Social leaders: How managing partners should use Twitter

Twitter. Love it or loath it, the social networking medium – worth more than £18 billion on its IPO in 2013 – seems here to stay.

Much has been written about how law firms’ social media strategies should take account of Twitter and the perils of individual tweets from lawyers about the world at large. Less, however, has been said about management engagement with Twitter, particularly whether using it on a regular basis has improved their personal brands, whether they feel they are doing it well and what they could do better.

Julie Gingell, marketing and business development partner at SA Law, warns that leaders ignore social media at their peril, “as it’s here to stay and will no doubt become second nature to the emerging leaders of the future”.

That may well be so, but presenting one’s views effectively relies upon a clear voice, says Stuart Miller, managing partner at Miller Rosenfalck. For him, the most interesting tweets follow the nostrum “inform, don’t sell”.

By informing in pithy terms, says Miller, “they form a body of material that makes the reader feel [the managing partner] has a personality and a relationship to the reader”.

“Which is not to say”, notes Miller, “that the content always has to be about law, but rather it has to be appropriate to the firm’s place in the world”.

That’s something that DWF’s managing partner, Andrew Leaitherland, has very much taken to heart. Having joined Twitter in May 2013 to “engage with those people interested in joining us on the DWF journey”, his own Twitter usage delivers “a dialogue with followers”, he hopes.

This he does through a mixture of news and thought leadership articles via DWF’s existing social media channels, alongside a stream of relevant information from the likes of Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and Forbes.

This, he says, “adds a personal touch to professional communications”, one that requires individual rather than institutional effort – something that Gingell also believes is important.

Similarly, DMH Stallard’s managing partner, Tim Aspinall, says he generally tweets about issues that affect the future of the legal profession – citing information about new market entrants and interesting statistics and developments.

Aspinall says that focus “reflects what I write and speak about at conferences in the UK and around the world”. Occasionally, he points to those articles or conference talks he has done during his interactions on Twitter.

Like Miller and Leaitherland, Aspinall is not above promoting his firm but tweets “very occasionally about awards the firm or partners in it have won” so that it is kept in balance.

Gingell is less cautious about promoting her firm, arguing that cross-communication can be very effective. Posting seminar slides, articles and video blogs as a mass transmission while “tweeting individuals with items of value” they might need “can market your firm to specific targets,” she says.

Leaitherland also uses Twitter alongside internal communication tools such as Yammer, DWF’s internal social network, saying the combination “helps you to make connections with people you may not necessarily come into contact with otherwise”.

 

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Social media engagement by UK law firms

Almost half of UK law firms (47 respondents) have won clients as a direct result of social media activity, according to research conducted by Byfield Consultancy last year. Of those respondents, most new clients came through LinkedIn (48 per cent) and Twitter (38 per cent).

Nearly a third said they regarded Twitter as ‘very important’ as a profile-raising tool. Almost eight out of 10 firms said they use Twitter to keep in touch with journalists.
Three quarters said they encouraged their employees to engage in social media on behalf of their firm.

101 of the UK’s top-200 law firms participated in the research. The full findings are published in The Law Says Tweet.

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Personal vs. professional

In that respect, the personal is the professional. Gingell says that, while she follows people “to generate momentum” around her tweeting and aims to capture her personality in 140 characters, “people won’t follow you just because you are the managing partner of a law firm”.

Leaitherland, however, says he uses Twitter rather more for “direct access
to DWF’s stakeholders and the
wider market.”

“This gives them direct access to
me – which I certainly find very valuable,” he adds.

One PR and communications source at a top-50 UK law firm suggests that, while Twitter provides managing partners with a platform to give senior insight into business causes and activities that are personal to them, as a distinct channel,
it has always been complimentary
to business.

Miller agrees, but deprecates firms that are “stuck in a rut of pure Twitter
self promotion” by citing tombstone
deals repetitively when others are
taking a chance on being relevant, humorous and thought provoking.

“Clearly, the immediacy of the
medium is key to getting the right balance”, he says. “But you have to
avoid it looking like pure propaganda.”

Tone, he says, is important, as is timing, but Miller – like other managing partners like DLA Piper’s Sir Nigel Knowles – sees no harm in “campaigning on longer-term issues that otherwise will be buried by short-term headlines”.

Miller says: “It’s a curious forum, where the 140 character limit seems
at first like a boundary, but you can see successful users developing arguments in a very punchy way over days and weeks”.

