Originally posted on
May 18, 2010 10:28 AM
This weekend we were sitting around as we usually do working on some new features for our product. The discussion centered around a component in our product that displays a law firms leads and eventually lead to social media, a hot topic today.
The question was can social media widgets be added to our application and if so what benefit would it provide a attorney or law firm. We had Twitter integrated in version 1 of our product and I had it removed because our clients found that Twitter and Facebook are distractions. One law firm found that when they restricted access to twitter and Facebook that some of their staff's productivity went up by as much as 400%.
No one is really listening
Now I don't buy into the social media buzz as a valid sales channel. At least not how everyone else goes about using it. I have used social media for promotional purposes before and it was very successful. Now you might have guessed that I just did what everyone does, joined a social circle to plug my product or service. That is the absolute worse thing you can do because of the human condition. We tend to believe bad news before the good. Anything I have to say (or anyone else associated with my product or service) isn't taken seriously in social circles by potential customers. Now you will always have followers, those early adopters but they don't add to your bottom line. They have already bought in. It is the new recruits, the new potential clients we want to attract. In the end you will find that no one is really listening. How can you stand out among all the other social media noise. As a student of Sun Tzu and Sūn Zǐ Bīng Fǎ I will use my opponent's venue and troops to spread information and attract new recruits.
Social Media can payoff in a big way
In the 90s I ran a online magazine called the OTZ. It was for the 3D community and focused on lighting and character animation. It was very successful and like most websites back then you had to either hear about the site from a peer or through some social media circle such as AOL groups, website forum, bulletin boards etc. or it would just wither and die.
I was a frequent exhibitor at SIGGRAPH (the international conference for computer graphic professionals) as a guest speaker and artist for a wonderful company in Silicon valley called Caligari. During one of these shows I was approached by McMillan publishing, one of the largest educational publishers in the country. They had heard wonderful things about my online rag called the OTZ and were interested in having me write a book for their New Riders Inside Series. I could pick any topic regarding 3D computer graphics and thought well since the founder of Caligari RomanOrmandy had become a friend of mine and he had such a wonderful product I decided to write the book called InsideTruespace.
Meeting my monthly deadline with new exciting cover art, tutorials and topics was finally showing some feedback. Remember, content is king. It's not easy creating 3D graphics that will wow your readership every month. A image could take 20-30 hours to create and on top of that I had to write all the copy myself every month. A lot of very late nights.
So I'm going to write a book. I want the book to be great. I want my readers to say it was the best they have ever read but there was a problem. There already was a book on the subject. By a well respected artist and friend. His book was the tome on the subject at the time. How could I compete? My artwork won't be enough to get folks past the color inserts at the bookstore. He already had a huge following. How can I reach his followers without sounding like I'm trying to sell them something? I needed a plan.
Everyone loves a good fight
Well I'm halfway through the book and its is already 448 pages. I have had to create all the imagery, tutorials, callouts and art work. All while my editors are breathing down my neck. The amount of work I'm putting in better pay off I often thought, but I still had no idea how to have my book taken seriously if I promoted it. I knew if the community compared the two I would win easily but how to do that. I can't run a ad campaign. What new writer can afford that. I know if I plug my own book only my followers will be listening. What to do.
Challenge my opponent in a open forum. Although the best book of the day was by a friend of mine, I knew that if we had opposing views that many people would gather around to see the fight. I started to release short excerpts of my book pointing out the flaws in the old tome and how the old ways are no longer valid. I didn't place ads or run a radio commercial I simply posted it to my own forums and let the community disseminate it for me.
It worked like a charm. The buzz quickly turned into a roar. Most of the dialog was taking place on my opponents forum and bulletin boards not mine. I didn't have to spend time or money promoting my book. The 3D graphics community did that for me. This is a interesting point. What validated all that was being said is that it wasn't being said by me. Today I read so much hype about using Social Media to grow ones practice. I personally think it is a waste of time unless you can get someone other than yourselves to do the talking.
Well the book turned out to be almost 800 pages long. When it hit the shelves at Barnes and Noble I was elated but the really cool thing was that everyone was picking up the book because they wanted to see for themselves why my tome was better then the last. To this day 98% of the reviews on Amazon say it is the best book on the subject and give it 4.8 out of 5 stars.
Lets apply a similar technique using the Legal community
So its 12 years later and my small staff think that Social Media is new and to effectively use Social Media they have to do what everyone else is doing. Blogging about yourself, tweeting about yourself, and facebooking about yourself. I just want to scream "No one will be listening" but instead I thought I would be fun to show my use of Social Media to attract interest and perhaps how Sun Tzu would have too.
We are aware of several bloggers that push the social media buzz. We can't challenge these bloggers on the Social Media topic because we are simply out numbered. Don't pick a fight you can't win. The masses don't think independently, they just follow. So I thought we would use our own product in the example.
