Should Lawyers Directly Promote their Services through Twitter?

Lawyers should consider directly promoting their services via Twitter.  While lawyers need to be careful to follow applicable ethical rules, members of other industries are seeing results from selling and promoting directly on Twitter.

Take the music industry.  A recent article posted on Tech Crunch describes the powerful role of Twitter in promoting a newly released album, Asleep in the Bread Aisle.  Asher Roth's first album rose to the number one position for digital albums the week of its release.  And Twitter played a key role.  Roth apparently Tweeted his 69,566 followers that his album would be on iTunes the following day.  He also Tweeted a link for locating the album on iTunes.   According to the article, the main advantage of Roth's Tweets is that it made the information feel more like an insider tip than promotion or marketing.

While lawyers sell their services and usually don't have a generic product to sell to the world, a law firm could promote a white paper, article, seminar, or speaking engagement through Twitter.  Likewise, if an attorney wished to share guidance or a newsletter about a new development in the law, the attorney could share a link or other information through Twitter.

Obviously, law firms and lawyers need to be careful to follow accepted protocol and norms for social media sites.  Thus, if an attorney is only using Twitter to barrage followers with promotional materials, such promotion will likely fail.  But if a lawyer first cultivates relationships, contributes to the "conversation" and shares helpful information, an occasional promotion is generally accepted and appreciated.

Please leave your comments below about whether and when lawyers should use Twitter to promote their services.