another marketing guide from Conscious Solutions

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TWITTER

Did you receive a slice of Twitter’s birthday cake on their 7th birthday? No, neither did we. Still, cake or not, it’s undeniable that Twitter has come a long way since its creation by Jack Dorsey back in March 2006. Over 500 million users later, with 21% of the global internet population now active on Twitter, we’ve been pondering how law firms can capitalise on its success.

The potential audience alone is one reason to set up a profile. To put this into perspective, the number of active users on Twitter is growing at a faster rate than Facebook, namely 714% since July 2009. So, it’s safe to say that at 7 years old, it’s still trending. In fact, a little birdy told me that every day in Twitter world, the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets are written, equal to a mammoth 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

As a free platform offering firms another opportunity to interact with their prospects, it’s hard to imagine why they wouldn’t sign up? Whether you are a regional or international firm, with a sector or service area focus, Twitter is a great medium for strengthening your real world relationships with businesses and individuals via the digital world. While it’s unlikely that you’ll reach 35,656,780 followers like Justin Bieber, or Stephen Fry’s 5,635,906, you can always aim for London firm Silverman Sherliker’s 17,275 followers!

The following ideas are a summary of the work that we’ve conducted with firms over the past one or two years, plus hints and tips from our specialist PR partner, MD Comms. This booklet will help firms to refine their initial approach to Twitter and their on-going strategy.

Natalie Gay Melissa DavisMarketing & Sales Executive Managing DirectorConscious Solutions MD Communications

Introduction

Getting Twitter ready

Its straightforward stuff; go to www.twitter.com and register. Your Twitter address can only have 15 characters and with over 500 million other users don’t cry if your ideal address is already taken. Once you’re registered make sure you upload your logo and personalise your Twitter page with your firm’s branding.

Boring bits first...Yes, it’s common sense, but before you start tweeting, remember that Twitter is a public platform. Your personal profile is accessible to all Twitter users, so you should always be weary of what you’re posting. A general rule that we follow... If you’re not prepared to “say it in the room”, in other words to say your tweet out loud to a whole room of people, don’t post it!

Social Media PoliciesLaw firms’ policies and attitudes towards social media will vary, but most agree on the following: do not breach contracts or confidentiality; do not criticise, bully or harass staff; or be misleading about what the firm can offer. Nor should information about individuals be released. Never forget that your tweets are your own, you are wholly responsible for them and the firm accepts no responsibility.

It’s mine, my own!If you have a personal Twitter profile, it should be just that. It’s not recommended to associate the profile with your firm; be it using the firm’s branding or name, especially if it hasn’t been authorised by the Partners. Different firms operate diverse policies regarding personal Twitter profiles; often despite being your own, firms may still monitor what’s being posted, to keep an eye out for any inappropriate behaviour.

Multiple Twitter Accounts@inksters, @BrianInkster, @ScotsFamilyLaw, @CroftingLaw and @louisefk are all Twitter accounts owned and used by the Scottish

THE BITS OF COMMON SENSE

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solicitors Inksters. At one point Brian Inkster, Managing Partner joked that the firm had more Twitter accounts than solicitors. Seriously though, if you have a sector focus or multiple geographies, then you should think about setting up multiple Twitter accounts. There are no hard and fast rules about how to name the accounts; many firms use their initials plus the sector. Others who allow their individual fee earners to tweet, use a combination of either the firm name or initial, plus the individual’s initials, for example, @JEB_BBLaw and @CAN_BBLaw are both from DWF Biggart Baillie.

Never, ever buy followersI don’t care how appealing the adverts and sites on the right look, never, ever buy followers on Twitter. All you will get is a load of brand new Twitter accounts without real people behind them who will never retweet you or help you build your audience.

The Area of InfluenceFirms often ask us which individuals or companies they should be following on Twitter. We tend to abide by one rule; follow all of those within your area of influence, be it clients and potential clients, competitors, suppliers, friends of the firm, local businesses or supporters, charities you’re working with, or people with similar interests. If you operate in a particular geography or sector then concentrate on those areas.

Look out for the A-Listers!No, we don’t mean the likes of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga or Stephen Fry, (unless of course they’re related to your area of work), but do look out for those users who have influence on Twitter; in other words, they have lots of followers. Generally speaking, the more followers a user has the more influence they have as their tweets are seen by more people. These are the ones that you want to follow.

GROWING YOUR FOLLOWERS

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What’s the @ got to do with it? You may have noticed other Twitter users adding the “@” symbol to their tweets; by inserting the “@” symbol before another user’s Twitter name, a tweet is sent to them directly, and will appear in their mentions on their Twitter homepage. Furthermore, Twitter will send them an email alert, so don’t worry, they will definitely get the message that you’ve mentioned them.

