8 Ways Law Firms Benefit from Media Monitoring

Corporate America has embraced media monitoring. Public relations and marketing departments in most corporations and not-for-profit organizations monitor online news as well as social media. By capturing mentions of company and brand names, media monitoring can help head off emerging public relations crisis and guide the company to the most effective PR and marketing approaches. It also aids executive decision-making on corporate policies.

For law firms, media monitoring reveals when online news outlets mention their firms, attorneys, clients, specific court cases, and their legal expertise. Social media monitoring provides public feedback on the firm, its clients, its cases, and industry issues. Full-fledged media monitoring also provides the firm with public perception and sentiment on its branding.

What Law Firms Gain from Media Monitoring

Through media listening, law firms can:

Protect and promote the firm’s reputation. When the law firm’s name or name of one of its attorneys is mentioned on a news website of social media platform, the firm can defend itself against criticism – or share comments that praise its attorneys and other positive mentions.

Gather competitive intelligence. A media monitoring tool can keep tabs on competitors. Law firms can learn how other law practices promote their services, what articles they publish, what conferences they attend, and other information. Maybe even more importantly, media monitoring can track mentions of adversaries in specific court cases.

Stay abreast of industry news. Media monitoring can identify court decisions, legislation, article and other legal news on specific types of cases relevant to the law practices or corporate clients. That will prevent attorneys from be surprised by a new bill or legal ruling.

Aid clients. Media monitoring helps attorneys stay informed about their clients’ business and potential legal problems impacting their business.  For instance, attorneys can learn of potential patent and copyright infringements and blog posts that require “take down” demands.

Win cases. By searching online news and social media networks, attorneys can discredit witnesses, gather information about prospective jurors and track their activities. Lawyers can find trial evidence on individual profiles, internet forums and social media networks.

Get more business. People ask for recommendations for products and services on social media all the time. Legal services are no exception. “Yes, even lawyers ask for recommendations for lawyers from other lawyers on social networks. The truth is, despite the skepticism of many lawyers, people have been doing this now for years,” says Gyi Tsakalakis, co-founder of AttorneySync, a digital marketing agency for law firms. By listening for their industry keywords, law firms can respond to those requests and suggest their services.

Find important influencers. Integrated media monitoring can reveal the leading influencers in a law firm’s niche, including both influencers at traditional media outlets and social media influencers. Those influencers typically have large numbers of readers or followers and significant credibility. By winning their attention and support, firms can quickly increase awareness of their businesses, gain more respect and ultimately win more clients.

Measure marketing effectiveness. Media measurement can rate the effectiveness of a firm’s marketing and its position in the overall market by analyzing its share of voice and grading sentiment on a positive-to-neutral scale. Law firms can gauge the effectiveness of their public relations efforts and compare its value to advertising and owned media.

An Integrated Approach to Media Monitoring

Media monitoring initially entailed monitoring newspapers and other traditional media outlets. As social media use has exploded and traditional media readership has declined, social media listening has increased in importance. Many Americans spend more time on social media networks and get their news through platform like Facebook and Twitter.

Monitoring of online news and social media is now essential for business and law firm success.  Organizations have found that news and social media monitoring helps improve customer service, gather competitive intelligence, and conduct market research. Law firms are also realizing that media monitoring is an invaluable research tool. However, it’s essential for organizations to use a tool that integrates data from online news and social media into a single dashboard for effective analysis.

Glean.info is one such tool. The service recently announced a new fully-integrated news and social media monitoring service for law firms. The base service includes monitoring of online news, blogs and Twitter. Firms can monitor firm name, partners, clients, competitors, industry issues, case adversaries, witnesses and much more. Law firms can add broadcast monitoring, print, other social media platforms and analytics.

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“Social media listening is really valuable and becoming very common for competitive intelligence and monitoring different topics and practice areas,” says Nancy Myrland, president of Myrland Marketing. “More attorneys are finding more comfort levels and including social media searches. It’s definitely part of the research being done today.”

Bottom Line: Integrated media monitoring provides a vast amount of information from online news and social media that law firms can use to gain more clients, win court cases, and stay informed about legal news. A service that furnishes data in a single dashboard overcomes the challenge of analyzing the large amount of data available online. Because of the widespread use of social media, it’s critical to employ a service that integrates data from social media and traditional online news.