Therein, of course, is a dilemma about risk. The top-50 PR manager says his advice to partners is to avoid using the platform to divide their audience on a topic, be it populist or political, or to stoke controversy. If that means that tweets are informational, rather than incendiary, then there is a virtue
in arguably being less interesting as a result, at least to the casual non-legal user, because, he says, “it’s so easy to get it wrong”.

Miller disagrees, saying Twitter is
“not for the faint hearted, so don’t tweet if you can’t take criticism or debate and address it constructively”. But, many others we spoke with erred on the side
of caution in avoiding the trite, the pejorative or the excess of personality.

Not everyone, however, has a complete separation of the personal and professional. Nigel Haddon, formerly chief executive at SAS Daniels, says he “tweets more on the personal side (i.e. about food, wine and football)” but follows “more people on the professional side”.

Haddon says he feels Twitter “will become more important” as a communication tool in future. “But I’ve not yet seen a great example of how a managing partner or a CEO might use it well from a law firm. I’m afraid there’s rather too much of the ‘look at me’ or ‘look at my firm’ going on, too much ‘telling’ and not enough ‘showing’,”
he reflects.

Steve Kuncewicz, an IP, media and social media lawyer at Bermans, agrees, saying “Twitter isn’t for everyone”.

He adds: “As much as I’m evangelical about its benefits, I’m under no illusion that older lawyers will be rushing to come up with their own hashtags.

“That said, I remember first writing a piece for this magazine on the potential opportunities for lawyers who tweet some five years ago and the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Individual lawyers can reap the benefits of social media, he says,
as “the whole point of interacting on Twitter is to engage, rather than broadcast”, and “to leverage true
value from the conversation”.

As one partner, asking to remain anonymous, says: “If you, as an individual, are on Twitter solely to tell everyone how great you or your firm are, then you are seriously underestimating your audience.”

Leading the way

So, do those same benefits apply to senior law firm staff members? Elliot Moss, director of marketing and
business development at Mishcon
de Reya, is in no doubt.

“Twitter offers a fantastic opportunity for a brand to really engage with its audience. I believe that if we want to be thought leaders in our field, we need to be there,” he says.

That said, he echoes managing partners in feeling strongly that “the success of Twitter as a communications channel is entirely based on the content you choose to share”.

Moss says “it is a great way to amplify the things we want to say, however it is this part – what we want to say – that
it is so critical to getting right”.

To him, the use of Twitter must be consistent with a broader communications strategy, “based on the premise that anything we communicate should be ‘of value’”. Like Kuncewicz, he believes tweets should be “relevant, interesting and informative”, as well as “authentic
and unique”.

How, then, would heads of marketing and BD in law firms advise managing partners? Keith Hardie – who fulfils a similar role to Moss at Bird & Bird, is less sure that managing partners need to engage with Twitter personally. Like Haddon, he believes there may be more risks than benefits in doing so, although he concedes that a firmwide presence
is valuable.

The need for a presence on Twitter is something that all law firms might agree on. Hardie’s firm has achieved external recognition for its social media presence, with over 6,000 followers of its official Twitter channel and a Klout score that is higher than any of the magic circle firms (see box: Klout scores of UK legal twitterati). He says his firm has generated new work specifically via this medium.

But, not everyone agrees that institutional communications are superior to individual ones. Kuncewicz argues that “law firms with corporate communications procedures, and set tones of voice, probably aren’t agile or flexible enough to connect meaningfully with their audience and catch a moment of lightning in a bottle, let alone exploit it to its fullest potential, especially when that potential doesn’t always translate into billable hours immediately”.

Similarly, Eddie Ross, chief executive at QualitySolicitors, is more sanguine about personality. “Whether you are likeable or not is going to matter in some areas more than others,” he says. “Work out who your audiences are – other lawyers, journalists, potential clients
– and adjust your tone to suit.”

For his part, Riverview Law’s director of operations, Jeremy Hopkins, also started out on Twitter as an observer but “quickly discovered a buoyant online legal community, which developed into engagement professionally and then socially”. He takes a personal as well as professional stance to using the medium.

Now, says Hopkins, his personal views on the legal market “very much align with the culture and values of Riverview Law, so I am lucky that personal and professional morph into one”.

He adds: “I tweet regularly, particularly during commuting, but also during the working day. For me, it is the modern day ‘water cooler’.”

If there are negatives, he says, it is that the kind of dialogue that Aspinall and Leaitherland have identified “often plays out very quickly, generating an appetite for more and more, resulting in dilution of meaning and/or repetition”. This he finds particularly true around the subject of the modern legal services marketplace, such that “everything that can be said has been said”.

Even for those dedicated to change
in legal services, Twitter can have limitations as well as levity and learning. But, personality can overcome them – within reason.

