Hands up if
you still think that tweeting is something a budgie does?
I must
confess it took me a long time to get into Twitter. I had dabbled in Social
Media generally, especially MySpace and then Facebook. But I didn’t really get the
point of Twitter. I couldn’t get my head around the idea of not having a ‘page’
and of limiting posts to 140 characters.
Ironically
it was only when I read How to Leave Twitter by Grace Dent that the penny
dropped.
It is now
the platform I use the most! It is such an effective way of getting a simple
message to a huge audience very quickly. The maths speaks for itself. If I
tweet to a thousand followers and just ten of them retweet to another thousand,
and so on, then we are talking massive numbers.
This point
is made by well known legal blogger Kevin O’Keefe who says that an effective
tweet can be more effective than any press release. He talks of one PR
Professional who says she is 9 times more likely to get a response on twitter
than by sending a press release.
This is the
potential power of social media generally and Twitter in particular. We all
need to be aware of the power of the tweet. Of course it is not always good
news. I have talked before about the dangers of tweeting first and thinking
later –
It can even
shake governments - Amnesty International is beginning to highlight those who
see the influence of twitter. They have today reported on the case of Nabeel
Rajab a human rights activist who has been arrested in Bahrain for posting tweets that criticised
the government.
Such is the
power of the tweet. Twitter, if properly used, can be the most effective form
of marketing and communication for lawyers. It is a powerful tool to be used with careful thought.
To ignore it is to be well and truly left behind!
No comments:
Post a Comment