07/14/2010 // West Palm Beach, Florida, USA // Law Firm Marketing Dude // Kevin Quinlan
Attorneys who believe that Twitter lacks powerful law firm marketing and business development tools may have been seriously misled by its pop culture prevalence. The social media network allows attorneys to create a unique firm-branded presence and effectively market their legal services through “tweets,” a 140-character message broadcast throughout the site.
The Twitter phenomenon is not disappearing any time soon, in January 2010 Twitter attracted 73.5 million unique visitors, a gain of 8 percent over December 2009, comScore reported. In addition Twitter boasts a staggering annual growth rate of 1,105 percent, leading comScore to rank the site as the 52nd largest website in the world (ranking above ESPN, and just under BBC and Craigslist).
Not only is Twitter a powerful marketing and brand building tool for lawyers, it is recession friendly as well. A Twitter account, which is free, can be set up in a matter of minutes, allowing marketing directors to begin “tweeting” about their law firms to prospective clients almost instantly. The mind behind many successful law firm marketing campaigns, Kevin Quinlan explains how Twitter can create a powerful brand for your law firm, helping to attract and build a new client base.
1. Claim Your Name; Protect Your Brand: Sign up now! Although Twitter user names haven’t taken off like the great domain name frenzy of the 1990’s, you want to make sure no one else scoops up your preferred name. Your unique user name is key to building a powerful brand for your law firm. Your user name should incorporate either your firm’s name or a nickname that features an area of practice your firm focuses on, for example: TheSmithLawFirm or SlipnFallLawyer.
2. Practice Makes Perfect: Don’t know what your doing? That’s okay; you don’t need too. Building a law firm-branded Twitter presence is a safe and easy way to begin marketing your legal expertise. Through trial and error your law firm’s attorneys can begin to understand Twitter better, including how to reach and track a specific legal niche or practice area audience.
3. Keep Talking, They’re Listening: You may feel like no one is listening, but give it time, it takes a while to build your followers. Not all of your followers are going to answer back, or even see your message, but be assured that your message is being heard. Remember, the “Twitterati” or journalists on Twitter are searching for their next big story; you never know, your Tweet about your firm’s landmark settlement could be picked up and splashed across the headlines of The New York Times.
4. Search Engines Love It: Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo eat up new content. Your Tweets are an effective way to get your content indexed by search engines, which are then displayed to your target audience. Your message is not just available to Twitter users anymore, now it can be found by searching the World Wide Web, allowing for more prospective clients to find your attorneys, and your message.
5. Stock Your Twitter Arsenal: The marketing power of Twitter is endless. The social media site offers widgets and developer tools, which can embed Twitter feeds or selected tweets into any website or blog you or your law firm publishes, providing for maximum exposure. These features produce an easy tweet-on-demand content management system, which will broadcast your breaking and up-to-the-minute Tweets from your cell phone.
6. Complement Your Law Firm’s PR Effort: A firm-branded Twitter account can be utilized as an extension of your legal website, boosting your overall PR, web visibility and brand awareness effort. As your Twitter following grows, an invaluable and relevant network will build, creating a place to keep your attorneys in the know and to get your message heard. A sense of brand loyalty can also be created among your followers, who could pass along your name to a prospective client or even just to regularly check out what’s going on among your legal team.
The social media experts at CEPAC have proven experience in law firm website design and attorney marketing. If you are ready to increase leads and build a firm-branded social media presence on Twitter for your law firm, then contact CEPAC today for a free consultation. Call or visit www.cepac.com to take your law firm to the next level.
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