Twitter not so much
When it comes to marketing LinkedIn and YouTube appear to be the social media platforms of choice for big law firms, whilst Twitter trails behind.
Passle, a professional services marketing platform, studied the online presence of 200 top law firms in the US and found that the average firm has just over 35,000 followers on LinkedIn and 46,500 views on YouTube. On Twitter, the average follower count is 8,300.
The research also tots up follower counts for the firms across the three sites.
Six firms have more than 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, with Baker McKenzie far out in front with 310,000, followed by DLA Piper (199,000) and Hogan Lovells (161,000). On Twitter, White & Case is the only firm with more than 60,000 followers (64,000), according to the data, while DLA Piper (41,000), Latham & Watkins (37,000) and Hogan Lovells (32,000) were the others with more than 30,000.
When it comes to YouTube, US personal injury practice Morgan & Morgan registered over eight million views last year, according to the research. Legal Cheek couldn’t resist looking into the kind of content the firm uploads to be garnering this many views and we came across a few gems. The firm’s founder, John Bryan Morgan, often shares in 60-second or so clips his take on random things like the food he hates, plus there’s this funny vid from the firm’s lawyers reading bad lawyer jokes. Elsewhere, Jones Day registered 266,000 YouTube views and Hogan Lovells 248,000.
The research found that a growing number of firms are turning to the ‘Tube to share their expertise, with 144 out of the 200 firms now on the video sharing website.
When it comes to total follower counts across the top 200 US firms — LinkedIn again takes the top spot (3,094,916), while Twitter ranks second (732,797) and YouTube third.
Commenting on the findings, Adam Elgar, Passle co-founder, said: “It is no longer enough to tell potential clients how good you are — you need to show it too. Firms have nothing to fear and everything to gain by putting their expertise in the public domain, and there is often a clear correlation between this activity and enquiry levels.”
He continued: “People buy expertise but they also buy people. The savvy use of social media to share insights about both the law and the firm is a great way to sell yourself to potential clients, and it need not be a time-consuming exercise.”
