Keeping Up To Date

I am not an expert in either marketing or in social networking. I don't think, however, that it needs an expert to know that:

1. Your marketing materials should always be up to date;
2. Your website is part of your marketing effort
3. If you wish to engage in social networking, then you need to actually engage in it and not simply ignore it after a while

This minor rant has come about as a result of some research for a number of different clients. I have been working with clients in the legal, educational and charity sectors in the last couple of weeks (I'm very lucky to have the variety) and have noticed that many of the companies/schools/charities I looked at seemed to get one or all of the items on the above list wrong.

I've seen blogs with the latest entry over a year old and have found links to non-functioning Twitter feeds. I've seen websites with broken links and links to events which are impossible to attend, what with them being in 2008. I've seen websites boasting that the company concerned (no names, no pack drill - but this was a law firm) could contact you by "post, fax and email" (wow).

I've looked at schools which offer the web visitor the chance to see content from pupils - only to find that eight of the ten pages were empty and the two that had content were ten months old.

In my opinion it is perfectly acceptable for small organisations - whether law firms, schools or charities - to have a small web site. Organisations this size are unlikely to have spare resources to support real-time engagement and may not have time for regular web updates. No problem. The problem comes when engagement is started or offered - and then not carried forward.

If you own or work for a small organisation, you should have a web site, I think. It can be very simple with basic information about who you are and what you do. Schools should have some dates on there and charities should have some way of accepting donations (which can be done from a link to a third-party) - and everyone should have contact information. That's it though. 

Much better to do a little well than to try to be all things to all people and to come unstuck.

PS - as a result of this research I had a good look through my own web site and did a little housekeeping!

Social Media for Cost Effective Marketing

In my role working with James Dunning of Geotrupes, I presented (if somewhat briefly) at the NetLaw Media conference on Tuesday 20th October in Manchester ("Key Strategies for Law Firms during a Downturn"). I'd been asked (at slightly shorter notice than I'd prefer!) on the subject of "Social Media for Cost Effective marketing".

Rather than run through my whole presentation, you may be pleased that I'm planning to summarise my thoughts here.

The first thing to consider is why anyone should be concerned about the use of social media. We will all know lawyers who tell us that they are currently busier than ever and think that social media is a fad. These might be the same people who agreed with a famous study in the 80s which concluded that there was no mass market for the mobile phone...

So why bother? Well how about:

• 36.9 million UK internet users in May 2009
• Of whom, 29.4 million visited at least one social networking site
• 90% of 25-34 year olds use social media - use not just visit
• 3,226 % increase in use of Twitter in UK between May 2008 and May 2009

It's the third point above that is the reason that every law firm needs to sit up and take notice. This 25-34 year old group will be starting businesses, becoming managers, engaging in M&A activity, buying commercial and residential property, getting married and getting divorced - and, statistically, engaging in criminal and fraudulent activities. They use the web - use soicial networking - and will expect law firms to do the same. They do not believe conventional advertising - they have grown up with it and have learnt to ignore most of it and to despise a great deal of it. Over the next 2 to 5 to 10 years, these are the people who will be our clients.

So - what now. Well you can't engage with every form of social media out there so have a look around at what is available. For business, one of the best is LinkedIn (currently with 50 million users). Registration is free, so it is easy to step in and have a look around. Engage with the groups - that is one of the most powerful aspects of the site. Read before you write - by which I mean spend some time looking at the site and at the way that people communicate on it. That way you can learn the conventions before your start to say anything - and possibly avoid the embarrassing "dad dancing" syndrome of using inappropriate language.

There are some rules, however:

• Trust your users. You don't have time to censor what is said so - just as you do with any other client interaction - trust your people to communicate
• Use a personal voice. Clients deal with people and not firms - so have identified members of he firm writing blogs and Tweets.
• Read before you write - see above. Make sure that you are using the appropriate voice.
• Would you like this read out in court…? If you cannot answer "yes" to this, then don't press "send". This should not be a new rule - you should be saying exactly the same before sending an email.
• Listen to feedback and interaction - that's the whole point of new media
• Plan your engagement - don't let it take over your time. Regular is much better than frequent. So a weekly blog is better than ten blog entries one week and then nothing for a month. The same with Tweets - daily is good, twenty messages in a day quickly becomes a nuisance for your followers.

Many of these sites are currently free - although most are developing "premium services". Remember that you get what you pay for, and in this new media world, the technology is free while service is expensive - so many of these services have poor, or even no, individual customer service. Be aware of the hidden costs, too. Measure the time that you, or your staff, spend using these sites. Remember, as well, the cost of not getting involved (Carter-Ruck don't entirely seem to have got the hang of it yet...) or getting involved badly (as Habitat found to their cost).

It's a new world - step right in and get involved.

A Twitter Follow-up

Following on from my earlier post and from James' analysis of the possible use of Twitter, I was interested to read an item on the BBC's web site entitled "Twitter tweets are 40% babble".

I always enjoy seeing how statistics are used in the media - write the story first and then find or spin statistics to fit, would seem to be the prevailing methodology. Just looking at the headline. It would be possible to say "Only 40% of tweets are babble" or even "Tweet are 60% non-babble" - both of which give the story a completely different spin while imparting the same data. Looking further into the text of the piece, it is revealed that 37.5% of tweets analysed were "conversational" and that 8.7% had "value" in that they passed on "items of interest".

