Karasma Media Legal Marketing Blog by Kara Smith » Twitter

Who Owns a Twitter Account ? A Lawsuit May Determine It…

Kara — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:30:34 +0000

The New York Times’ John Biggs has poseed an important question…

How much is a Tweet worth and how much does a Twtitter follower cost?

Noah Kravitz, a writer, worked for PhoneDog, a cell phone marketing company. While there, he wrote for the company’s blog and acquired more than 17,000 Twitter followers. He left his job after 4-years and was intially told that he could keep his Twitter account and was requested to “tweet on their behalf from time to time and I said sure, as we were parting on good terms.”

twitter.com/phonedog_noah and the site Noah's last post directs you to have been "disconnected" for now...

I am among a fast growing number of marketing professionals who are building our reputations as online journalists via their blog and social media platforms. In doing so, we are building our influence among our audience, and any employer interested in doing so for their company, will bring on professionals who are demonstrating their skills.

The “proof’s in the pudding” so to speak, and transparent actions speak much louder than words. So, of course any savvy hiring manager will want to be on the lookout for the skill-set.

This being said, John’s statement below truly hit home…

… in a world where social media’s influence can mean the difference between a lucrative sale and another fruitless cold call, social media accounts at companies have taken on added significance.

The outcome of this case is going to set a precidence. Particularly, because more and more marketing and sales professionals are being hired because of their savvyness using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms, and the number of followers they have acquired.

As employers, you’ll want to stay concious of what you’re paying your employees to do. After all, if they’re being paid to sit in a seat and make calls, then their interactions on social media (and the followers they generate) — are personal. They are not connected to the business you pay them to perform.

Transparency in business practices has never been more important. So, specicifity in job descriptions and fair compensation from the outset will alleviate a multitude of problems later — not to mention the negative public relations impact a lawsuit against an ex-employee in good standing has on your company.

Similarly, if you are an employee of a firm and requested to blog and use social media as an addendum to the duties you were originally signed on to do, make sure the stipulations for doing so are in writing!! Expressing your professional opinion, ie: publicising your expertise on the company’s behalf, your writing skill, and the audience you attain, and the time it takes to create are all valuable skills that you should be compensated for.

Karasma Media Partners in Bringing Social Media Marketing Workshops to the 2010 Harlem Book Fair

Kara — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:04:38 +0000

On Saturday, July 17th, Troy Johnson of AALBC.com (The African American Literature Book Club) has invited me to co-host Publishing YOU-niversity, includes four, 1-hour, standalone workshops on social media marketing for authors and small to mid-size organizations.

Attendees will be provided with a foundation for using a website, Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to promote themselves and their businesses.

Every web interaction has the power to influence a potential client’s decision to purchase your book, product or service. So, if your website does not provide an informative and satisfying experience and you don’t engage your visitors through social media, then they will find an author who is interested enough to have a dialog with their audience and a business who’s interested in what they have to say.

We’ll be discussing how social media can help convert your online visitors to viable business prospects and customers after interacting with your website.

Register today for:

Location:

Thurgood Marshall Academy (Classroom 211)
214 West 135th Street
New York, NY 10030

Participants who enroll in ALL FOUR workshops will receive a complementary “Jumpstart Your Social Media” Booklet

Troy is a technology expert and industry leader in marketing books on the World Wide Web. Mr. Johnson is the founder and webmaster of AALBC.com LLC. AALBC.com was launched in 1998, and is now the largest and most frequently visited web site dedicated to books by and about black people.

He has been recognized in articles that have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Essence Magazine, The New York Times, The Amsterdam News, Black Issues Book Review and Black Enterprise. Troy has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs including C-Span2’s Book TV and The Black Family Channel’s Literary Living; and in 2005 was named one of the 50 Most Powerful African Americans in Publishing by Black Issues Book Review magazine.

At this point, any public relations person stating that they possess a level of expertise using tools of social media, should have the level of this skillset illustrated in their online presence. Personally, I’ve garnered numerous speaking engagements and broadcast coverage for both myself and my clients, using a combination of social media outreach and traditional PR.

You can see some of the coverage here:

Fox 5 News, Newsweek’s Online Magazine, 10/10 Wins, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NY 1, Harlem Torch Magazine, and Black Enterprise Online.

More About The Harlem Book Fair

The Book Fair was founded in 1999 by QBR/The Black Book Review as a community event and forum for African American readers to discover and celebrate their history and culture through books.

It is now a week long event and the country’s largest community gathering of African American readers and book lovers. It has evolved into a national brand that is expanding into new markets each year. The Harlem Book Fair now draws over 50,000 attendees, and 15 million viewers via C-SPAN’s Book TV. Last year, the Book Fair was broadcast live in Europe and Asia for the first time.

The 2010 Harlem Book Fair spans two avenue-long blocks on West 135th Street with tents, pavilions of books, food, and cultural concessions. Fair space has more than doubled since its inception.

View the Press Release

Update to Legal Marketers – Tweets are Embeddable as of May 4th 2010

Kara — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:36:20 +0000

The use of real tweets helps “chunk” the piece both visually and logically; we think it makes it easier to read.

