In July 2023, Elon Musk confirmed that Twitter would rebrand to X. At Conscious (and I don’t think we were alone!), we initially thought there would be a quick change back to Twitter, and that Elon’s other changes wouldn’t last. But, here we are, one year later, and Twitter is still called X. Although many of us still refuse to call it X, it seems as though the changes are here to stay, so is it time we embraced X and came up with a different strategy?
What are the potential benefits of X for law firms?
One of the helpful features X uses more heavily than other social media platforms is the use of hashtags. Not only can your firm share hashtags that are relevant to your firm in your posts (such as #BristolConveyancingSolicitor or #FamilyLaw), but you can also search trending hashtags and identify whether there are any opportunities for your firm to be talking about this subject, as well as searching for hashtags that a potential client might be searching for (e.g. #SolicitorRecommendations) and use hashtags such as #journorequest to find out if there are any PR topics your firm could offer expert commentary on.
With X Lists, you can customise and organise the posts you see in your timeline so you can ensure you are seeing content you want – this could be from relevant businesses and individuals you work with or places that post relevant or helpful content to your firm. You can choose to join Lists created by other users, and they can follow yours too so you can create some helpful threads for the services your firm specialises in.
Finally, as with other social media platforms, X for professionals can be a helpful tool in tracking your digital marketing successes. They have extensive in-platform analytics software that can help you to see how your firm is performing on the platform.
What other new features does X have?
Since its launch, X has seen a number of new features including:
- A new grid display format showing posts with media included in a grid format, instead of a list, which makes it easier to see the culture, experience and expertise of your firm, especially if you are using high-quality and valuable graphics. If you are using Instagram, you can share similar graphics to X and vice versa.
- X Premium is a paid subscription that offers additional features to improve your experience on the platform. There are three tiers with X Premium that offer different benefits including reply prioritisation, longer video uploads, text formatting, media studio, the ability to edit posts and post longer content updates.
- The platform is also making it more desirable to post original updates rather than sharing content that is from a third party, so when you share posts like this, they now look different.
What does my law firm need to do next with X?
First, we’d recommend updating the bird logo to the X logo on all your marketing materials if you haven’t already done so. Keeping the bird, whether you want to accept the rebrand or not, will make your marketing materials look outdated rather than a stance against the change now.
Next, it might be time to have a play around with the new features X has to offer for business accounts. Some of the things that will help to optimise your X profile are adding a location to your bio, adding methods for contacting your firm and your hours of operation.
Finally, before the update to X, we had been recommended that clients using the Twitter embedded timeline update to the API option due to the large amounts of data and image the feed uses, which could impact loading times and CWV performance. Unfortunately, since the change to X, the API option is no longer free. Another change Elon bought in, which seems to be here to stay, is not being able to view any posts without a login. This means that even if you decide to use the free embedded feed, users will be not be able to see the posts unless they are logged in.
If you want to find out more about getting the most out of your law firm’s social media profiles, get in contact with the team at 0117 325 0200 or sales@conscious.co.uk.