Effective Social Network Marketing

According to its Wikipedia definition, social media marketing is "an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales."

Today, prominent social media sites include Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more 8 figure subscriber sites that are prominent within their geographical or demographical spheres of influence.

The volume of social media Web sites springing up these days is reminiscent of the competing search engines back around 2000. Some of you may remember names like Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite, Altavista, or Infoseek. Many of these engines disappeared rapidly and we will likely see similar results within the social media space.

I think it's Facebook's game to lose at this point though and their subscriber base and growth trend position the company for considerable sustained success. LinkedIn is also highly influential within the business community and may ultimately change the recruitment/job seeking landscape entirely.

Understanding the basics of social networking is critical so you can begin to think of ways your business can leverage these evolving marketing platforms, as competitive marketing differentiators.

Click here for a link of sites around the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Click here for a link of recent Facebook statistics: (pretty astounding)
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

So, how can you integrate social media into your current strategy?

First, focus on relationship building with relevant contacts, on sites that you are comfortable with. Do not look to navigate, or even understand the entire world of social media - it is far too broad reaching and may be overwhelming, if viewed in its entirety.

There are many influential community members, lawyers and non-lawyers users of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, who can be great potential sources of new client leads for your law practice. Social media allows you to stay in touch regularly, by posting relevant updates or news about your firm. This way, you are continually reminding contacts of your expertise in the domain, making it more likely that you will be the one they reach out to. While not everyone within your network circle will be interested in an proactively seek out your professional blog, you may still be able to share important information and updates via more personal sites like FaceBook or Twitter. For example, a blurb announcing a a recent $5 Million medical malpractice verdict may attract the attention of your banker, who has a client whose mother was recently misdiagnosed. Alternatively, a LinkedIn profile, higlighting the new organization that you are now affiliated with may cause an old business contact that you did not expect to hear from to inquire into your offering.

Also, social media opens the door to highly targeted marketing to sizeable audiences. Facebook's pay per click marketing tools, for example, enable advertisers to target a subset of its roughly 1/4 Billion user base, by interests, age, location, etc... As with any marketing tactics, you will want to test, measure and optimize to make sure you are achieving the ideal return on your investment.

There is an art to leveraging social networks to promote a product or service and most experts will advise to be very cautious in your approach, so it does not backfire. Tip: Social Media is a two-way communication channel - using it as a one way tool is ineffective and may harm your company's image Getting a contact that you met online through a social network to visit your Web site, or blog takes patience. Leverage your relationships to give your organization a human element and nurture these relationships and you will see the long term dividends.

Lastly, social media is an incredibly powerful tool for exchanging information with both peers and clients, including developments in the law, trial strategies and successes. The field of social media is still in its infancy right now and I would strongly recommend that you first get your feet wet and start taking advantage of some of the networking opportunities offered. Once you understand how to network within your social circles, you will be better positioned to grasp the strength of various opportunities to market outside of it.

Get Ready to Rumble...

As an early pioneer of Web assisted dispute resolution, I am very disappointed to inform that relationships between insurance companies and claimants have recently taken a turn for the worse and plaintiff's and defense lawyers may already be seeing the impacts of this shift toward an increasingly adversarial environment. Of course, the economic downturn is once again the main culprit.

So, what exactly is going on? The property and casualty insurance industry depends on premium investment earnings for a considerable portion of profits. There are many profitable carriers that do not have a combined ratio (losses plus expenses divided by earned premiums) of under 100. Translated in English, a carrier may spend $1.02 and earn $1.00. However, in good times, that $1.00 can generate an extra $.16 because it is floated, or held on to for a lengthy period of time.

As you can guess, insurance carriers are not very eager to part with their capital, while their investments earnings are at all time lows. Under normal conditions, insurance companies are driven by both the compelling need to satisfy policy holders and the financial reality that legitimate claims do not get cheaper as they age. However, given the market dowturn, carriers have started digging in and cash flow has become the new profit and loss.

Here's a link to an interesting Business Insurance article, where David Siesko of Siesko Partners elaborates on the carrier perspective and its current impact on relationships with policy holders.

What does this mean for litigation professionals and the vendors that support them?
This phenomenon is having a profound impact on the industry and the impact varies according to the perspective.

Let's start with plaintiff's lawyers and claimants. If you are a trial lawyer that handles a large volume of carrier settlements, get ready for protracted negotiations, and an increase in litigation due to less flexibility by insurers. An increasing number of commercial carriers will be following in the footsteps of auto carriers and taking an increasingly rigid approach to settlement. A year ago you may have negotiated a specific injury to a $45,000 settlement. Today, a carrier may offer you $35,000 and tell you to take it or sue.

"Mill" type firms, which are dependent on high volume, low severity claims, will see an increase in receivable cycles and likely a reduction in the amounts they are able to negotiate. This will ultimately cause many firms to rethink their existing business strategies. Plaintiff's firms will become increasingly dependent on litigation financing companies to help them navigate the peaks and troughs that will be created by this new environment.

Insurance companies will become increasingly dependent on defense firms, which is certainly a positive if you fall within this category. However, it is not all sugar and spice, as insurers have begun to scrutinize every dollar spent, in an uprecedented fashion. A number of carriers are hiring additional legal bill review experts to help them turn the heat on their defense firms.

Legal vendors will be impacted differently, depending on the type of business they are in. Litigation financing is a great place to be today - just have to make sure your investment is secured by viable cases, or that the firm you are lending to is very healthy financially. It is a different ballgame today.

Some vendors, particularly ones working with plaintiff's firms, may expect a delay in receivables. Firms will not be seeing settlements as fast as they once were and this is going to affect everyone doing business with them. It is a good time to be in the cost-savings business, but you will need to demonstrate an immediate and certain financial return, to win business consistently.

So a few tips to overcome this change in carrier practices: ensure adequate cash flow by learning about and leveraging the legal financial services available on the market, keep your own operations trim and tight to remain competitive and make sure to stay on top of the aging of your receivables.