#UsingHashtagsHashtags are a great way of grouping words together, either to draw attention to certain aspects of a tweet, or to attribute the tweet to a certain event or news bulletin. If one hashtag receives a lot of activity, it is at this point they will trend on Twitter.

Retweet Away!Retweet followers’ stuff; it’s a mutual pat on the back and a great way of building effective Twitter relationships. Do your followers a favour or two and you never know, they might return it in the future if you’re running a promotion and trying to get the word out! This is particularly important for the A-lister’s mentioned above; be callous about it – retweet those A-Listers with the biggest following and then have great tweets of your own that they can then retweet to show reciprocity.

Don’t be Shy, go ahead and ask for RT’s!The aim of Twitter is to get your tweets seen by as many people as possible. Research conducted into Twitter activity has shown that 26% of people will retweet if you actually write ‘Please RT!’. Simple we know, but if you don’t ask you don’t get!

To offer a competition, or not to offer a competition…? That is the question. Further Twitter research has shown that 32% of people will retweet if there’s an incentive to do so like, ‘retweet for the chance to win a trip to Barbados’. Of course in most cases, the giveaway will be a little more modest.

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Consistency is Key Posting one tweet a month isn’t going to get you noticed. Organically grow your followers and those you’re following by getting active and staying active. Set aside time to be on Twitter and you’ll almost certainly see the results. With such a strict character limit, how long will it take?!

Whoa….Twitter allows 140 characters! That’s correct. But when someone retweets your great content, Twitter will stick “RT @youraddress” in front of the other person’s tweet. So, if you keep your writing to 120 characters there is no risk that your tweet gets truncated. Many of the tools we discuss below will help take care of this but it’s still good discipline to write to an artificial 120 character limit.

Follow your CompetitorsNow, we’re by no means suggesting that you stalk your competitors… But keeping a watchful eye on their activity on Twitter is never a bad idea. Perhaps they’re doing something that you’re not?

Promote Local CompaniesRaising the awareness of your local partners and/or suppliers will be very much appreciated if they’re running a promotion, organising an event or supporting a charity, especially if you’ve built up a loyal following. You never know when you’ll need them, and it never hurts to get involved in your local community.

Team TweetsGet as many different team members as possible involved in the Twitter activity; two, or even ten minds are always better than one! One of our clients has an “internal Twitter feed” that anyone can use; using a form on their intranet that only allows for 120 characters, plus fields for name and a website link, fee earners can complete the form and submit it to the marketing team. It’s then up to those in charge of Twitter content to make an editorial decision whether to post it as a live tweet; this really helps with ensuring they have enough content to post.

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Do the MathWe recommend that the ideal Twitter ratio is 2:1 followers:following. Anything more than this, say 10:1 and it’s a signal that you’re not really listening to your audience, in other words you have too many followers to really pay attention to (pop and film stars excepted). It’s also a signal to Twitter itself that your account may be a “spam” account. Less than 1:1 and unless you’re new it tends to mean that you are “listening” more than you are contributing & engaging with people. But the more people following you the greater the audience you can tweet too.

Point back to your website Remember, your online presence begins with your website, so always aim to point people back in that direction. Shout from the rooftops if you’ve got a new team member, you’ve done some work in the local community, you’re offering some new services, won any awards or have any new elements on the website such as blogs or news items.

Rule of Ten Of every ten things you mention on Twitter only three (four max) should be directly about “you”. You need to signpost to other interesting content around the web or retweet other people. If all you are talking about is me, me, me, then you are likely to get unfollowed.

Let Google do the work, so you don’t have to.Wondering what on earth you’ll tweet about? If you don’t have one already, set up a Gmail account. Then simply set up a whole host of different keywords under Google Alerts (www.google.co.uk/alerts) relevant to your firm or area of expertise. Google will crawl the web looking for any articles relevant to the keywords, collate them and have them sent to your email address either in real time, daily or weekly. Also try http://www.followthatpage.com to bookmark pages you want to be alerted to when they change.

CONTENT IS KING; DON’T LOOK LIKE A JESTER

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Newsletters to your inboxSign up to as many newsletters as possible that are relevant to your area of expertise; these are a great source of knowledge delivered straight to your inbox and another easy tool for forming the basis of your tweets.

Great stuff for Twitter FolderOnce you have your content coming straight to your inbox, make sure you set up a folder in your emails devoted to great stuff for twitter and set up a rule to get emails sent directly to it. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of content to use to avoid any head scratching when you’re not sure what to say.

