Laptop Legal » Social networking

Law Professional social networks: Winners and losers

Jordan — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:08:23 +0000

This post is just some notes on using social networks in practice.

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?

twitterfeed: send posts to twitter

Jordan — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:36:22 +0000

twitterfeed can help you automagically turn your blog posts into tweets. The service has even recently expanded to allow you to feed any RSS into twitter and a whole host of other services, including facebook. It has lots of customisable settings, so that you can add leading or trailing text to your tweets, add hashtags, or even limit the tweets to certain categories.

Tools like this are really handy for solos and small firms because they save time and make use of a number of resources at once to help develop your online presence.

I don’t have a bit.ly account yet, but twitterfeed can use bit.ly for link shortening and even tell you how many clickthroughs you’ve had to your blog from twitter, which is handy to know for your impact.

Next up, I think I’ll have to investigate URL shortening services…

Twitter and webinars

Jordan — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:51:26 +0000

Just a quick note to reflect back on a webinar that I was a part of last month. I helped organise the event, but didn’t speak. While all of the speakers were presenting over the webinar, I consistently tweeted supplemental information. For example, links to speaker profiles or relevant papers, links or supplemental materials.

This was admittedly a bit of a last minute idea for me, but realised that it worked pretty well. For next time, I think I’d:

develop and deliver some exclusive Twitter content given during the event
and do a bit of promotion around the Twitter feed.

You can follow me on Twitter here.