Byfield Consultancy Law Firms & Social Media Report
I had the pleasure of attending the launch of this new report at the lovely offices of Fox Williams LLP on Tuesday morning. The event was pretty well attended with around 45 people in the room.
The launch took the form of a discussion panel made up of the following people :-
- Katy Dowell – The Lawyer (@TheLawyerKaty)
- Fred Banning – Communications Manager, Pinsent Masons (@FBanning)
- Daniel Geey – Associate, Field Fisher Waterhouse. Daniel is the author of the popular football blog http://danielgeey.com and has almost 10,000 followers on Twitter (@FootballLaw)
Nigel Miller – Partner and Head of the Technology Group, Fox Williams LLP (@NigelMiller)
- Karen Snell – Senior Marketing Projects & Campaigns Manager, Hogan Lovells (@KarenSnell74)
The discussions were actually pretty good and I’ve captured my take on what was said in this downloadable mindmap that I created with the brilliant Xmind. I’m not going to repeat everything that was said here in this article.
- Byfield Consultancy Launch Discussion Mindmap (549KB PDF)
Having trained over 680 law firm staff already this year I’m not sure any of the contents of the report were a real surprise to me. The introduction opens with the same thoughts I hear from my of our clients. “What is the real business case for time spent doing social media”. There is no real, clear, 100% proof that there is a measurable, direct return on investment. But that’s probably true for much of the marketing that law firms do as, frankly, their internal ROI tracking is just not good enough.
The report is broken down into six primary areas. The sections, with some of the primary findings were as follows.
- New business
- Embracing social media
- Social media strategy
- Risk
- Engagement
The panel discussion was pretty wide ranging and my notes show the gist of what was discussed under each of these areas.
The report is well worth downloading and having a slow read through. Page 6 has a particularly good case study from one of our clients, Trethowans on how Twitter was a key strand in some PR they gained around an accident injury matter they were involved in.
Social media was once described as being a bit like teenage sex. Everyone says they are doing it (they are not) and everyones thinks they are great at it (they are not).
Whatever you think, it can’t be ignored, it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future and law firm’s clients are increasingly expected to engage with them via the various social media channels.
If you are interested in following what we do in social media land, you can find me/us at :-