There are some folk who felt that a pasted-in image of a tweet was a bit “tacky”. Personally, I never really minded it, since it illustrated a point. Either way, there’s now an easy to use alternative!

With just a small bit of code you can generate simple, selectable flat-HTML tweets like the one I used here.

Blogged Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the Influence of Legal Marketers: http://tinyurl.com/26d3kjhless than a minute ago via APIKara Smith
karasmamedia

You’ll need to capture a Tweet’s URL and paste it in, so you may want to take a look at Ben Sparks’ directions on how to do so first.

Here’s the link! Blackbird Pie

Legal Marketers: Responding to social media inquiries is more important than you think

Kara — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:06:00 +0000

We all receive inquiry calls from people seemingly interested in the services we offer. Would you ever not respond to a phone call because you don’t recognize the telephone number?

I received this e-mail today:

I found you on Twitter and wanted to just take a moment of your time to reach out to you in hopes you or someone you may know can help me, you never know and I am taking a leap of faith.

Long story short, I left my ex nearly 3 years ago, divorce was final in May of 2009, and I got the worst divorce. We receive zero money for child support, zero alimony, and zero for the business (restaurant) we had. I had very bad representation and I have been looking for pro bono help since the second week of May 2009 after I realized that I had been had. I have 2 amazing kids and want to file a motion to overturn the final judgment (which I have one year to do-year is literally around the corner) based on fraud (my ex did not disclose his true financials at the mediation).

I have been given various different advise from attorneys that I have had free consults with but because of the economy, I have yet to meet a family law attorney willing to help me for free. I have gone to every legal aid and resources and still no help. I know you’re in New York, but if you know anyone that might be able to help me, I live in Tampa Bay Florida, I would be very greatful, thankful, and appreciative.

Thank you in advance.

Initially I responded by saying that I did not know of any one who could assist her directly and suggested she research via Avvo.

Her response:

Thank you for the quick response! Wow, I really didn’t even expect to get a response at all! I will check out the link and you never know right! Thank you again for your kindness!

Fortunately, I participated a webinar on Martindale Hubbell Connected conducted by Pro-Bono Net later the same afternoon. I forwarded her the link to their consumer site, www.lawhelp.org, an online resource that helps low and moderate-income people find free legal aid programs in their communities, answers to questions about their legal rights, court information, links to social service agencies, and more.

The point is, I feel it’s important that Twitter not be disregarded as a source for viable client leads or people reaching out for your assistance.

I sent the contact information of 4-criminal defense attorneys to a human resource director in the mid-west inquiring for one of his colleagues. He and I initially connected from his following me on Twitter, he connected to me on Linked In and we’ve had subsequent conversations regarding business generation for minority owned law firms.

As of January, Twitter had more than 30-miillion users in the U.S. alone, so it’s far from being “useless”.

It may be true that some communication via online platforms from anonymous sources need to be taken “with a grain of salt”. However, with more than 30 million Americans communicating on Twitter, and millions more on LinkedIn and Facebook the time has long past that legal marketers can ignore initial service inquires or requests for assistance.

Additionally, while we may not be able to assist people directly, it’s equally important that we’re savvy enough with our community to be able to direct them to sources who can.

Pro Bono Net is a national non-profit organization dedicated to increasing access to justice for the disadvantaged. Their website for lawyers, www.probono.net, promotes collaboration and makes it easier for pro-bono attorneys to get involved, saving time and connecting them with opportunities, training events, mentors, and searchable libraries of practice resources.

If you’re an attorney and would like to learn more about how to get involved at www.probono.net

Additional articles you may be interested in:

A Very Simple Twitter Formula for Generating Legal Marketing Business

A Great Legal Marketing Firm Tool to Optimize Twitter

The Joy Of Watching Pro-Bono Seeds Grow: Harlem’s Alain L. Locke-P.S. 208 in the News

50 ways Legal Marketers can incorporate “Social Good” into their “Social Media Strategy”

What if I Were Just Getting Started with Social Media Marketing

Karasma Media’s Pro Bono Work

You can reach her at 917-856-5410

A Great Legal Marketing Firm Tool to Optimize Twitter

Kara — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:19:50 +0000

As of January 2010, more than 75 million people visited Twitter, with over 23 million from the US. According to Twitter, over 50 million tweets are sent daily.

Twitter is being talked about everywhere. People are drawn to it because of the buzz of its popularity but the majority of people don’t understand its potential. That includes most ad agencies.

My primary objective for using Twitter has been to increase traffic to my blog. Twitter is now the leading traffic generator for THE KARASMA MEDIA LEGAL MARKETING BLOG.

There are hundreds of tools that have been developed to enhance Twitter’s usefulness for marketing. The tool that is most helpful to me and the one I use most often for legal marketing new business is called Social Oomph.

