Editor's blog | SoLoMo's judgment

Only a few years back Twitter was mostly for idle loafabouts on a year out, broadcasting to the world they were having the most amazing flat white in the sun on Sidney harbour. So far, so uninteresting. Now most law firms have a presence on the chattering platform. Not just the large ones but also smaller firms whose reach and ambitions are usually limited to a smaller catchment around their local communities. Without knowing it, they are embracing the SoLoMo approach, a concept which stands for ‘social, local, mobile’ and describes the new buying relationship between clients and suppliers.

Like the air you breathe, you have probably been doing SoLoMo without thinking about it ever since you started in practice. It’s just that it didn’t have a name. But behavioural marketeers have spent time analysing how the worldwide web, with its claim to connect users in different time zones, is now helping people connect with their local communities. And they’ve come up with this name.

Until then, you were probably just thinking about advertising in yellow pages, playing golf with local SME owners, writing the occasional piece for the local paper, or making sure you were listed in legal directories. All this is SoLoMo before the internet was invented. Now, your website, your blog, your Twitter feed and Facebook page are all doing the same thing. What SoLoMo makes clear is that online technology is not an end in itself, merely an advanced tool to communicate and reach out. The next stage, service delivery, can take place online, but – importantly – SoLoMo positively assumes that clients may want to interact face-to-face and visit your firm, so being local is an integral part of the relationship.

SoLoMo is also what underpins the legal newcomers’ offering – think Rocket Lawyer and its online service backed by a panel of local firms, or LegalZoom, which is still to launch in Britain but also promises to bring together local firms and online interaction, particularly if the partnership with QualitySolicitors comes off.

Rocket Lawyer went one step further earlier this year when it bought LawPivot, a Quora-style platform allowing users to post questions that are picked up by lawyers. The latest manifestation of this movement is a widget launched earlier this week called HonestyBoxx. Unlike the big online legal brands, the new gizmo just sits on your website. Like these other online legal services providers, it allows users to post and get quick answers to their questions, and it is an opportunity for lawyers to generate and convert leads. There is one, critical difference: users must attach a value to the question they need resolved, which founders say will be key in filtering out time-wasters. You could of course argue that the Rocket Lawyer membership model performs a similar function, but the effect of instant micro-payment of HonestyBoxx probably acts more efficiently.

HonestyBoxx doesn’t come with Rocket Lawyer’s or LegalZoom’s big marketing budget. It is up to you to build it into your own marketing strategy. In fact, there is nothing stopping you from asking your web developer to turn your existing ‘get in touch’ forms into something similar. Whether this SoLoMo thingey works for your firm is for you to judge, but widgets like HonestyBoxx are bringing new Twitter-type power to individual firms without having to plug into the dominant brands’ networks. If anything, this ought to make you think again about how you mesh your online presence with your wider marketing strategy and think more sharply about getting measurable returns on your online activity.