Demonstrate your expertise By all means schedule tweets far into the future (more about this later…) but also remember to be reactive to breaking news relevant to your industry; showing your expertise, knowledge and responsiveness to changes in your areas of influence will gain the respect of your followers.

#GreatForEventsUsing a unique hashtag for an event that you’re running is a great way to review and group together what your attendees are saying about your event. Slight word of warning though, be sure to check if the hashtag has been used before; you don’t want your event being attributed to something inappropriate! Promote it as much as possible, mention it at the start of the event and reiterate it on any PowerPoint slides too.

#SeparateWordsWithCapitalsIf you’re grouping together words to make up your hashtag, make sure you use capital letters to separate each word to make it more readable. We wouldn’t recommend grouping together any more than five words; it just gets confusing for your readers!

#TWITTERFOREVENTS

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Our preferred platform… HootsuiteThere are many platforms available to make tweeting as easy and non-time consuming as possible. Our preferred platform is www.hootsuite.com. It’s free for up to 5 social media accounts, and integrates with most platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Perfect Planning Prevents… With the aid of Hootsuite, you can plan and schedule tweets far into the future using the publisher tool to ensure consistent activity on your account from month to month. If the time and date need reviewing after it’s been saved, simply drag and drop the tweets in the publisher tool to move them.

Using bulk uploadThe easiest way to schedule a whole load of tweets on one account is to simply download the bulk scheduler sample available on Hootsuite; follow-ing the outlined format, simply add your tweets and re-upload to Hoot-suite. And magically your scheduled tweets will appear in the publisher.

Get Mobile!Using a mobile device? Download the free and straightforward to use Hootsuite app available for IOS and Android devices to make tweeting on the move easy.

Spread tweets out, 4-5 times a day66% of Twitter users will unfollow you if you’re tweeting too much. We recommend tweeting no more than 4-5 times a day on the same account.

“Hey! How did you do that...?!”Hootsuite allows you to post status updates (Facebook), network updates (LinkedIn) or tweets (Twitter) on behalf of other accounts if that user has logged in with Hootsuite. Even so, to avoid the potential awkwardness where the person involved didn’t know you were going to tweet, just set up a rule that forwards the correct user an email once a tweet is sent on their behalf.

TOOLS AND PLATFORMS

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Be uniqueWhile Hootsuite can integrate with different social media platforms, including LinkedIn, we recommend not posting a tweet to a LinkedIn or Facebook profile; the character limits on LinkedIn and Facebook are much longer than Twitter and as a result the update looks shorter.

Paper.liPaper.li is a site that allows you to read Twitter and Facebook feeds as a daily newspaper. Paper.li extracts tweets including blog posts, newspapers, online articles, images or videos and groups them together by relevant content forming a series of articles. This cool free tool summarises everything that you’ve been tweeting about on a daily basis and then tweets to your account on your behalf, mentioning other Twitter users who have been curated into your daily paper.

P.S. Follow me on Twitter.Even with the most gripping of emails, most people will skip to the P.S. at the bottom, and even more will respond to a command when given one. So finishing an email with, P.S. Why not follow us on Twitter?, is a great way to increase your followers with very little effort.

Keep it InterestingResearch into Twitter has shown that 92% of people retweet because of interesting content, so give your followers some great news and you’ll be sure to get the word out!

Don’t be selfish!If you’re lucky enough to get some followers, don’t annoy them! Sure, they want to hear what you’ve got to say; some might even want to hear more about your services, but all the time? Not so much. In fact, 34% of people unfollow because you’re talking about yourself too much, so quit it!

RETWEETING, UNFOLLOWING & #FF

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#FF (Friday Follows) Started back in January 2009, the #FF was suggested by http://twitter.com/micah as a way of acknowledging or recommending people who follow you each Friday using the hashtag #FF. The rest, as they say, is history. It’s a great way to touch base or reconnect with followers who you’ve not had that much interaction with.

Embrace IndividualitySure, on your website you want to be professional and corporate, but the wonder of social media, and Twitter is no exception, is the option to show your firm’s sociable and individual personality.

Time = ResultsWe can’t recommend a specific amount of time that you should spend on Twitter a week, but it probably goes without saying that by investing more time in Twitter, you’ll get better results.

Batching, grouping and schedulingUsing Hootsuite to group tweets together on one account, or schedule across multiple accounts is a great way of maximising on content, saving on time and communicating to a wider audience.

