By Naheed Somji
Carbon Design Social Media Strategist
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
A lawyer friend of mine listened to the “marketing guy” drone on and on about how it’s each partners’ responsibility to drum up new business for the firm. He mentioned tactics like attending events, networking, and posting on LinkedIn.
My lawyer friend was not convinced. I believe her exact quote was, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
And she is right. When your main focus is settling cases, meeting billable targets, and helping clients, marketing is the last thing on your mind. “I went to law school, not business school!” she exclaimed. Fair enough.
Except… that marketing guy was kind of right.
At Carbon Design, we worked with a top global law firm to help answer a question about LinkedIn usage amongst employees. We analyzed the LinkedIn activity of over 600 partners, specifically measuring post engagement and number of followers (connections) against a list of top performers in the organization.
The results were eye-opening.
We wrote a proprietary formula to calculate a Social Media Score to indicate who has the greatest social media value, aka who is providing the most value by posting about the firm. We found a direct correlation between the most active LinkedIn users and the top billers.
Does posting on LinkedIn all day make you a better lawyer? Of course not. But those who were active on LinkedIn were establishing themselves as thought leaders, and gaining recognition for it. Thus creating the feedback loop. A partner would share their/the firm’s successes on LinkedIn, get cheered on by friends and colleagues, and get noticed by other companies. Over time, a network is built and leads are turned into clients and cases are won so the partner has more successes to share on LinkedIn.
There are two variables needed to make the feedback loop work: content and conversation. The firm provided the content — expertly written articles, blogs, videos — and the partner focused on engaging with their network. If one of these pieces aren’t in place, the marketing effort fails.
If you’re a lawyer reading this, work with your marketing and business development teams to create a content plan for you. This plan should be a checklist of what is required to write an article or record a video. You have two responsibilities: fill out the form that provides the context to the marketing team, and commit to the process and to sharing and engaging with the content when it’s published.
If you’re a marketer or communicator reading this, your job is to create a template where the subject matter expert can give you the information you need in 10 questions or less. You can take their input, the images, and video files, and craft a story that’s relevant for your audience. Keep your SME in the loop on the timeline — remember, endless reviews are where content goes to die, so be clear about the needs and commitment.
If you need help with any of the above, find us on LinkedIn (with the rest of the top performers).
