How to lose followers on Twitter – a helpful guide for lawyers and legal journalists
Everyone should understand how Twitter works, whether they use it themselves or not
My Twitter account now has 33,000 followers and I genuinely have no idea why. This is not false modesty or a so-called ‘humble brag’. It is because there are many far better legal journalists and lawyers on Twitter, all of whom are worth following more than for my erratic tweets.
Accordingly, I cannot explain why I have so many followers. If I suddenly had half or double the number, I would not be able to explain that either. But what I can share is how it seems to have happened over time, and this may be useful to any other legal journalist or lawyer interested in using the Twitter social platform.
The first thing is to look not at how one gains followers but how one loses them. Unless your account is being followed because you are a celebrity or public figure, then the person who has just followed you really has no idea who you are. And people who follow easily also unfollow easily. Say something boring or uninformative, you will be unfollowed. Post two or more tweets and then you will be unfollowed just because you are clogging up their timeline. It may well be that thousands are following you, and this perhaps is nice; but on the way hundreds, if not thousands, will also unfollow you. On average, I get unfollowed by up to a dozen people every time I tweet.
So the first key is to not worry about being unfollowed; it usually is not personal, just evidence of a dynamic medium. At worst, it just means you said something interesting enough to be followed in the first place.
But what attracts followers? In my experience, it tends to be when people retweet you. This means that they have reposted your tweet to their follower list. The effect of this is that people who are not already following you will come across your existence and think you may well be worth a follow. But even here there is no way one can aim for this. Retweets are entirely in the gift of your followers. If they do not think you worth retweeting they will not retweet you, and nor should they.
And this takes you to one underlying merit of social media. So-called ‘social media strategies’ usually do not work. Other than at the margins, increasing a social media profile cannot be done by mere contrivance. Even those who acquire thousands of ‘bought’ followers are swiftly exposed and discredited. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, social media abhors phoniness. If your purpose in having a Twitter account is simply to increase followers then you are actually unlikely to do so.
My own approach to Twitter is mixed. It is a great means for sharing information, especially links, and viewpoints, and for instantly getting feedback. Sometimes the responses are boring or banal; but often there are those willing to share a fresh insight or engage in constructive criticism. On the other hand, there is a great deal of misinformation and sometimes sheer nastiness. But none of this is a special feature of Twitter; it is a feature of people generally.
In respect of the law, Twitter is a superb forum for pointing out errors in news reporting and for promoting generally the public understanding of law and our legal system. It is now becoming common for interesting trials to be live-tweeted and discussed, and for the mainstream media to then play catch-up.
The combination of live tweeting and legal blogging can mean that newspaper reports of the very same case add no or little value. For lawyers, Twitter can also be a rich source of information about clients and their environments. A lawyer who only looks at press cuttings may as well be looking at cave art. So even if a lawyer or legal journalist does not want to tweet, it is increasingly important that he or she understands how Twitter works.
David Allen Green, media correspondent of The Lawyer
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Readers' comments (26)
David Allen Green | 13-Aug-2012 1:12 pm
@Tim Johnson
"He appears to leap onto every bandwagon going, including the recent pornography case at Kingston Crown Court in an effort to increase his following."
I was actually asked by Myles Jackman, the defence solicitor in that case, to do what I could to populise it. (I suspect I lost more followers than I gained as well!)
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James Walsh | 13-Aug-2012 2:19 pm
@davidgreen
Thanks for the factual corrections, each point is taken, but none of belies my observation that the twitter joke trial raised a very simple question, and to my mind at least was a case of obvious error in the lower court being corrected on appeal.
I don't buy for a moment the point re the divided divisional court showing matters weren't straightforward. Judges have different opinions and dissent from one another all the time. All the first court proves is the general unwisdom of judges sitting in even numbers. (My guess is that they disagreed over whether the finding of menace was a finding of fact, which, on an appeal by case stated, they had no jurisdiction to reverse. In one sense, of course, it was such a finding, but so perverse was that finding, given the nature of the tweet, that one hardly needed to be Lord Denning at his disingenuous best to say that an error of law could be detected.)
