Are you missing out? Time to tap into the airwaves and be heard

I studied law in the old days; when you wore, with a sense of job well done, the hand cramps that always followed a two-hour lecture. We were collectively terrified of missing a vital case name in the pre-technology days of the unrecorded lecture.

Nowadays, you are more likely to get cramps from swiping right, or left, as the whim takes you. I say this in all seriousness. There are 480 million interactions on smart phones in Australia every day.[1] Are you missing out on this action?

I am not advocating for a future where clients select a lawyer by swiping. Can you imagine the conversation?

Yet, if each of Australia’s 24.6 million residents is averaging 19.5 interactions a day, you have to ask yourself — am I missing out on something?

I am hoping the 0–5 year age group is not yet tweeting, so you may be up for 20.8 interactions per day. I average about 10 texts a day, and perhaps, a Facebook like or three. Some days on the commute to work, I look left and right and wonder if my neighbours are shouldering some of the unaccounted for 10.8 interactions I am selfishly shirking.

If social media is to the 21st century what the telegraph was to the 1800s; its ability to connect people will be transformative.

So how do lawyers get a piece of this action? How can they best adapt their practice to tap into this mass communication channel and connect with clients and other stakeholders?

How do you push back on the inherent lawyers’ urge to wait to be asked for advice, and dip a toe into the social media whirlpool to market yourself?

More importantly, how do they do this and maintain the requisite degree of proprietary and professionalism the community and the courts expect from lawyers?

Expert help is the key, and your QLS is a great place to start.

There are innumerable pathways to a social media interaction. Clients can be engaged via LinkedIn updates on matters relevant to their business. This may lead to subscription to a regular commentary published by your firm.

Marketing your services to specific interest groups on Facebook who have ‘liked’ property development posts, will provide more targeted and effective ‘click and open’ rates.

Reminding clients of meeting times, courts times (and locations) and matter deadlines, via text might seem, well unseemly, but that is how 4.69 million Queensland residents are communicating.

At QLS we can help you be one of the proactively engaged 9637 practising Queensland lawyers to embrace technology and claim some airtime on your client’s smart phone.

Learn the business of law with QLS’s Practice Management Course.

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[1] Deliotte Global Mobile Consumer Survey 2016