Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Counsel to Counsel

Legal Commentary

: Counsel to Counsel

Twitter, LinkedIn and the Tower of "Babble"

If you are confused about how to use social media to market your law practice, you are in good company. Although twitter is getting tremendous media attention at the moment (and in all likelihood, you've been receiving connect requests through LinkedIn for months), these are very new media.

No one really knows which Web 2.0 application will be around in 10 years. It's all too new.

I've been experimenting more in recent months with both LinkedIn and with Twitter and while I was feeling like I was missing something with both of these media, in truth, I've come to realize that even the "experts" have no concrete recommendations for the best way to incorporate these tools into your marketing arsenal.

The best advice I've gotten is that I should experiment with Twitter, LindedIn, Martindale Connect and Legalonramp. So far, I've done more with the first two than with the latter; but I remain open to trying these last two tools as well.

This same advice has come from a leading expert on the use of social media in the political realm, a consultant who has been working with large corporations to integrate social networks into their businesses and a legal tech guru who has been blogging since the inception of blogs.

So what's a confused lawyer to do? For starters, get involved in some on-line community and get accustomed to sharing ideas with other professionals using one of these media. Experiment and make time in your schedule to be a meaningful partipant.

One of my coaching clients once shared with me the advice of a partner about participating in bar associations and other industry groups: don't be an empty suit (i.e. don't just sign up but never show up). The same holds for social media: don't be an empty username. Your future will depend on it. But no one can really tell you how!

Full post as published by Counsel to Counsel on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).