Ross says “it is OK, expected even, to tweet about non-work stuff”. But, he warns: “don’t do it too much until you’ve established your credentials and people know why they are following you.”

Like Miller, he is not against dialogue. “Display your expertise, have confidence in your opinions and, within reason, don’t be afraid to be controversial,” says Ross.

External perspective

Gus Sellitto, managing director at Byfield Consultancy, thinks senior lawyers should include a Twitter account as part of their overall reputation management strategies, “but only if is useful for them and helps them to achieve a specific aim”.

That aim, he says, should be clear – whether it is to develop business, discuss important legal developments, express strong legal business opinions “or to
tell followers that they had toast for breakfast this morning, if that’s what
they want to do”.

Melissa Davis of MD Communications agrees. “Really engaging with social media requires a real digital ‘personality,’” she says.

That voice, she says, “skilfully
walks the line between personable
and professional and encompasses relevance, thought leadership and
subtle self-promotion all in one very attractive package”.

She notes: “If that sounds tough to achieve then that’s because it is, but the rewards for getting it right are enticing, which is why so many of us are talking about it right now.”

Clare Rodway, managing director of Kysen PR, draws an analogy with networking: how much value managing partners get out of it will depend on how good they are at it. “That’s why a solely ‘corporate’ approach to Twitter, where the firm just tweets press releases, rather than individual partners engaging with others on Twitter in a meaningful way, will only take you so far,” she notes.

“Delegating Twitter engagement to the marketing department is a missed opportunity,” Rodway adds. Alongside a ‘corporate’ voice, whilst also avoiding the risk of being self-obsessed, law firms “should have streams of communication coming from partners and other individuals in the firm”.

Sellitto says his agency’s recent research amongst the top-200 UK law firms shows social media has yet to be fully integrated into law firms’ wider business development and marketing strategies (see box: Social media engagement by UK law firms). That, however, is changing, as nearly a third said they regarded twitter as a ‘very important’ profile-raising tool.

Underpinning these strategies, advocates Davis, is peer research. She argues that the “truly successful tweeter poses questions, gets into conversations, uses all the forms of social media available (YouTube, Vine, Instagram, all of which can be integrated with Twitter) and (crucially) keeps up the momentum – an abandoned Twitter profile is the biggest social media fail”.

Sellitto advises: “Think carefully about exactly what your story is, who you want to tell it to and how you want to tell it before engaging on social media.” This will ensure a more strategic and less scattergun approach.

“It’s better to say less and be more impactful than to be tweeting every five minutes for the sake of having a social media presence,” he concludes.

As one partner told Managing Partner: “Work opportunities and referrals have presented themselves from people I’ve met through Twitter. And that’s not because I tell everyone how great my firm is. People just know me for being me.”

 

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Klout scores of UK legal twitterati

When it comes to judging social media mastery, the most commonly-used yardstick is the Klout score. A free online analytics tool that measures data from an individual’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media profiles, Klout assigns a score from 1 to 100 based on the reach and depth of a user’s online influence. While its methodology is far from perfect, Klout says it weights scores based on both the number of connections users have and their “true reach” – essentially the level of real engagement users’ networks have with the content they post.

While the size of a Twitter user’s follower base and the number of tweets racked up are a heavily influence on the Klout score, these factors aren’t everything. Some of the sample UK legal Twitter users we looked at who have very large networks, but tend to tweet mainly impersonal firm and general legal news, don’t score nearly as highly as some with smaller networks but a strong personal touch on Twitter.

The rules of effective Twitter engagement for lawyers are therefore similar to other business users: tweet often, offer variety and include plenty of colour. The small sample of users we looked at reinforce the generally-held belief that the most effective Twitter users post honest, clear opinions not only on professional matters but also on other issues. They comment on news and events and, when retweeting material they find interesting, give their own opinions.

• Jeremy Hopkins ‏– @Jezhop – 59
• Steve Kuncewitz – @SteveKuncewicz – 59
• Keith Hardie – @keithhardie – 49
• Elliot Moss – @elliot_moss – 48
• Karl Chapman – @KarlChapman100 – 47
• Clare Rodway – @ClareRodway – 47
• Melissa Davis – @MDcomms – 46
• Sir Nigel Knowles – @sirnigelknowles – 42
• Andrew Leaitherland – @ALeaitherland - 42
• Tim Aspinall – @tjmaspinall – 36
• Gus Sellitto – @GusSellitto – 35
• Nigel Haddon – @nigelhaddon – 33

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Ben Rigby and Fraser Allan are freelance legal journalists

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