Guest Post: How One Lawyer Uses Twitter

This week’s guest post is from lawyer Steve O’Donnell. Steve is a patent, copyright, and trademark attorney here in the Lancaster area, and is an active member of the local Twitter/Social Media community. In his guest post he explains his philosophy of how he uses Twitter, and balances the personal/professional aspects of it.

Everyone that has something to sell thinks they can sell it on Twitter. What many people don’t seem to grasp is that Twitter is more like a cocktail party then it is a yellow pages ad and until they understand that, they’ll have a hard time making Twitter “work” for them.

I’m a lawyer that has landed a few clients from Twitter. As far as I’ve been able to tell, I might be the only one (or at least in the very small minority) that has been able to generate new business from Twitter.

My secret is no secret: I don’t look at social media as a business opportunity.

I follow a number of lawyers across the country on Twitter. Many try to use it as advertising. If someone posts nothing but “call me to discuss your estate plan” they’re not going to get followers. I’m busy, I don’t want someone to steal my downtime with ads, so I stop following those people. Their issue is that they’re thinking of social media as a branch of traditional advertising, which it isn’t.

Another group of lawyers posts very relevant content. I love those people because they do most of my legal research for me. Some have huge followings, but have trouble turning that following into business. Their problem is that they’re only targeting other lawyers. They might establish themselves as an expert in their field, but if the only people that hold them in such regard are their competitors, that isn’t going to translate into business.

A third group of lawyers on Twitter use it as a social outlet, but often find themselves conversing only with other lawyers, and even then they tend to self-censor so harshly that they sound less like a person and more like a talking head. Lawyers, and I guess professionals in general, tend to be extremely conservative about their “personal brand” and don’t want a potential client finding out too much personal information about them. Their issue is that they’re simply not being social.

I don’t use Twitter for anything but my own amusement.

Most of my tweets are anything but business related. I ask and answer questions, I throw out jokes, I discuss things, I insult people that I’ve never even met in real life. I try to engage my followers, not because they’re potential clients (even though they are), but because I like to be social. That’s the trick that most people trying to market through Twitter miss, social media is supposed to be social. If relevant to the conversation, I’ll mention that I do patent, trademark and copyright work, and I do point out my recent blog posts. That lets my followers know what I do, without me trying to hammer it into them.

I consider Twitter to be nothing more than what it is, a conversational platform. I don’t commit myself to sending out a certain number of business tweets per week, they get tweeted when they’re relevant, similar to how I toss those things into any conversation.

I wouldn’t change my Twitter posting style or frequency if I stopped getting business from it, or if I started to get a lot more business from it. It’s simply a social outlet for me, any business I get from it is secondary, and that is why it’s working for me.

Tagged as: lawyer, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter