This is the second post in a four-part series: Twitter Law U Gameday: Where's the Band? This post highlights why law schools need to have a Twitter presence.
When I talk to law schools about jumping into the Twitter stream, the most common protest I get is “but we have a website, isn’t that enough?” The answer is NO, and here is why:
“A website, while a valuable informational tool, is viewed in today’s world as static, in contrast to the “real-time” communication stream of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t replace your existing information resources, such as newsletters and websites—it is used in conjunction with them. Twitter gets your information out to the public in a direct and immediate manner. A law school’s website is often updated without anyone even knowing about it. With Twitter, the school can Tweet about the content as soon as it’s updated on the website, thus reaching a vast audience and immediately letting them know about the new content.” Jump Into The Stream, www.Techcrunch.com, May 17, 2009.
So, the greatest value of Twitter is the immediacy of the message delivery—it streams live in real time. The immediacy of the message is so great that Harvard Law School even used it on February 10 of this year to update snow predictions for its students and faculty! RT: Boston Tweet: Boston has downgraded the snowstorm to an advisory with less than 6" of accumulation – the snow emergency ends at 6pm.
Law schools should use Twitter daily to promote their brand name, expertise and knowledge. Law schools can use Twitter to do everything from announcing press releases and awards, to messaging existing students, to recruiting new students and promoting alumni relations. For example, the University of Chicago Law School had this recent tweet: Alumni News: Alan Meese '89 Receives William & Mary's Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence
The value of Twitter is keeping the school’s brand name in front of students, potential students and alumni every day. For a law school, keeping the name of the school in front of a student who has applied to law schools and consistently bombarding him or her with news of great happenings on campus is invaluable in influencing that student to attend that school. Nobody is perhaps doing a better job of this than Widener Law School with 3588 tweets, or University of Chicago Law School with 2,297 tweets, It is also a useful tool to persuade alumni to make donations for the same reason.
Yet another advantage of Twitter is so schools can control their own content and message. The school is the author of the Tweets and can control the message about the school that it wants delivered. Moreover, if a negative message about the school is distributed by a disgruntled student, for example, the school will have a direct and immediate method to counter-attack the student’s negative message on Twitter.
Finally, the competition is already using Twitter effectively to target new law students and to service their existing students and alumni. The University of Virgina Law School, for example, demonstrates its social media prowess by not only having a Twitter account, but also a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, and a Linkedin account. For many Generation Y students and alums who are on-line constantly and don’t respond to traditional methods of communication, that will be an important consideration in deciding which law school to attend and which donations to make.
So, kudos to the law schools who have joined Twitter and, in the process, created their own personalized news magazine. To the rest of you, what in the world are you waiting for?
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