Louise Rosen Byer Blog
The time has come to admit to ourselves the significance of social media and the fact that it is not going to get less important. There is a place for social media in the legal profession and lots of us know we just need to accept it and dig in.
Recently I asked a very bright young adult (24) with a social media job a at a tech giant, why she values sites like Twitter and Facebook. She said she “loves it” because it allows her to have, what I would call various “communities of interest” in all areas of her interests such as news, work and entertainment. But more than this, it allows her to see what matters to the people in her network — and to use that as a way to know more about things she might never otherwise see or learn.
I finally got it. Social media replicates and enhances interactions within communities that are multi-dimensional. Rather than getting a link to an interesting article and seeing that in one dimension, social media allows us to see who else cares about an issue and even better, enhances our community depth and breadth. For example, not only does one of my formidable FB “friends” have a journalistic background in tech and science, he presents his research “finds” to our FB community and we enhance that by our knowledge base. In other words: we learn about cool stuff we never knew about before.
So what’s wrong with that? Nothing.
As professionals we need to dispel the sense that social media is lite on substance. It doesn’t have to be. Big things can be communicated through this vehicle. It’s all about content and value and that will never change.
If we are not out there communicating in this spinning world of social media, we might be left out of opportunities to create communities of interest that are real and dynamic.
Many lawyers are now beginning to see the inevitable — get in or get shut out of potential to reach broader audiences and in turn, to learn and broaden our own world and knowledge base.
Caveat: My young tech friend and I agreed that those who post only self-serving content are not interesting in the long run. Content is key. So say something of value and others will value your involvement in their community of interest.
Today, mashable business has posted a whopping list of its own resources for businesses and marketing. So, spend some time checking out the past year’s guides for business and marketing as stated by one of the biggies in the social media world. In their words. ‘this roundup can get you well on your way to establishing a successful business or marketing campaign.”