Crushing It With Social Media
Wall Street Journal Blogs ran a post on Friday called Gary V’s Five Commandments of Social Networking, based on Gary Vaynerchuk’s new self-help book titled “Crush It!”
The book is about using free social media tools to transform personal passion into a successful business, and the book is No. 5 on the Wall Street Journal business best-seller list.
What does Gary V know about social media? Let’s just say that he has 851,000 followers on Twitter and 33,000 fans on Facebook. He knows a thing or two about social media.
These are Gary V’s Five Commandments of Social Networking (as presented by WSJ Blogs) and yes, they all apply to lawyers playing in the social media sandbox:
- Treat it like a cocktail party. Social media is about conversations and relationships, not selling. Put on your marketing hat to create your strategy and action plan, but “change your clothes” before your guests arrive. Nobody wants to talk business at the party, but they’ll contact you when they have a need or refer somebody to you when they hear about a need.
- Don’t draw lines in the sand. This is one of my favorites and refers to making hard and fast rules that you and your business don’t belong on one social media platform or another. This comes up a lot with Twitter and Facebook. These platforms are overwhelmingly popular for a reason. Just accept that maybe you don’t understand the how’s and why’s yet, and observe for awhile. Be obstinate at your peril. Read more…
An Insider’s Secret To Twitter Success
Laura Fitton, author of Twitter For Dummies, says that success on Twitter depends on four key concepts:
- Listening
- Learning
- Caring
- Serving
If you listen, you will learn. If you care enough to serve, you will find success.
Get it straight from the woman who “wrote the book” in her recent interview with WebProNews.
Jump in with an intention to make a contribution and add value. In Laura shorthand, “be useful.” And a word to the wise — there is a reason that “listen” is first on the list.
Lawyers, Blog Brilliantly
One of my favorite themes on PluggedInLawyer is to demonstrate how easy social media can be. I completely believe that concept, especially if you can land yourself a roadmap or two.
The cornerstone to a successful social media campaign is your blog, which I fondly call “base camp.” That is the place where you can strut your expertise and organize it in a way that interested people can easily access.
So how do you come up with content ideas for your blog? How do you keep those ideas interesting to your readers? You’ve got all this great information in your head, but where do you start and how do you keep the content flowing in a way that is interesting? And what the heck do you do when your brain freezes and not one idea surfaces for a post?
Chris Brogan answered these questions yesterday in his post How To Think Of Blog Posts. Using Chris’ roadmap for ideas will not only give you great ideas for your posts, but if you use a cross-section of his list, your blog will showcase your expertise from several different angles. I know from personal experience that it’s all too easy to get busy and end up with a series of Read more…
Social Media Ethics Considerations For Lawyers
Gina Rubel is a former trial attorney and owns a PR and marketing agency specializing in legal communications. She often presents social media CLE courses. In the course of preparing for a couple of presentations recently, she read up on social media ethics and picks the following 20 articles as must reads in her post on The Legal Intelligencer Blog.
The articles are presented with the most recent first, and the collection is excellent. My personal fave is #18.
- Indiana High Court Allows MySpace Entry As Evidence In Murder Trial
- Criminal Court Judge To Be Transferred After Facebook Postings
- U.S. Seeks To Restrict Gift Giving To Bloggers
- DOJ Is On Twitter & Tweeting For AG Eric Holder, Too
- Pretexting, Legal Ethics and Social Networking Sites
- More On The Legal Ethics Of Social Networking: Investigating Opponents
- Social Networks May “Leak” Personally Identifiable Information
- Social Networks and Personal Injury Suits
- Attorneys Say Companies Can Monitor Employee Use Of Sites, But…
- Too Much Information: Blogging Lawyers Face Ethical and Legal Problems
- A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs. Rules Of The Bar
- Social Networking Sites & Litigation
- Ethical Issues To Consider When “Friending” Witnesses Online
- May An Illinois Lawyer Ethically List His or Her “Specialties” on LinkedIn?
- Our Linked-In Judiciary
- Facebooking Judge Catches Lawyer In Lie, Sees Ethical Breaches
- ACLU Fights Judge’s Facebook Comments Ban
- Legal Marketing Ethics In A Web 2.0 World
- A Friend In Deed
- Mind The Ethics Of Online Networking
Update on 11.03.2009: Gina has added a bonus article by one of my favorite legal industry commentators, Debra Cassens Weiss (article dated 10.28.2009): Want To Update Your Avvo Listing? Is So, Start Policing Client Comments, Opinion Says.
Jump Start Your Legal Practice With Social Media
Cari Rincker posted a beautifully written paper on JD Supra called How Social Media Helped Jump Start My Practice. In it she writes about quitting her job in Wyoming four months ago to relocate to New York and hang a shingle in an area of law she apparently had a passion for, but wasn’t practicing in Wyoming.
In her paper, Cari lays out a beautiful roadmap for any attorney to follow in establishing an effective social media strategy. More importantly, she does an excellent job of demonstrating how and why she is connecting with her desired audience with her efforts. As she points out, connecting with your desired audience starts with defining that audience and making sure that you’re writing to them, not somebody else.
Success with Cari’s strategy is self-evident in the post. She lays out the facts like a skilled advocate and a reader can’t help but come to her intended conclusion.
I’m used to reading slick marketing white papers on the web, so it still cracks me up to see something less flashy that screams “lawyer” like Cari’s piece, but she did a beautiful job of blending the two worlds of law and social media.
For the traditionalists out there, you’ll really appreciate the style in which she writes the paper. If you know me from prior posts, you know that I tend toward the flashier web 2.0 marketing style, but as a lawyer, I can still appreciate a good footnote or two.
Job well done, Cari! I’m in total awe that you dropped everything to follow your passion. You, in my humble opinion, are the new face of law. You go, girl!
Way More Concerned With YEO Than SEO
One of my biggest influencers in the world of social media has been Jeff Turner, a guy who was at the forefront of blogging and all things social media in the real estate world before we even had the term “social media.” Jeff is one of the most authentic, plugged in and generous voices I’ve ever found on the web.
I haven’t checked in recently on what Jeff has done, but I’ve been busy digging up my thoughtleaders and their Twitter information so I can reconnect with my roots. That led me to Jeff’s Twitter homepage and his amazing, stop you in your tracks bio statement, “Way more concerned with YEO* than SEO…. *You Engaging Others.”
Not only does this statement capture the essence of who Jeff Turner is, it captures the essence of what social media and social networking should be all about. SEO still has its place as part of a smart social media marketing strategy, but search engines, for all their complicated mathematical algorithms, are (at the end of the day) looking for relevance. Engagement is what is relevant on the web right now.
Everybody should be more concerned with YEO than SEO. Jeff was smart enough to recognize and articulate the concept. Big, big, “drop everything and create a post” hat tip to Jeff Turner for his social media brilliance.
By the way, I see from Jeff’s bio that he has also added two more little ones to his brood since I last checked in. So glad there are more little Turners in the world. =-)
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