Legal Marketing & PR

Lawyer Offers to Give $25K to Charity if He Gets 25K Twitter Followers

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

Events on Twitter are really getting pathetic.  First we had a movie actor who won a competition with an entire TV broadcasting network to get the most followers.  Celebrity won over news, which shows the decline of the intelligence of the American Public.  Now a lawyer wants to "buy" followers on Twitter.  Twitter is becoming a circus.  Few paid attention to it before December 2009 and now people are falling over themselves to get into the center ring.

From the ABA Journal:

Seattle personal injury lawyer Bill Marler wants 25,000 additional Twitter followers by the end of the month, and will donate $25,000 to a charity if he achieves the goal.

This follows movie actor Ashton Kutcher's competition with CNN in a race to be the first to have 1 million Twitter followers. Kucher made an agreement to donate 10,000 malaria nets to charity as a result of winning, and that's what inspired attorney Marler.

Marler, who represents victims of food-borne illnesses, made the offer in a post at his Marler Blog on April 17, when he had about 1,650 followers. Three days later, Marler tells the ABA Journal, he has an additional 275 or so followers.

Many blogging lawyers are now posting on Twitter as well.  Marler has been using Twitter for a couple months, posting news of what he is doing and what he is blogging. His followers include 'foodie-type people,' government health workers, journalists and other lawyers. He doesn't view the service as a way of generating clients, but he does see it as a way of communicating with government and media representatives interested in food-safety issues. He also uses Twitter to follow food-safety news, but is finding that it can be 'another one of those Internet time drains.'

Marler reports some critics claim he made the offer for ego gratification. 'Any criticism leveled against a lawyer for their ego, I suppose, is pretty much on the mark,' he muses. 'The reason I did it, I was just so fascinated by the whole Ashton Kucher CNN thing. I thought it would be interesting to see if people would respond to an offer like a dollar for each follower.'

Marler says he's a little surprised that the post hasn't generated more followers, but he has generated some great suggestions for worthy charities. 'It's run the gamut,' he says, from Parkinson's disease to sustainable farming to 'a reply from somebody in Africa who wants to put in a permanent well in the village.'

Marler says he already donates money and helps raise cash for good causes, but the recipients have been traditional charities such as the Red Cross or education. Even if he doesn't meet his goal of 25,000 followers, Marler says, he'll probably donate the money anyway.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).