Marketing opportunities missed through ignorance of social media
The legal profession misses out on marketing opportunities by taking a “reticent” approach towards social media, according to research published this week.
LinkedIn is by far the most popular social media platform among law firms, followed by Twitter and Facebook, according to a LexisNexis Martindale Hubbell-commissioned survey of 110 law firms in 22 cities around the world.
While 77% of firms have a LinkedIn presence, a significant proportion have only registered a company page and have not engaged with other users or fully exploited the channel’s recruitment, reputational or client-development possibilities. The report found that firms which dabbled in social media and infrequently updated their pages risked losing their followers to those who do.
Derek Benton, director of international operations at Martindale-Hubbell, says: “Registering a profile is a step in the right direction, but not doing anything with it is like renting a shop on the high street and never opening the doors.
“Moving from registration to broadcast and on to conversation are the steps of social media engagement—and law, just like any other sector can, and I believe, will engage for the benefit of business development.
With some notable exceptions, now is the time for law firms to adapt their business models and experiment with social media as part of their client acquisition and retention programmes, or risk being left behind.”
The free report, Global Social Media Check-up: A global audit of law firm engagement in social media methods, is available at www.martindale-hubbell.co.uk/socialmedia.
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