Social Media Primer for Lawyers (Part 2)

By Debra Bruce, J.D.

In the last post we began an introduction to various social media from the perspective of lawyers. That post discussed blogs and Facebook. This post continues the series by introducing lawyers to LinkedIn and Twitter.

3. LinkedIn www.LinkedIn.com

Although LinkedIn has a smaller membership (over 50 million) than Facebook, the members are primarily white-collar business professionals. A LinkedIn profile looks like a resume on steroids. You are invited to post your current position, former positions, and education. You can fill the summary section with a search-term rich description of your practice, and you can incorporate your blog, slide show presentations and other features. Your LinkedIn page may get better search engine ranking than your website! If you still don’t have a website, get on LinkedIn so that at least you will exist when prospective clients or referral sources search for you on the web.

Like Facebook, LinkedIn has a place to post short status updates. Because it is entirely appropriate to toot your own horn on LinkedIn, this is a good place to publicize an award you just received, a trial you won, an article that got published or anything else that enhances your professional reputation.

Like Facebook, you can invite people to link to you, but with a kicker. When your old classmates or colleagues connect to you, there’s a good chance they will review your profile. If you have constructed it carefully, they will be reminded of the ways you can help them. Then your status updates will help keep you top of mind when they have a need. A lot of people have gotten business just from reconnecting with old contacts as they built their LinkedIn network.

Once you get about 100 connections, LinkedIn becomes even more valuable because it operates on the “six degrees of separation” theory. Let’s say there is a company that you want to do a little reconnaissance on. You might want to know how to best approach them as a prospective client, get a job there, or find their weak spots as a litigation opponent. When you search on the company name, LinkedIn will not only show you everyone you are connected to who works there or used to work there, it will also show you which of your friends knows someone like that.

Like Facebook, LinkedIn has groups that you can join that share common interests. In those groups you can raise your visibility among potential clients and referral sources who are members of the group by answering questions or posting some of your own to get a discussion going. Keep in mind the usual ethical caveats if you answer legal questions, and shy away from posting questions about legal issues in a public forum. Examples of a few questions that might generate discussion without making you look bad include (i) how have you found LinkedIn to be beneficial, (ii) if you have used a virtual assistant, what was your experience, and (iii) what positive trends or changes do you see coming out of these challenging times.

4. Twitter www.Twitter.com

Twitter is called a micro-blogging site because posts cannot exceed 140 characters, and the user’s profile description can’t exceed 180. It evolved from a mechanism for people to text multiple friends at once to keep tabs on each other, so they could meet up or alert each other to something cool going on. Today, however, Twitter is has become the fastest way to get up-to-the-minute news on any topic. Observers “tweet” the news as it happens, as previously described regarding the June 2009 Iranian election. It also garners attention for newsworthy events that mainstream media may have ignored.

Twitterers share information, often with links to blog posts with more in-depth discussion. If your followers find your comment interesting, amusing or informative, they will “retweet” it to their followers. Thus, your posts can very quickly go viral, and if it contains a link to related information on your website or blog, Twitter can drive a lot of traffic there. If you have a message you want to get out to a lot of people, or if you want more traffic to your website, it pays to develop a lot of Twitter followers.

Twitter can help lawyers to build a reputation for expertise and create valuable relationships with potential clients and referral sources by joining conversations in an arena with very few barriers. Twitter has been described as a giant cocktail party where you can join a conversation on any subject that interests you. Just like at a cocktail party, you make new acquaintances and can follow up with them later in a more private forum.

The culture of the “Twitterverse” is open and collaborative, allowing you to connect with (or at least eavesdrop on) people who probably wouldn’t take your phone call. For example, on July 10, 2009, the new CEO of General Motors, Fritz Henderson, spent half an hour answering questions on Twitter about the products and direction of the “new” post-bankruptcy GM.

The Twitterverse has its own etiquette, which frowns on flagrant self-promotion, and favors helping others and reciprocation. Since those values support relationship building, and relationship building lies at the core of effective marketing of professional services, Twitter can be a valuable tool for lawyers.

Twitter neophytes often find it confusing. That’s mainly because the Twitter structure is actually rather skeletal, and users rely on a myriad of external applications to make it function in the way they want to use it. Just enter “top Twitter apps” into your favorite search engine, and read a few blog posts to find some applications that will make Twitter easier to understand. For some quick guides, check out Twitter 101 by LegalTypist, Inc. and The Ultimate Guide to Everything Twitter by Webdesigner Depot. To really learn about the power of Twitter in detail and in an efficient manner, read the book Twitter Power by Joel Comm.

The most common misconception about Twitter is that you will just waste your time reading about what someone had for breakfast. Yes, some foodies and narcissists will post about what they eat. However, you won’t “hear” what they have to say, unless you follow them. If their conversation bores you, walk away! Only follow people (your “tweeps”) who tweet on topics you care about.

Here is a brief list of essential applications and sites for attorneys experimenting with Twitter. This list just scratches the surface, but it’ll help you get off to a good start.

Tweetdeck. This popular application helps you manage the conversation flow of the people you follow. You can segregate tweeters into columns by interests, locations, friends, favorites, or any other category that helps you sort for the tweets you really want to read. This becomes more important as you increase the number of people you follow. Tweetdeck also has an iPhone app to keep your tweets organized on the road.

Tweetbeep. You can use this app to alert you by email when someone sends you a message, mentions your name, or mentions any other subject you want to react to promptly. This tool is essential for lawyers who don’t check Twitter frequently, and might miss someone’s effort to contact them or compliment their tweet.

Lextweet. A site that follows the tweets of lawyers and other members of the legal community who register with the site. See what your peers are saying.

Twellow. Breaks tweeters down by industry based on what they registered under. Find people to follow in your clients’ industry or in the legal industry.

WeFollow. Another service that categorizes twitterers to help you find who to follow.

By now you have plenty to experiment with, and yet “social media for lawyers” encompasses so much more. The next post will discuss some social media venues that specifically relate to lawyers.

Debra L. Bruce is President of Lawyer-Coach LLC (www.lawyer-coach.com), a law practice management coaching and training firm. She practiced law for 18 years before becoming a professionally trained Executive Coach. She is a former Vice Chair of the Law Practice Management Committee of the State Bar of Texas, and past leader of Houston Coaches, Inc., the Houston Chapter of the International Coach Federation. She welcomes your comments below.