Now it would be silly to challenge my competitors in one of their own forums or even our own. We would simply be overwhelmed and the noise would only be heard by those who have already made their choice. Remember, its those who gather I have interest in not my opponent. What we need is someone who loves a competing product and get them to mix it up or at the very least post our text, thus creating buzz in a forum we don't own or have any association with. To boot we will get free publicity. Remember, there really is no such thing as bad press if you have a solid product or service.
You can't have a fight if you don't have a opponent. I'm a avid reader of the Lawyerist. It is a very good blog and has lots of really good content. The owner of the blog is no fan of our product and has made his opinion on the subject known (they use Rocket Matter). He will be our opponent since he has a large follwoing. We will use his blog to our advantage. Readers who would otherwise never hear about our product on his blog will gather to see the fight and in return we won't have to pay the blogger a dime for the hits we will surely get from his and his readers retort.
Keep in mind that they will fire back. The blogger and some of his readers will come to his defense. This is expected, it is sort of a battle except we are not interested in what the blogger has to say or any of those who agree with him. They already made up their minds. They are not prospects. Remember what we are interested in is those who gather to see the fight. The ones who have not made up their minds yet or didn't know they were looking for something new, yet. I would have to spend a lot of up front cash to get their attention otherwise. They are already on his blog reading it so why not get our product in front of them without all the sales pitch hoopla.
The Results
Did Lawyerist take the bait? As you can see from the Woopra screen capture, they did. The list is ordered by page views not visitors which is of interest to me. If the reader has been to our site before they will most likely peek at the first page and bail. So the numbers are interesting. We will update the image below as the numbers trickle in.
We posted to the Lawerist blog late Saturday evening. We challenged him to compare products and attacked his inability to be unbiased. I also posted a open challenge to all products. This is really so indexers scanning his blog link this text to those products as well.
On Sunday our website received 34% more hits then the last 4 Sundays. The blogger mentioned us in his Tweets, posted our text on his Blog and he posted a response. His Tweet mentioning our product already shows up in a Google search. That is all we needed. He validated our product to his readers at that moment. Monday is when it got interesting. It is 11 AM the following Monday and our downloads for a typical Monday are up by a hefty margin and our SaaS signups for a weekend are up as well. More importantly, our inbox is full of questions about our product. What will be interesting is how many new clients we will retain as a result. Stay tuned.
The rules of engagement
This was a fun exercise and my very small staff finally get it. You have to be creative. Doing what everyone else does just won't get you noticed.
- This method can only be used once. Remember, you are not at war with your opponents.
- Pick your opponent wisely. He has to have a large following.
- You have to have a solid product or service so when prospects come to look for themselves they can see the value and the difference.
- You have to have a very thick skin. You wouldn't step into battle without armor, right? Your opponent won't just sit their and take it nor will his troops.
- This technique can't be applied in all industries. It is just an example of how to use creative ways to break through all the noise.
A apology of sorts
I normally wouldn't apologize, this is battle after all, but I did blindside my opponent or victim depending on how you view my approach. He is a pup to Social Media where I'm an old dog. Although Lawerist isn't a fan of our product we hold no ill will. As I said, I enjoy the blog. It was the most likely candidate for the experiment and most believable as a opponent since we have exchanged text on his blog in the past and he does not like our product. It doesn't hurt that they have a large readership either. This is the number one reason I chose them for the experiment. I wish them the greatest success and will continue to read their fine blog.
Closing statement
Social Media's sole purpose to me is to attract new prospects. You have to be creative because in all the noise your message won't be heard, no one is really listening for a sales pitch. But they come running when they hear "Fight-Fight!".
Frank A. Rivera CEO
HoudiniESQ legal case management software
UPDATE
The children of the blog responded and came to Mr. Glover's defense as expected with exactly what I expected. With comments only a 16 year old could appreciate. The young and inexperienced are so predictable.
Just to set the record straight.
Several bloggers reported on my experiment and assumed that what I claimed in my post on Lawerist was made up. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is I indeed had these conversations with Mr. Glover via email exchanges and on the phone as he made a point of mentioning "Frank picks up the phone at LOGICBit" (I'm paraphrasing). In his own reply he says no such dialogs took place but in the same breath he says he never received the name of a firm he could do a story on. Which is it? Wasn't that in my post, you never took me up on it.
Lawyerist is bias and has admitted so. TechnoLawyer has no bias. The contributors see to that. Both derive revenue from advertisers. Which in your opinion is more credible?
I did expect bloggers to get the facts wrong though. They aren't journalist. They don't confirm facts before taking a position.
Now I would be the first to admit that I can be abrasive and frank, no pun intended, but if you research my post on SaaS in general and on the legal software industry you will find that my post are more honest and revealing then anyone else's in the legal software business.
Most Bloggers aren't authorities of any measure.
Tags are uniquely valuable in a system like Flickr, Myspace and Twitter since photos and funny post can be categorized fairly easily using Tags. A user can find all videos of funny pet tricks in seconds.