1. Thought Leadership as a Strategy

For legal marketers, value can be delivered in the form of information, education, better quality or even better service. One of the key principles of social media is to provide value to its consumer. For lawyers and in turn, their firm’s brand to stand out, they will have to provide value at all levels to their consumers. Social Media will prompt the legal industry to adopt thought leadership as a value in their manifesto in their area of core competence.

2. Online activism

We are witnessing an increase in online activism from citizens globally. People are reaching out to each other across the country or world either for peace rallies or prayers or candle light vigils or to form groups to decide on action steps. Social media is providing a platform to like-minded people to connect with each other and come forward to participate in events. Time sensitive information, and precautions like, fraudulent legal websites and how to protect yourself from them, will become more and more prevalent; with lawyers being the catalysts for change. It is being used to educate citizens to become more alert and aware about their surroundings.

3. Podcasting

Podcasts are a really great way to convey information, or to display feelings, or to share information in non-text ways.

Although the number of podcasts being produced by organizations like IBM, GE, and BMW continue to proliferate, many legal firms have not bought into the value and potential return on investment for podcasting for both B2B and B2C applications.

Attorney Robert J. Ambroji talks about new media new media and how it is being adopted by the legal profession

4. Rise in Independent Practices

I predict that in 2009, will see a surge of attorneys opening their own firms, and many of them will utilize social media will facilitate them in their process.
This year, two of the key barriers for any entrepreneur are sourcing and marketing. They do not know how to reach out to their potential customers or their relevant suppliers and secondly do not have big marketing budgets to do so.

With social media coming into play, both the barriers will be tackled for good. Armed with a profile in social networking sites like Facebook, Linked, Twitter and blogging, in, independent practices can reach out to his potential customers and vendors at practically no cost. The costs they incure will be for social media expert guidance, design, and maintenance, which are exponentially less expensive, with a more effective ROI than almost any other marketing campaign they can put into place.

5. Legal Firms will turn into listeners

Let’s admit it, most of us, if given a choice would rather speak than listen, and over the years the media we used facilitated only one way communication. With social media increasing its presence, legal firms will have to get used to receiving feedback. Their clients, associates, and employees will have the opportunity to talk to them directly and they will have to listen. If law firms want to continuously seek and retain their attention, we will have to start listening and accepting feedback.

6. Seeking User Participation

Law firms are going to have to generate content that elicits their readers to respond and encourages ongoing interaction. They are going to realize that unless they don’t stimulate engagement with their content, their clients and perspective clients will interact with legal information platforms elsewhere.

Polls are one way for them to do this.
Above The Law a legal tabloid,created a reader poll inviting their readers to predict on whether 2009 will be better or worse for attorneys.

Firms can also ask their readers to SMS or Tweet, sharing their points of view on a particular event or story as it unfolds. The firm can then tabulate the results and publicize them with their comments. These quick polls can then be used to gauge public opinion on social matters pertinent to their clients.

7. Inclusion of User Generated Content

Many law firm blogs contain information solely generated by their attorneys and do not generally encourage public interaction. Additionally, if the only online platform a firm has is a website, then two way communication is not possible. Most news channels have started involving citizens to cover a story for them. This arrangement works wonderfully for the news channels and the possibilities for law firms are vast . By allowing their readers to generate content, law firms wil be able to have empower citizens to have an active voice and make a difference in issues that directly effect them.

8. Listening to people’s point of view
Internet and Mobile are mostly the mediums that will be used to seek feedback, and legal marketers will be able to edit their content accordingly. The feedback will act as a litmus test to evaluate what their audience wants to know

It’s heartening to see that traditional public relations and marketing practitioners are adapting and change a the new social platforms are developed. However, for law firms the two way interaction will get restricted to these activities as that is the limitation of traditional practices.

It is predictable that several social media platforms like blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking sites will gain momentum and start providing more and more value. So, it’s important for law firms who wish to interact with their audience, to incorporate social media public relations as part of their marketing strategy.

Photo by Barney Finlayson