Given that Twitter was designed as a way of saying what you were "doing now", in other words "meaningless babble", I think that finding that 8.7% of 2,000 Tweets were valuable is pretty good. Having just returned from holiday, I'm tempted to say that less that 8.7% of my inbox was valuable (not your emails, of course - they're always valuable) and I would not be keen for anyone to measure the value in my spoken communications. I should also like to mention that the 2,000 tweets analysed were recovered over a 14 day period and, at this moment, Twitter is showing 14,564 messages are being transmitted per minute. I'm not sure how good a sample is, therefore, of only 2,000. Their methodology (available here) seems flawed to me - 200 messages per day for 10 days (working days only apparently). They offer some different analysis from their dataset - best times to Tweet etc - but I'm surprised that they seem so definite in their conclusions given how small their population was. The analysis was carried out only on US Tweets (although I'm not at all sure how they managed to identify those) and between 11am and 5pm (US time - probably CST but they don't say for sure). Not only that, but they appear to be confused about some features in Twitter - repeating the false contention that one cannot secure one's feed. I'm disappointed in the analysis (surely they had time to analyse more that 200 Tweets per day) and in the BBC's rather lazy use of it. The BBC's item ends with a note that the study will be repeated quarterly. Unless the size of the study it much enlarged, I don't think this will help much.

Would the results be different if a more full study was undertaken? I don't know - but at least we would be able to be more confident in any analysis which was undertaken.

Twitter is a social medium - one designed for ordinary people (well, tech-friendly ordinary people) to communicate. It should not be a surprise that most people do not need to say things of value. As James' post mentioned, the business use of Twitter and other social media is in its infancy. Patience, BBC, patience.

Did you holiday on holiday?

So - first day back for me after two glorious weeks on holiday. You may remember that in July I blogged (here and here) about things to do before going on holiday to ensure that you were able to switch off properly. Did I follow my own advice?

Well - yes and no. I did talk with clients to say that I would be away and did give them a schedule of when I would be checking my phone and email messages. Being the risk-averse person that I am, I thoroughly checked home and office before I left to ensure that everything was secure and that everything possible was switched off (including copiers, printers, hubs and routers). I also had every intention of keeping to my schedule of checking emails etc first thing and last thing each day - but didn't keep to it. My first thing got later and later (well this was supposed to be a holiday) and last thing got later and later too. In fact, I think a measurement of a successful holiday is that I completely forgot my schedule on a couple of days - on two occasions I didn't check emails for a couple of days - and nothing bad happened! I discovered that I wasn't indispensable and that the world did not end if I remained "unplugged" for a while. In fact it was even better than that - quite often I was using my laptop to listen to the radio (ah the joys of BBC's iPlayer - and what a pity that only radio is available outside the uk) and had managed to avoid the demands of my inbox.

I was much less disciplined with my Twitter account. I don't think I wrote anything, but I found myself watching the feed. I use TweetDeck which allows me to sort entries between work and not-work, but became surprised at the way that some people were using their accounts. I was obviously confused about a couple of bloggers since I imagined that they would be using their Twitter feed for work related items. These are people who have targeted and interesting blogs and I had looked forward to their messages on Twitter. There were some good posts - but also a mass of other stuff to do with their social lives. In the end it was easier to stop following them, just to reduce the number of posts I was wading through (particularly when I'm supposed to be on holiday...). This was a real pity as a good deal of what they had to say was interesting - and I will continue to read and enjoy their blogs.

Please don't think that I am critical - everyone is free to use Twitter in any way they like. I am surprised, however, that professional people using their professional names and referencing their work web sites etc should run their social lives so publicly. I read James' posts about the use of Twitter by law firms with interest. I would seem to have found a situation where the use of this new medium has both raised the profile of some people and some firms - and damaged it to some small degree.

Perhaps the answer is to have two accounts - one for work related Tweets and one for more personal stuff?

Anyway - the holiday is over now and so I return to work refreshed and re-focussed. If you have been away, I hope it was equally wonderful and if you have yet to go - I trust you enjoy it.

Just how common is common sense?

I read this posting in the FT with great interest, and a little depression ("If granny would disapprove, don't put it on the net" by Rhymer Rigby).

I don't doubt that it makes a great deal of sense, what concerns me is that it apparently needs to be stated. Surely this is the lowest level of common sense? Don't we all know that we no longer control information or images once posted on the internet? Just who needs to be told about this stuff?

I would be concerned in any case if this article had been published in a tabloid - but this was in the FT, for goodness sake! "Campaign" lists the FT as the choice of the "business high flyers", so surely this demograph can be relied upon to have the common sense required to know not to post stupid comments or pictures anywhere remotely public. Perhaps this is one further piece of evidence for the reduction in the number of people willing to take personal responsibility (I enjoyed this take on responsibility).

On Facebook and Twitter - as in emails, telephone calls, letters and even faxes (yes - some people still send faxes) - we must all take responsibility for what we write and post. The best lesson I was ever given in this regard was to "imagine that anything you write anywhere might end up being read out in court". Good advice for all, I think.

PS - isn't Rhymer Rigby a great name! I'm really pleased he appears to be a real person and not a pseudonym.