And talking of disingenuous, references to Cooper dominating the TV coverage are rather incomplete, aren't they, when you yourself argue above the line that a disregard of social media makes you a media Adullamite? Anyone using Twitter would have been challenged to miss the torrent of self-regarding posts from you about the trial. Including classic publicising tactics like "teasers" (the solitary "Gosh" gambit).
All this being said, it is good of you to take time out from your no doubt busy legal practice to reply.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2012 3:05 pm
If you have time to follow and Tweet anything you probably don't know anything useful and if you do you can't be trusted to keep it to yourself. You also have too much time on your hands.in the first place, and I would not hire you.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2012 3:16 pm
There is a reason what DAG has loads of followers. His tweets have often pointed me at plenty of useful legal information and legal issues that I might not otherwise have been aware of and no doubt others feel like this as well. And he seems like a nice bloke. So if he has a high profile it’s hardly surprising.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2012 3:42 pm
Some people here just don't get Twitter at all
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Derek Muldoon | 15-Aug-2012 4:23 pm
@ anonymous of 15 Aug at 3:05 - Having time to tweet clearly shows that you haven't enough to do, but having enough time to add the 13th comment to an article by a lawyer about tweeting? That clearly demonstrates a thriving practice, and your anonymity demonstrates that you can be trusted to keep your useful knowledge to yourself. Would you hire me? In case it helps, I have closed my Twitter account, as I didn't have time to use it.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2012 4:34 pm
I have just unfollowed, because of 2 posters' mention of DAG blocking dissenters, which DAG has not denied, despite posting in this thread.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2012 4:37 pm
When do the Olympics start?
Apols if I'm a bit off the pace, I don't use twitter.
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TheLawMap | 16-Aug-2012 1:35 pm
David,
You are one of the best known legal bloggers. When we started out on Twitter it was an exercise to get to know others in the legal family. This family includes the judiciary, lawyers, legal journalists and new legal media users, law students and the general body of people who express an interest in following law related news. The Leveson enquiry and LASPO had generated so many column inches that the likes of yourself and other respected law writers had accumulated a following that others would envy. I am principally a follower of your blog. TheLawMap no longer follows you not because of anything you have done but because Twitter allows an account holder to follow roughly 2000 individuals until their follower numbers roughly equal the number of followed. I had to go through a process of culling as 1800 followers is not quite enough for us to follow all those we would like to follow.
Twitter needs to address this technicality. I appreciate that this is a ploy to cut out spammers but each month we get around 30 or so spammers follow us only to unfollow by the end of the month. Unless one is a 'marketer', I believe that it does not make any sense to keep tabs on how many followers one has.
As an interested body in Law, legislation and how the law impacts upon the human condition, my primary goal in twitter is to spread legal news. A number of followers and even non-followers interact with us through direct questions or retweets each day roughly to the equivalent of 20% of how many tweets I had made that day and that for me is the most pleasurable part of Twitter participation. This pleasure has no monetary value but it would be fair to say that lawyers working for firms, in chambers, in house or for themselves are human too. So all legal issues discussed takes on a human aspect through which side of the law we stand. I often find great debates raging on between the right and left. Politics mingles so often with Law as the interrelation is undeniable. For law firms wanting to get in the act I firmly believe that they should engage in this 'interaction through focusing on the human aspect of law' rather than promotional ends. That is where Twitter works its best.
Taz from TheLawmap
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Richard Bloomfield | 16-Aug-2012 5:35 pm
"If you have time to follow and Tweet anything you probably don't know anything useful and if you do you can't be trusted to keep it to yourself. You also have too much time on your hands.in the first place, and I would not hire you."
But you would, presumably, hire people with the time to post snarky comments on thelawyer.com?
I congratulate David for his success on twitter. Much of the public believe negative stereotypes about the legal profession and judicial process. Anything that encourages laypeople to take an interest in and improve their understanding of the legal process, even in a small way, has to be a good thing.
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