And the really great part? That free attendance is all they are offering speakers. It's not a paid speaking gig and they aren't even covering expenses.

Let me just analyse this a little more:-

• We want you to take a day out of your business at a cost of (fill in your own figure here!)

• To travel to our event at your own expense.

• Where you will divulge whatever know-how and experience you have built up in social media marketing.

• To your competitors.

• For free.

• At a conference they are paying a fortune to attend.

Is there any other sector where people would agree to do this? Is there any other area where lawyers would do it (unpaid training sessions for your competitors on the latest legal developments?). Or is it something special about social media?

The social media marketers and other presenters who are selling to law firms are in a different position… it's a good opportunity for them to market to their client base. If you practice in a niche area where referrals from other lawyers are key to your business then maybe it also makes sense.

But for most practicing lawyers in more mainstream areas, to offer to speak at this kind of event for free seems crazy.

There is, or should be, an altruistic side to social media... and I am always happy to give whatever limited advice I can (for free) to those who starting out. I'm not a consultant or an expert, but if I can help I will usually try.

I draw the line at altruism when my efforts are packaged and sold for another's profit. That isn't altruistic... just parasitic.

I'm sure there will be a lot of these kind of conferences cropping up in 2011. As lawyers we need to have more respect for the value of our time and expertise.

If what we have to say is worth paying to hear (and it is - a lot of the people who are speaking are lawyers who have used social media to great effect in their own legal businesses) then why give it away for free!

Ignite my fire...

Last night I got the chance to speak at the third Ignite Liverpool event.

For the unitiated, Ignite is a global movement which came out of Seattle in 2006 with the aim of promoting networking, information sharing and fun. The format is interesting (if a little scary for the presenters!). To quote from the Ignite website:-

"In talks that are exactly five minutes long, Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds."

I delivered a brief history of social media and the law in 20 slides... and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The talks were an eclectic mix ranging from bovine homicide to global warming via Batman, which made for one of the most interesting events I have attended in a long time.

There is a good review of the evening on the LDP Creative Blog and the individual talks were filmed and will be available online shortly (I will post a link to mine for anyone who wants in lesson in how not to present!).

If you are in the Liverpool area then I would 100% recommend coming along to the next event (and speaking if you are feeling brave - it is a great experience!). Otherwise take a look at the main Ignite site for a local event.

http://ignite.oreilly.com/

The social media election?

After last week's election results it seems that @nick_clegg may not have as much in common with @BarackObama as some of his supporters had hoped.

More on this later, but for now don't worry... I'm not planning to get political. I have read enough political commentary over the last few weeks and I don't feel the need to add to it.

Actually, I am interested in the role of social media in the campaign... in particular whether we have seen the first "social media election" as The Guardian and others predicted or whether Gordon McIntyre-Kemp has it right in his post The Next Election will be Socialised.

Twitter and Facebook have certainly been buzzing with debate and grassroots campaigns. Social media has been the story (Kerry McCarthy's ill-considered tweet about postal votes) or given it viral reach (such as Philippa Stroud's prayer sessions to 'cure' gay people).

There are some politicians who are established social media users like @tom_watson and (looking a bit closer to home) @leahfraser who kept on Tweeting through the campaign and after the count was announced.

However, most of this buzz is what I think of as "horizontal" social media (and yes, I know that could be misinterpreted!). What I mean by this is people talking about the election (debating, re-Tweeting media stories and blog posts) - rather than interacting directly with policy makers, candidates or party leaders (which I would label as "vertical" interaction).

When you start to look beyond the horizontal, the picture is quite different.

If you watched the election campaign unfold on Twitter you might have noticed the similarity I mentioned earlier between Nick Clegg and Barack Obama. Both of their Twitter accounts are "managed" (in Clegg's case) or "run" (in Obama's) by somebody else on their behalf.

Both accounts are genuine (Obama's is even a verified account) and totally transparent about the third party involvement (if you really want to outsource your tweets then you could learn a lot from their approach).

When you start to look at "vertical" social media activity from these accounts (and from @uklabour and @conservatives) it is pretty much a one way street.

In other words, the parties and many politicians treated social media as a broadcast medium. They realised that social media was an important channel to communicate with the electorate, but used it at a fairly rudimentary level.

We saw David Cameron on Mumsnet of course, but the leaders debates themselves were firmly TV based. Twitter Q&A sessions were few and far between. 

If David Cameron does agree a coalition with the Liberal Democrats (at the time of writing he had been invited to form a government, but the coalition deal wasn't signed) then the accouncement isn't likely to come via a Tweet from Nick Clegg.

In fact, the best use of social media from someone close to a party leader was probably @SarahBrown10, who uses Twitter in a much more "social" way and has picked up over a million followers (a hell of a lot more than any of the official Twitter accounts). 

This revolution, at least, was not Twittervised.

I'm not arguing that politicians should be tweeting from the campaign trail every five minutes and I don't think it is realistic to expect Nick Clegg to be live-blogging his ongoing discussions with the other parties.

However, I do believe this may be the last election where this relatively shallow involvement in social media will work for politicians (or maybe the second last, but I'm assuming for now that the next general election is in five years or so).

Twitter didn't even exist during the 2005 general election campaign, and Facebook still wasn't accessible to the general public. You can't call either of these "emerging technologies" any more, but I wouldn't like to even try to predict the reach of social media by 2015 (and what it will look like).

If the graph continues in anything like its current form, then expect to see social media to play a much more important role in 2015 (or thereabouts)... in a real "social media election".

Politicians won't have the option of hopping on the social bandwagon once Parliament is dissolved. There will be a divide between those who have built up their social networks and developed relationships with online constituents over the long term and those who still see social media as just another campaign tool.

My message to the candidates who ventured into social media for this election campaign? Don't stop now... if you carry on engaging, building up relationships and showing a little of what you really stand for it will stand you in good stead next time around.

If your Tweets stop once the returning officer announces the results, then don't expect to have much social media credibility in five years' time.