The Law, the Internet and Social Media
The Law, the Internet and Social Media
by Rick Nashleanas
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How does the average person choose a lawyer?
That depends on how old you are. Baby boomers have found a lawyer through referrals, yellow pages, printed advertisements and other traditional media. Fortunately for lawyers, this age group has required the most legal work.
Face it, you and I don't know much about how to choose a lawyer. We don't know much about it. We don't even know the questions to ask. When I have talked with lawyers, I often find that they feel that they are engaged in more of a popularity contest than anything else.
Referrals have been a great source of information for baby boomers because it helps fill this obvious gap of knowledge and information. In a community with the turnover of Colorado Springs, a lawyer has a difficult time keeping his name in front of an ever-changing local community, but it can be done.
The next generation
The post-baby boomer generation is growing up and just starting to look for long-term legal counsel. They get their referrals from different sources. This is the generation that has grown up with blogs, podcasts, youtube, myspace and many, many more. As a potential legal client, social networking can expand your referral source of lawyers and legal alternatives.
Prove it
Business Week (June 11, 2007) reviewed online social media usage. A couple of salient points for the Colorado Springs dental community include:
- Social media usage is small but growing fast. Over the last year, it has grown 668%.
- Very few users create content, but many consume content.
- Users of social media fall into six categories: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.
- Users who are 40 and under are most likely to create, critique, join and read. Interestingly enough, users who are 40+ are more likely to be inactive, online but don't participate in any form of social networking.
The state of the internet and Colorado Springs law
There is definitely a generation gap between the Colorado Springs legal community and this new generation of clients. Many of the legal professionals I have talked with just "don't get it" when it comes to the internet's social networking. They are uneasy with blogs, internet publishing and online videos.
If you look at web site for most Colorado Springs web sites, they are static, unchanging online brochures. Since there is no interactivity, there is really no reason for a visitor to ever come back. There is really no *new* information and there is no interchange.
The problem is that this type of project takes time and effort. What legal professional is looking for more work that, frankly, they don't completely understand? In addition, for social networking to work, you must have a critical mass of legal professionals and potential legal clients interacting in the same forum.
Is it really worth it?
As our company, Monarch Digital, does internet marketing and design, we try to stay on top of the latest trends in internet marketing. Entireweb recently posted an article entitled "6 Blogging Myths that are Holding You Back". I won't go into each point, but you'll be able to fill in the blanks:
- Myth: My customers don't read blogs. Reality: Blogs often rank high in search engines.
- Myth: Blogging is for teenagers. Reality: "You wouldn't dismiss the telephone as a communication device just because your teenager spends hours each night on it, would you?"
- Myth: Blogging is just a fad. Reality: Are you still saying that about the Internet?
- Myth: Blogging takes too much time. Reality: Business bloggers report that their online time results in better ROI than any other marketing effort.
- Myth: Blogging is fraught with dangers, like people leaving negative comments. Reality: Negative comments come out whether you are participating or not. If you find yourself in a PR nightmare, you can tell your side of the story and not leave it to whoever should decide to comment.
- Myth: My customers don't read blogs. Reality: Whether they know it or not, they do. They find them via search. Even more importantly, the people who are not your current customers are reading blogs.
How do we implement social media for the Colorado Springs legal community?
As publishers of springs-lawyer.com, we will soon be incorporating many social media features directly into this web site, such as:
- An event calendar on which lawyers can publicize speaking and promotional events.
- An integrated story and blog feature.
- A "Who's online" feature, allowing you to see who is logged on to the site. Users can directly contact folks who are currently logged on.
- Online tracking of requests to our dentists.
- 1 to 5 star ratings of articles and blog posts, allowing users to see the most popular stories on the site.
- Like amazon.com, a "If you liked this article, you might also like" to help visitor navigate the site for similar information.
- Integrated search of all materials on the site.
- Polls and surveys, giving visitors the opportunity to participate in the community.
- Account reminders, reminding registered users to come back when new content appears on the site.
Call to action
Sharing of information in a local professional community benefits all, matching clients with the right legal professionals. Our redesigned site will facilitate that information exchange. We will notify everyone in our database when we roll out our new site design.
If you are a legal professional, get signed up (it's free) to appear on the site today. You'll automatically be set up to participate in our new web.
If you are a potental consumer of legal advise in the Colorado Springs area, bookmark this site and refer your friends. You'll love the additional information you'll get on our new site.
Click here to contact Rick directly.
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