These are some of the Social Oomph features that I like and use:

Manage multiple accounts from one dashboard (your agency’s as well as clients Twitter accounts)
Manage an unlimited number of blogs
Upload your agency’s blog posts and URLs from an Excel spread sheet, in bulk to Social Oomph
Pre-set the date/time range for each post in minutes
Automatically shorten post URLs through Bit.ly and track clicks
Automate – follow those who follow you in Twitter
Automate – unfollow those who don’t follow you in Twitter
Purge and filter your Twitter account’s DM box
Small monthly fee that is month-to-month, that you can cancel at any time (it more than pays for itself for the time that it saves)
Junior level people/interns can be easily trained to use this tool on behalf of the agency and clients
You can also schedule your agency blog posts to Facebook, just keep the repurpose level to only a few per day or it gets annoying…

For Twitter to have real value from a new business perspective for legal marketers, you must have a clear objective and follow a simple formula for use.

In Fortune 500 CompaniesTwitter Moves Ahead of Blogs – Are you Tweeting Legal?

In Social Media for the Legal Marketing Industry – Digital Branding Creates Clients

Here’s the Scoop: Facebook for Lawyers Is In the News

Chris Brogan on Legal Marketing: An Interview With Karasma Media

You can reach her at 917-856-5410

A Very Simple Twitter Formula for Generating Legal Marketing Business

Kara — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:14:07 +0000

Twitter is the leading traffic generator for THE KARASMA MEDIA MARKETING BLOG. One of the best helps I found when I first started using this tool came from Angela Maiers, educator, author, blogger who leads Maier Educational Services.

Angela developed a simple Twitter Engagement Formula that provides purpose and direction for her participation. She calls it the 70-20-10 Formula:

Angela Maiers

Share Resources (70) – Successful learning in the 21st Century is not what you know, but what you can share, so 70 % of my Twittertime is spent sharing others voices, opinions, and tools.

Collaborations (20) – 20% of my Tweets are directly responding, connecting, collaboration, and co-creating with like-minded Twitter colleagues. From these important tweets, lifelong professional and personal relationships have been forged.

Chit-Chat (10) 10% of my Twittertalk is “chit-chat-how’s-your-hat” stuff. It is in these “trivial” details shared about working out, favorite movies, politics, and life in general that I connect with others as a human being. These simple chit chats are what have allowed me to know that I am never alone, and there is support whenever, wherever, and however I need it!

Angela reminds her readers that their engagement formula will be different but hers provides a good example and a place to get started. Angela says to, “Engage with purpose and intention, and Twitter success will follow!”

Legal Marketers – Now is NOT the time to give up on Twitter

Kara — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:00:21 +0000

Legal marketers, don’t stop tweeting just yet. If you haven’t gotten yourself up to speed with social media, specifically with Twitter, there’s no time better than right now.

Total Attorneys‘ @Kevin Churn posted a note to me on Twitter about an episode of their terrific show on BlogTalk Radio he knew I’d be interested in. Kevin, John Remsen and Larry Bodine discussed:

Shoestring PR for Lawyers

In the conversation, Larry states that “Twitter is really a waste of time”, because very few lawyers are actually using it. It’s extremely important to remember that social media and the population of legal professionals is an ever growing platform.

I have a question, since when is a legal firm’s bottom line primarily dependent upon other lawyers? Aren’t there some “consumer folk/audience” involved here?

If you recall, only a short time ago, it was thought that Facebook was purely for personal use. The number of law firms with professional pages on Facebook has skyrocketed in the last 6-months.

Insidefacebook.com reported:

More than 10% of law firms in the country are on Facebook and more than 40% of attorneys, according to a survey conducted by the American Bar Association earlier this year. 12% of respondents reported working at firms with an online presence in a social network such as Facebook, up 4% from the 2008 survey, marking a three-fold increase, and 43% of reported maintaining a personal account.

The impact that Facebook is having on the legal world is surely worth noting.

It is evident the impact social media is having on legal marketing and what’s coming for us regarding Twitter.

Twitter’s traffic has grown tremendously in the past year, but how many people are actively using the service versus casually passing by? According to the latest research from eMarketer, that number will be at around 18 million by the end of 2009.

The fact is, Twitter was not designed to work well on it’s own. In fact, it’s pretty frustrating as a stand-alone. Partnering it with support applications like TwitterLater, TweetDeck and SocialToo coupled with a little patience and persistence, your social media efforts will surely payoff.

Social Media expansion takes time. Are you willing to take a chance of not starting to build now?

I need to point out that I don’t believe mid-size legal firms can master social media use and public relations efforts on their own. You’re lawyers! Professionals like myself have spent years cultivating relationships and communications skills that we use to garner the results we do. Additionally, working with social media platforms as PR tools is exceedingly cost effective when you attain guidance on using them effectively.

Those legal marketers “stuck on no” are risking having your organization being left behind as online presence becomes increasingly more important.

Other articles you may be interested in:

Twitter’s just getting started for Legal Marketers

Does Social Media end cold calling as a new business tactic for legal marketers?

Listening, monetization, and ethics are key for successful social media campaigns and your legal marketing reputation

Karasma Media Legal Marketing Blog’s Top 10 Posts of 2009

Legal Marketers, Interested in 13 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog?

Why Technology and Social Media need to be integrated into your branded legal marketing strategy.

Kara works with legal marketers to create a more clearly defined focus and distinctive business strategy that will provide them with a competitive advantage for new business, higher reputation recognition, and enhance their ability to attract, win, and retain the clients they really want.