Best time of day to send tweets? 11am on a Thursday? Unsurprisingly, there is no conclusive evidence that suggests there is a specific time of day that’s perfect to send tweets… But generally speaking, if you’re posting tweets on behalf of a company, probably better to do it within work times. On a personal account, it’s probably better to do it during your commute on the train, in the evenings or at weekends. In short, it really depends on your audience.

Remember to say Thank YouWhen you get new followers, remember to say thanks to them by using the @ before their Twitter name; this 10 seconds of kindness will help your virtual relationship blossom.

TWITTER INTO THE FUTURE

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Use Twitter as a medium to answer questions posed via TwitterTwitter is direct, which can be both a blessing and a curse. If Twitter users pay you a compliment, a whole bunch of other people see, plus it’s dead easy to respond with a quick ‘thanks!’. Of course, this goes both ways; if your service, for one reason or another, has been less than perfect, it’s an easy medium to use to have a real moan. Of course though, you’ll get an email alert to let you know what’s been said, and it’s dead easy to respond quickly. Just make sure you have a response ready for such a scenario; preparation is the key.

New member of staff? So you already know that one of the main reasons for effective social media marketing is to get people back on to your website where you can sell them some services! But we also know that law firms get between 20-40% of all traffic to staff profiles, so if you have a new member of staff joining the team, then tweet about it!

Never waste an opportunity With Twitter users in excess of 500 million and 150,000 new users every day, don’t waste the opportunity to display your firm’s branding in the profile picture on Twitter; it’s prime online real estate. It’s also the image that shows when you send a tweet or search on a particular user. It’s a great place to put the company logo as this is more likely to be recognised by other twitter users; if you have more than one account it could be a case of changing or modifying the colours to differentiate each one.

Twitter Backgrounds A feature that Twitter introduced recently is the ability to create or select your own background cover image behind your profile picture. It can be used very effectively to show the personality of your firm and engage with your followers, plus, it’s a free space. If you want to try something a little different to using your logo, remember that people relate to people, so why not incorporate your staff into the background image to make your firm look more approachable.

VISUALLY

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Consistency is Key Don’t forget, if your firm has multiple profiles on Twitter, ensure that they’re all consistently branded; your followers should quickly be able to determine whether different accounts are owned by your firm.

Twit Amore I’d be lying if I said that this was another tool or tip to raise your brand awareness, but given that you’ve nearly reached the end of this tips booklet, you deserve a treat. Just head to http://twitamore.com/ and enter your username to find out who you love the most on Twitter. There’s no need to even sign in; just simply fill in your username.

Sleeping Time On the list of weird tools that you need for social media world, this must be in the top 5! Have you ever wondered what time you sleep, based purely on the time of day you send your tweets? You have? Okay, well then just head over to http://sleepingtime.org/, pop in your username and hey presto! There you have it.

Vizify This has got to be one of the coolest twitter tools around; it takes all of your social media accounts (as few or as many as you want to log in with), mixes them and creates your own website based on your activity, be it your tweets, your photos on Instagram, status updates on Facebook and your top used hashtags. Pretty cool huh? Just head to https://www.vizify.com/ to take a look.

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THE FUN STUFF

Tweetwally Tweetwally is less about you and more about what other Twitter users have been talking about, allowing you to search on different hashtags, be it to look up a certain trend, a piece of breaking news or highlight updates occurring in your sector or specialism. Check out http://www.tweetwally.com/ to pop in some different hashtags.

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CLIENT TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE BOOKLET

“As a firm who have reaped the rewards of being active on Twitter, I would recommend all firms investing time in social media. The practical tips included in this booklet are great for getting you started and for your on-going Twitter strategy.” Paul Hajek, Director, Clutton Cox Solicitors http://www.cluttoncox.co.uk/ http://www.twitter.com/paulhajek http://www.twitter.com/will_matters1

“As a firm, we’ve been using Twitter for quite some time, but there is still plenty of useful information in this booklet for us to digest and use to maximise our Twitter investment and help raise Stephensons’ online profile.”

Stephen Perry, Marketing Executive, Stephensons Solicitors http://www.stephensons.co.uk/ http://www.twitter.com/solicitorsllp

“Twitter is here to stay; it provides firms with a vital opportunity to communicate with their clients and prospective clients. This booklet gives the information needed to make Twitter accessible to firms of all shapes and sizes!” Melissa Davis, Director, MD Communicationshttp://www.mdcomms.co.uk/https://twitter.com/mdcomms

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another marketing guide from Conscious Solutions

AWARENESS THROUGH

websitesmarketing& intranets

53HELP LAW FIRMS RAISEIDEAS TO co

nscio

usBRAND

TWITTER