Social Meeja – What a Luddite Has Learnt So Far… Lesson #2 – Twitter is like a small child

Welcome to my musings about my trial and error approach to using social meeja to promote my legal training company.  I have done lots of amazing things: got a Cambridge degree, taught a whole load of solicitors over the years, set up my own business, had a beautiful daughter (the biggest achievement). 

But nothing has prepared me for the complete change in the way that I need to think to succeed at this and for those of you out there grappling with similar challenges, I thought that I would tell you what I have learnt so far. 

My twitter account is @adaptlaw – the clue is in the name. It’s my company account – so I am not going to post pictures of what I had for lunch (unless someone very important buys it for me).  So, I don’t think that I am aiming for thousands and thousands of views.   My aim is for someone to think: ‘That looks an interesting webinar’ or ‘Lorraine’s membership scheme for property lawyers and firms looks like good value’ and they are prompted to press the link that takes them to my website.

So do not take anything that I say as a lack of ambition – quality not quantity is my aim.

#1 Having a website is not enough

You need to get traffic to it. People are not going to find you. They are not waiting for you. They are not waiting for your products or services; however good they may be.  You need to get your name, brand and message out there and one of the main ways of doing that is via social meeja.  I chose Linked In first (for its business context) and Twitter more recently.

#2 Understand the difference between Linked In and Twitter

Twitter is like a small child – it needs constant attention and input.  Linked In is Twitter’s older sibling – it tries to be a bit more cool and grown up, is less needy, but still demands quite a lot of looking after.  They are different. 

A post on Twitter is an ephemeral thing. You put it out. It gets views. You get excited. The views die off quickly. You get deflated.  You open the rioja.  All in the space of a matter of hours.

Posts on Linked In have more of a shelf life. They get more views than Twitter but over a longer time.  So, there is gratification to be had in checking your phone regularly.

But, the really interesting thing for me, despite it being a petulant child, is that Twitter seems to drive more traffic to my website than Linked In. Or maybe it’s just my friends and family being kind or seeing if I have put on weight (there are videos here on the website). 

But should I also have Facebook?  Instagram?  No thanks.  Twitter and Linked In are fine for now. Two children are quite enough to manage.