Medium: A Valuable Social Media Platform for Law Firms

In the digital age, with so much information coming from so many sources, a new social media platform, Medium aims to help its users deliver and share only highly relevant, superior quality content. Its stated mission is to create “a place where everyone has a story to share, and the best ones are delivered right to you.” For law firms creating thought leadership content, Medium can become a powerful additional channel to help expand reach with their target audience.

Launched in August 2012 by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Medium was designed for people to express their thoughts in more than 140 characters. Medium has tools that are similar to other social media platforms. It has tagging, similar to hashtags on Twitter, that allows authors to index their content into different categories and helps readers find content they are interested in. Medium also has its own analytic tool that shows users how many people have viewed, read, and recommended their articles. One unique feature of the social media platform: it is collaboration-friendly and allows the author to share their draft with other users in edit mode in order to edit and perfect their article.

Medium brings in an estimated 25-30 million monthly visitors to its website. This has caught the attention of large companies like Amazon. In October 2015, Jay Carney, Amazon’s senior vice president of corporate relations, responded on Medium to an article published by the New York Times about Amazon’s tough work culture. Carney’s response generated national media news coverage. Medium’s Evan Williams explained to CNNMoney that both parties found within Medium an open public forum where they could share and respond to each other. ”People can read both [sides of the issue] and interpret [for themselves]…. It’s much more of a conversation and an interaction than a standalone blog.” Aside from Amazon, companies like Starbucks, Google, Slack, Intel and BMW also actively participate on Medium.

Why should law firms care? Medium gives law firms the chance to highlight their legal knowledge and engage with a sophisticated audience on a well-trafficked platform. With its high visitor traffic, Medium gives a law firm an opportunity to connect with potential clients that it normally wouldn’t find. Medium can give your law firm free publicity and showcase your credibility as an authority in your field.

Medium allows you to join the conversation on other contributors’ articles. It encourages comments and includes highlights to help you see what other readers find important or interesting. In scanning another author’s articles, you can determine if their subject advances a legal argument or requires a lawyer’s perspective. You could use this as inspiration for a separate post of your own, or offer your knowledge and assistance to other authors in a comment appearing alongside their articles.

Like many social media platforms, Medium is easy and free to use. It allows you to share video, audio, and images to help bring your content to life. Content on Medium is easily shareable and it has simple editing tools to help you create engaging content.

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