Social networking is continuing to grow rapidly with the number of social networking users having doubled in the last two years. Statistics from Nielsen Online show that social networking has now overtaken email in terms of worldwide reach. Social networks are so big, in fact, that many of them are competing in size with some of the largest countries in the world.
The big question is what does this mean for the business of law?
With the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal, law firm partners and lawyers can communicate quickly and easily with their followers and/or connections. Marketing professionals can identify their most influential advocates and better manage the brand. Business developers can discover new leads and zero in on key opportunities and pitches, and client service staff can proactively identify and address issues.
CRM4Legal Social Networking Accelerator
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms capture useful data from social networks by:
• Identifying and tagging public online conversations about their industry, firm, brand and services.
• Analyzing message effectiveness by measuring impressions, replies, and other key metrics.
• Using pre-built analytics to track follower count and identify evolving trends in real-time.
• Gaining instant visibility into brand health with the Social Networking Dashboard.
• Using powerful analysis capabilities to identify the biggest online champions, influencers and complainers.
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms increase the awareness of their brand and services and improve sentiment by:
• Identifying key influencers in each practice area to increase brand awareness.
• Automatically tracking public online conversations of interest within the client system of record.
• Rating and tracking the sentiment of specific social networking conversations.
• Tracking online reaction to new firm announcements or developments.
• Keeping track of competitors by monitoring their public online conversations.
• Using social networks as a source of market research by creating online focus groups.
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can also help law firms engage social clients while managing and tracking their efforts by:
• Quickly spotting developing PR or perception issues and addressing them.
• Authoring social networking messages directly from the client system of record.
• Automatically tracking responses to social networking messages or conversations.
• Seamlessly integrating social networking channels into existing marketing campaigns.
• Launching online marketing programs that engage social clients in their preferred environment.
• Seamlessly tracking responses and leads generated from online marketing efforts.
Supporting Law Firm Business Development
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal provides key capabilities to help law firm business developers gauge interest and find prospects by:
• Tapping into social networking contacts to jumpstart “warm” lead generation efforts.
• Identifying prospects by focusing on conversations and topics relevant to the practice area or service.
• Better measuring the online influence of each contact based on follower counts and postings.
• Leveraging online career information to better understand the contact or decision maker.
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms business developers engage in more relevant conversations by:
• Engaging in online discussions with prospects and clients right within CRM4Legal.
• Viewing social networking conversation history within the client system of record.
• Instantly seeing a social networking profile for each contact for a more holistic view.
• Effortlessly creating new contacts in CRM4Legal from social networking contacts.
• Easily creating an opportunity in CRM4Legal directly from social networking sites.
Accelerator Components
In order to help law firms implement these strategies, Client Profiles offers the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft CRM4Legal. Accelerators for Microsoft CRM are add-on modules developed to address specific business needs. The Social Networking Accelerator allows Microsoft CRM4Legal users to discover online conversations, identify influential people, and engage with them on social networking sites using their client system of record—Microsoft CRM4Legal. Additionally, the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal includes the same easy-to-use interface and industry leading analytics that allows law firms not only to capture data but also make sense of it.
The solution is made up of the following components:
1. Social Network User, Social Network Contact, Social Network Status, Configuration and Controller entities.
2. Customizations for tracking social networking activities.
3. Workflow plug-ins for retrieving and posting messages to social networking sites.
4. Plug-ins for monitoring the sentiment of contacts and statuses on social sites.
5. Six workflow definitions for handling posts and retrievals of messages from social network sites.
6. Four reports for analyzing social network traffic and impact.
7. Script extensions to the application user interface.
8. Documentation of the social networking capabilities, reports, custom entities and installation.
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