Demonstrating the value of social media to senior partners

DEMONSTRATING THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO SENIOR PARTNERS

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA?

We often encounter a steep wall of resistance when we talk to senior law firm partners about the importance of Social Business.

All too often these key decision-makers have one eye on retirement (already thinking about the dogleg on the 13th hole) and have no interest or patience to listen to explanations about the how the future of their firm may depend on social technologies and social media.

So how do you go about convincing senior partners to understand the value that social technologies can bring to your firm? What follows are a few suggestions that have worked for us in the past.

Provide Examples

One of the most effective strategies we use when we need to get senior partners to understand the value of social media is to set them up with a free Hootsuite account.

Hootsuite provides both social media publishing and social media monitoring. In this instance, we use Hootsuite to monitor the social media activity of individuals, companies and organizations that are of interest to senior partners.

We actually sit down with the senior partner, and ask him to name companies and individuals he finds important or influential to his practice. We also ask him to name a few key word or phrases that are also important to his practice. We then build tabs and activity streams on Hootsuite on the fly and demonstrate to him how he can monitor what certain people or companies are posting on social media in real time. This is a huge eye opener for senior partners. Think of it as the “AHA!!!” moment.

Benchmarking

Anyone who works in the legal industry knows that law firms like to compare themselves to what other law firms are doing.

Usually once a few law firms start doing something and it proves worthwhile the rest will follow. Therefore, benchmarking your competition and showing senior partners what your competitors are doing usually causes senior partners to take action.

Start by making a list of your closest competitors and research what they are doing on their website and on social media. Do they have a Facebook page? A Twitter account? A blog? How many followers do they have? What kind of engagement are they getting? Have they gotten press coverage as a result?

This kind of information is always helpful in getting senior partners to understand the value of social media by showing what your competitors are already doing.

Show Examples of Success & Failure

Nothing is more powerful to demonstrate the value of something than showing actual examples of success or failure.

If your firm is already active in social media, share with your senior partners the successes you have achieved.

You don’t necessarily need to show how social media led you to getting a new client, although that would be ideal.

You can also share small success stories like getting quoted in the local law journal or having a current client comment on one of your blog posts.

Demonstrate any type of engagement with your audience and if you can show how that engagement has resulted in new opportunities, Great!

If you are not actively involved in social media yet, then share the success stories or failures from close competitors if you can find them.

Use Market Data

There are many publishers and research companies that are constantly publishing data on how different industries are using social media.

Large organizations like Forrester, Gartner and Nielsen publish multiple reports throughout the year.

Get a hold of these reports and find those that focus on the industries that are important to your senior partner.

If the partner focuses on Financial Services, then show him reports of how people in the Financial Service industry are using and engaging with social media. Same goes for telecommunications or retail.

It’s not enough to show senior partner that other law firms are using social media.

Sometimes the best way to inform a senior partner on the value of social media is to show him how his clients or prospects are using and consuming social media.

Start Small

As consultants, one of the strategies we employ with the firms we work with is to start small.

Rather than develop and deploy a social media strategy for the entire firm, we usually begin with one or two practice groups. This allows firms to “test the waters” and get a sense for what works and what needs to be improved.

We usually ask our clients to recommend one or two practice groups whom they believe will be most eager to embrace and experiment with social media.

Another benefit of this approach is that as those practice groups begin to demonstrate some traction and success, it is very easy to share those success stories with senior partners and other practice groups that may also be thinking about getting started with social media.

Draft an Effective Social Media Policy

For many senior partners, the challenge is not so much conveying the value of social media as it is to allay their fears of this new medium.

Senior partners usually avoid social media because they are afraid of losing control and something going array. Perhaps they have read negative stories in the press about what can happen with social media and are reluctant to try it no matter how much value you demonstrate.

One of the techniques we use to help senior partners to overcome their fears is to help them craft an effective social media policy.

A well crafted social media policy will help to reduce the risk inherent with social media while at the same time providing training and education to firm employees on how they should conduct themselves through social media.

Seek Outside Help

Sometimes it is necessary to enlist outside help in order to help you overcome a senior partners objections about social media and to properly explain the value.

Sometimes external consultants can do a better job in convincing senior partners that this is something they need to do in order to be successful in the future.

One of the benefits our clients get when they hire us is that not only do we have expertise in social media, we are also former lawyers who understand the law firm culture and the business of law.

We spend a significant amount of time working with senior partners to help them understand social media and getting them comfortable with the concept.

Measure and Report

A critical success factor in demonstrating the value of social media to senior partners is to be able to properly measure and report on your success.

Therefore it is critical to begin with setting up a set of key performance indicators you will use to measure the success of your social media efforts.

Work with your senior partners to identify what success will look like and what is important to them.

If lead generation is important, then make sure you have the proper analytics in place so that you can measure and generate reports on your activity and engagement.

Social Media success take time to develop and build and it is an ongoing process of measuring and adjusting. It is therefore important to continually be demonstrating value to your senior partners.

From our experience, we know how challenging it is to help senior partners understand the value of social media.

In many instances it has to do more than fear than any logical explanation.

We hope the tips outlined above will help you make the case for social media at your firm.

Should you need help, we are here to assist you in your quest.

Good Luck!

http://good2bsocial.com@good2bsocial