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PM Forum - London
Taking Advantage of Online Networking
In an industry where individuals and firms are pressured to take a stance on social media, normally a negative one, we were fortunate to hear at the PM Forum, at White & Case on 18th March, from two individuals from a top firm of accountants and solicitors who gave us their take on the growing phenomenon in the workplace that is online networking. Their audience was largely marketing managers and business development managers from the professional services arena.
Christian Walsh, Website Manager from Allen and Overy LLP and Nick Masters, Head of Online at Price Waterhouse Coopers echoed a similar message. Social media is permanently evolving and has no set rules on how firms should use it to their advantage. To Christian’s own admission there had to be a shift in mindset within A&O where they could not shutdown and worry about online networking but in fact embrace it and look at A&O’s own online presence. As Nick explained, in a recent survey 40% of tweets on twitter were deemed “pointless wittering”. However, when it works it can be very powerful. Through free tools such as Twitter and YouTube, firms now have an avenue of getting information about themselves to a market that they were not able to reach before.
For the first time ever, Facebook is pulling in more web traffic than Google. More people are searching on YouTube than Google so they can absorb information by watching a video rather than reading a PDF. So as Nick asks, why would firms not want to put their information up on here? We were reminded in the room not to expect people to come to you but to in fact take information and push it to relevant people. One must also remember that content is important. As Nick explained if you send the right content to the right people, then they in turn will pass it onto other relevant people they feel would be interested in the content.
So the questions on everyone’s lips at the Q&A were does it work and how do we know it works? Christian explained how A&O had received RFPs off the back of Twitter and journalist requests too. The media coverage has raised the profile of online media within the firm. Busy lawyers are now asking him about LinkedIn and how they can use it to their advantage. The feedback they receive from Blog comments and tracking conversations on YouTube have also proved invaluable feedback.
All these different tools will inevitably push traffic back towards your own website so being able to track this traffic is important. Inevitably these will be organisations that are responding to content you have put out in the public domain and can be potential business.
Julien Adams
Trovus
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