I use twitter, mostly because it’s fun and social, but also as a digital watercooler since I work in a solo/small firm setting. I follow and comment on mostly people I know from a professional setting, but always people I like (because they’re nice, or because they always have something interesting to say, thought the two are sometimes mutually exclusive). Gives a bit of real time socializing as if I were in a big office.

LinkedIn is great for making more serious business contacts and doing searches on people to get a bit more background. I don’t socialize much through it, but it’s a useful tool.

When I moved over to the UK, I was surprised at the number of people who use Facebook in more of a business context. There’s a definite subset of business contacts I meet that friend me on facebook over adding me to LinkedIn. With Facebook, I keep it strictly social, and most of my friends and family are there too. (So if you’re a business contact, I’ll defer you to LinkedIn).

But then comes along one of a number of social networking sites (SNS) that aim for a specific professional context. Texas Bar Circle is one, Gathering2 is another.

I’m not sure I get these sites, frankly.

Usability is paramount to any SNS site (or any site for that matter). Gathering2 fails badly on this point in particular: It is built in flash, which is totally inaccessible in my iPhone, is annoying because I can’t use my scroll wheel on my mouse or even have Firfefox remember my password. Once I’m in, I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do or why I should spend time there. LinkedIn groups are far better for people just interested in a topic. Or Ning.

I have broadly the same feelings (except for the Flash comments) on Texas Bar Circle. What are the advantages of these ring-fenced professional SNS sites? I know that the selling points often are:

• networking within your vertical profession, which may mean a chance to let your hair down (no clients) and chat informally about current events, practice related stuff, etc.

• news, blogs, events feeds tailored for your interest.

The only problem with both of these is that:

• I already network in person and online through all the other tools with people in my profession, so not so sure I need another forum. If I need some lawyer-to-lawyer chat, I can go to SOLOSEZ or SOLO IP for starters.

• I already have RSS feeds, email alerts, and other ways to take in the hosepipe of media information, plus I get all the other things I’m interested in at the same time as well.

So what’s the point of these services? Anyone using them and getting something of value they couldn’t get elsewhere?

LPM blogs

Build a Solo practice. Susan Cartier Liebel’s blog and one of the first I started following when I developed my consultancy.

There are quite a few others that I dip in on regularly, such as Chuck Newton and Home Office Warrior. These days I mostly just see what is out there via the twitter people I follow, though I very sorely tempted to join Solo Practice University to give it a go.

Tech for the solo/small firm

Keep up to date with Future Lawyer and for the Mac users, subscribe to MILO and read iPhone JD if you have an iPhone.

SEO

SEO Moz comes in very handy and has lots of tools to help with SEO. My Pro subscription has been useful, but there are plenty of things to get you started for free.

SEO Book. I bought and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and it’s been a great help to understand the issues and where to improve (even if I don’t get to do all of what he and SEO Moz recommend).

UK

In the UK we have the SOLO IP group, which I’d hoped would offer more practice management tips and tricks, and still has the potential to be a really useful resource specifically for IP practitioners.

“pay peanuts, you get monkeys”

But my thought, based on their prices:

CMS website for £8 to £15,000? Seems like you could get a better deal with finding a theme developer for WordPress or Drupal to code you up something SEO friendly (or buy a pre-built theme such as Thesis).