Websites, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube: what’s a lawyer to do? Should they blog? Should they be on Twitter? How much does social media cost? How can lawyers control what appears on their Facebook page? Should they even try? What’s SEO? What benefits does a social media presence truly provide? For many lawyers, marketing is at best a necessary evil, something they must do but don’t particularly like or understand. Add in the Internet, technology, and the cute and clever names that abound in the Web 2.0 world, and lawyers have good solid reasons to develop a marketing strategy of sticking their head in the sand until all this “social” stuff goes away.
The good news? There’s ample guidance. But sorting through the mountains of articles, presentations, blog posts and white papers to separate the rare wheat of useful advice from the all-to-common chaff of hype and sales pitches is an unfamiliar and overwhelming task. And one that is virtually impossible to complete: a Google search of the words “social media” and “lawyer” reveals nearly 1.5 million hits today, a number that increases every single day as more and more social media experts turn to the legal profession in search of new client opportunities (and more and more lawyers turn to social media consulting in search of revenue).
It’s against this background that Jayne Navarre has written social.lawyers: Transforming Business Development (Thomson Reuters, 2010), a comprehensive, thoughtful and practical guide to social media that deserves a place on every lawyer’s bookshelf. Full of no-nonsense advice and illustrated by myriad examples, social.lawyers provides an in-depth look at the technologies and strategies of social media and the specific steps lawyers need to take for creating an online presence. It’s an easy read, written not as a legal brief nor as a trendy new book on trendy new technologies, but as a valuable guide for any and all lawyers who have realized that they need to have a social media strategy, one that they can and will execute.
social.lawyers opens with a general discussion of how the Internet continues to change the way in which lawyers and firms market their services, but Navarre quickly moves to the practical: seven “steps for effective change” designed to ease the awkward passage that all lawyers experience when they first engage in social networking. In doing so, she sets the tone for the entire volume: first, a methodical exploration of the “what,” second, a logical point-by-point analysis of the “why,” and finally: a step-by-step description of the “how.” Navarre then neatly wraps up the practical tips with a set of case studies featuring “social lawyers,” lawyers who have embraced social media, changed the way they market themselves and their practices, and successfully implemented social marketing strategies that have positively impacted their practice.
Throughout the book, Navarre does a great job of breaking down that which can appear to be insurmountable – like developing and sustaining a legal blog or selling an aggressive social media strategy to a BigLaw firm – into understandable, bite-sized pieces that have a reasonable chance of getting done. Readers will not be disappointed by her skillfully crafted lessons that span the full range of social media and social networking topics, from search engine optimization to privacy to blogging and Facebook and LinkedIn and authenticity and a whole lot more.
I feel like I’ve known Jayne Navarre for a long time, even though we only met in 2008. That’s probably because I’ve learned so much from her, from her work as a board member in the Legal Marketing Association, as an in-house law marketing and business development leader, as a blogger and a social media consultant. She gives practical, real world advice, the kind that only comes from someone who has spent enough time in the real world to know what can and should get done. The kind of advice that fills the pages of social.lawyers. Get your copy and see for yourself.
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Disclosure: Jayne references 22 Tweets, the live Twitter interviews of lawyers that I do, a couple of times in the book as she details the marketing habits of social lawyers. Thanks, Jayne!
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