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Implementing a Twitter Strategy into a Law Practice

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Over the past several months, I have implemented Twitter into my solo law practice.  I use Twitter primarily to follow developments in the trademark, copyright, and Internet realm of intellectual property law.  Additionally, I use Twitter to build professional relationships and understand issues relevant to my clients. The purpose of this post is to identify practices that have helped me to make better and more effective use of Twitter in my practice. This is not an exhaustive list, just a few tips that I hope will make readers make better use of an excellent practical tool.

  1. Follow relevant organizations.  Your local bar association, the intellectual property section of your local or national bar association, and national IP organizations likely already have a presence on Twitter. I, for example, follow the Denver Bar Association(@denverbarassoc), Colorado Bar Association (@CLEinColorado), the IP Section of the Colorado Bar (@CoBar_IP), and the International Trademark Association (@INTA).
  2. Follow the followers.   After following organizations, look at their Follows and Following tabs.  Very likely, the people you want to connect with follow many of the same organizations as you. Also, Twitter has recently added a suggestion function that attempts to match people with similar interests.
  3. Follow thought leaders. Thought leaders are people who have developed their own strong network of followers through active content generation or high levels of interaction with others. Examples of Intellectual Property attorneys who fall into this category include Nils Montan (@NilsMontan), Kevin O’Keefe (@KevinOKeefe), Ron Coleman (@RonColeman), Samantha Collier (@SamTaraCollier), K Matthew Dames (@copycense), IP Think Tank (@IPThinkTank), Jeremy Philips (@ipkat), and TrademarkBlog (@Trademarkblog).
  4. Set measured expectations. Building a following takes time. Connect your Twitter feed to your LinkedIn profile and your law firm’s Facebook page to inform colleagues of your Twitter account.
  5. It is more haiku than treatise.  Writing an effective tweet that conforms to a 140 character limit can be a challenge for attorneys. Twitter requires users to adapt their writing style.  If you have something substantive to say, write a post on your law firm’s blog or an article in a legal publication.  Use twitter to direct your followers to your post.  Make use of hashtags such as #IP, #trademark, etc to attract users to your Twitter feed and/or law firm website.
  6. Be interactive. I am more likely to follow a person if they retweet, reply, or comment on other’s tweets.  That said, some thought leaders such as @Mashable have accumulated so many followers that they rarely use the “@” sign to mention another user and hardly ever retweet.
  7. Be organized.  Twitter is open for business, generally, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It can be overwhelming.  Try to set aside 30 minutes every day to reading and posting tweets.  Also, an effective way to organize the tweeps you follow is to use lists.  I use lists to segregate the people I follow into IP, local, business, and general law groups.