SEO consultant Indu Priya recently wrote a post for the site Quick Online Tips about measuring return on investment (ROI) when it comes to Twitter. While the piece was not directed at lawyers, its messages were well taken and certainly apply to our practices. As the author notes there, it is notoriously hard to measure results on new-media platforms like Twitter; to discern what works from what doesn’t. But there are a number of tools available for those who want to measure their Twitter results and extrapolate their ROI.
Obviously, to assess how close you are to your destination you must know where you’re going. Some firms have gone to the length of assemblying a marketing plan in order to set goals for themselves – but if you ask me a simple outline will do until you find out whether your aims are realistic, achievable, or economical. Consider these well-known Twitter success stories:
Dell famously uses Twitter to disseminate offers and discounts, as well as to listen in on market chatter. To guage success Dell counts the number of Twitter-based discounts redeemed by consumers, comparing those figures with the number of purchasers overall. The difference should represent the difference that Twitter makes in its customer-count.
Barack Obama’s Twitter account is the stuff of history – launched during his lightning 2008 presidential campaign, its goal was simply to touch as many people as possible and allow them to communicate with one another. Once their common Twitter friend (the Obama campaign) brought them together, the key metric measured b y the campaign was the number of posts (tweets) that were circulated (retweeted) by followers. After that the multiplier effect took over and delivered the vote.
Of course not all goals are measurable or even achievable; but most can be reached following some creative planning. In the meantime, consider these ROI measurement tools for Twitter and find more on OneForty:
No Law Practice for me, Thanks
funemployed (noun) (fun-em-ploy-d)
def The state of being without a job yet having lots of time to enjoy activities during work hours. i.e. Rex is funemployed so after his workout he blogs and twitters with his other funemployed friends
def Unemployed individuals who use their free time to explore themselves while waiting for a job to tumble into their lap or try to fall ass-backwards into money. i.e. Man, I love being funemployed – don’t you [INSERT ANNOYING LEGAL BLOGGER/TWITTERER NAME]
See Also
funemployment (noun) funderemployed (adverb) i.e. I used to wonder how legal bloggers and Twitter bums managed to write all day while maintaining a job or law practice. Now I realize that most of them are funderemployed or funemployed altogether.
Let’s face it: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn squandered their potential. Instead of becoming knowledge or trade hubs, they’re essentially virtual singles bars. All 3 of these networks are so choked with ads, scams, and come-ons that companies trying to turn a legitimate buck have turned to so-called opinion or “thought” leaders (anyone from Ashton Kutcher to Robert Scoble) in order to cut through the chatter. Fair enough, but lawyers still aren’t going to buy a product because it’s being pushed by an actor (even if it’s a dream-boat like Ashton). And as the authors of this piece in Social Media Today point out, professionals get online for reasons not common to the average user, including:
So why is there such a yawning gap between what professionals want in social networks and what the networks deliver? And to make matters worse, most social media campaigns are basically re-packaged website or blog content grafted onto the flavor of the month; an approach which is transparent and ineffective.
Why don’t social networks and advertisers observe the same rules that we professionals observe among ourselves, i.e.
If social networks and marketers respect these principals will they gain traction with professionals? How should I know? But I’m sure that if they ignore these points I’ll be gone before they can sell me anything.
Another day another buzzword. Today it’s the real-time web - one in a series of recent developments making the web more useful. Now the web
Much high-quality writing about this comes from Read/Write/Web, host of the Real-Time Web Summit going on right now. Here are some of the companies they’ve featured thus far:
While the legal applications for these developments are virtually limitless, even day-to-day applications are intriguing. At last my refrigerator can call, IM, or e-mail with a reminder to go grocery shopping; or it may just transmit a pre-programmed list to the store based on the fridge’s lastest contents (adjusted for plans to have the neighbors over). Events that I upload from my phone to my calendar are communicated to the refigerator which can remind me to buy party supplies, etc. The list goes on and on.
Now if you don’t mind I’m going to tell my house to raise the room temperature in time for my arrival this evening.
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