I am pleased to have attended last week’s Legal Marketing Association’s New England Chapter Annual Conference.  The theme of the conference was how technology should be used (and is being used in some cases) within the legal industry.

Not that I had any doubt before, but it is now even more clear to me that we have only started to realize the power of social media for marketing.  Business development plans need to have a strong social media component.  Lawyers are commonly skeptical of social media, much like they were once skeptical of websites, email and other common online marketing practices.  With that in mind, I want to share a few stats on how the use of technology in this marketplace is evolving.  The keynote speaker, Thomas Lee, offered up these tidbits for consideration:

• 1 in 2 people will have a smart phone with access to the web and social media outlets within a year.
• 90% of people trust a peer recommendation where only 14% of people trust an advertisement.
• 93% of marketers use social media already.
• 1 in 8 minutes are spent on Facebook.
• People use Wikipedia as a trusted resource for the majority of their information.

The fact of the matter is that social media is accelerating the speed of word of mouth, for good and bad.  My opinion…it is time to adopt social media as a way of promoting your business before you are left behind.