Twitter for lawyers: all hype?

Recently Sysomos did a survey of Twitter users and found not surprisingly that 85% of new twitterers posted fewer than once a day and that 5% of twitterers were responsible for 75% of the traffic.  This suggests that there has been lots of curiousity in Twitter but only a small subset has adopted it.  So is it a waste of time?

Article:

I don’t think so.  This blog post automatically gets posted to my Twitter account.  I don’t even need to go there.  Because of the type of content I post, I mostly get requests from followers interested in social media and legal marketing and practice issues.  I spend a couple minutes a day reviewing potential followers and selecting those people I think make sense for my niche. 

I have more than 250 followers and I’ve done virtually nothing except stream these blog posts to my Twitter account.  Do I use Twitter to its fullest?  No.  But at no cost to me except the time it takes for me to blog and review followers, I have developed a niche community.  A few times a week I look who I am following and get ideas and useful links from them that I can use to further develop my expertise and share with my followers. 

So I have a small community and a basic familiarity with the service and if and when I decide to expand upon my Twitter presence, I will be able to do a lot easier than someone who has rejected it out of hand.   FYI: a good resource for attorneys who tweet is:

Lextweet

Social Media Saturday: Facebook privacy illusory

“The fact that an individual may have restricted viewing of his/her Facebook profile to preapproved individuals is irrelevant, as courts have generally held that a party who maintains a private or limited-access Facebook profile stands in the same position as one who sets up a publicly available profile. In both cases, Facebook postings that relate to any matter at issue in an action must be identified and produced for examination.

It has also been held that a plaintiff must submit to cross-examination from defense lawyers with regard to postings made by the plaintiff on his/her Facebook account, regardless of whether the content was available to the public or not.

In reaching this conclusion, an Ontario Superior Court Justice stated that “to permit a party claiming very substantial damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a Web site, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information about how they lead their social lives, risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial.”

Article:

Social media specialist: new job for bad economy

Now maybe managing twitter accounts for companies is the next big thing but one of the twitter postings for Whole Foods is:

“Pie Eating Contest at the store 6pm! Sign up at 5:45 in the Foyer. ” 

How is the better than the job announcing Kmart store specials?

New York Times article:

“Talk about investing in the future. The position of social media specialist, introduced by companies like Comcast, General Motors and JetBlue Airways, has become the hottest new corporate job among the Twitterati. To marketers, it seems, personal relations have become the new public relations.

Of course companies have been seeking to exploit the marketing possibilities of social media for years — remember all those corporate storefronts in Second Life? Politicians and actors, too, have become adept at bypassing mainstream media to interact directly with fans (and foes). But only recently have companies begun hiring someone specifically for the task, largely because of the explosive popularity of Twitter.

To some, Twitter is an extension of customer service, an efficient way to solve problems for disgruntled customers. To others, the use of interactive media is strictly promotional: PepsiCo, for instance, recently advertised that it was looking for journalists and students to tweet during Internet Week in New York in June.

Having a social media aficionado on staff is one way to create conversation about a brand, the same way hip-hop record executives in the 1990s used urban street teams to promote new musicians. And it is a rare example these days of a growth industry: Forrester Research, a research and marketing firm, has 12 analysts advising more than 100 companies on how to use social networks to get customers to do things like open bank accounts or buy more face cream.”

Twitter comes to the White House

Here it is: 

http://twitter.com/whitehouse

Don’t use “recession” in your Facebook profile

If you live in Australia, that could get you fired. It seems that employers in Australia are firing employees who speak out on Facebook (and probably other popular social media sites) about their working conditions.

Australian legal experts say that the employers are the ones that could be violating the law.

“If an employer hasn’t told people in advance what the rules are, what the conditions are, then that greatly increases the likelihood that an employee can say well, I can’t be terminated for this because I wasn’t aware that this is something I was not to do.”

Article

Juror blabs about case on Facebook

Eric Wuest, a juror in a high profile corruption trial involving a Pennsylvania state senator revealed on his Facebook profile for people to “”stay tuned for the big announcement on Monday”.   He didn’t think this was a problem because he wasn’t explicit about his role as a juror on this trial.  The judge agreed and decline to have him removed from the jury.

However, it appears that new rules will have to be put in place for jurors and social media.  The ease of publicly posting information about a case and for nearly anyone finding that information puts the jury system at risk.  Trial lawyer and jury consultant Anne Reed warned that “dozens of people a day are sending Tweets or Facebook messages from courthouses all over America”.

Article

Social media Saturday: new Twitter search

Tsavo Media launches Twithority.  The differentiator is that brings back results based on the highest user rankings and also by the most recent results.  They claim they look back over the most recent 1,000 results but I’m not sure what that means.  I ran two searches; one “class actions” and got a total of three results.  I then ran a search on “Jon Stewart” and got many more and across the top it says, “Top 10,000 by Rank.”  However, after the first page of results, there was no place for me to click for more results.  Can’t say I’m impress.

New release

Social media Saturday: new Twitter search

According to this Wired blog post, Twitter is now rolling out a search function that is integrated within a user’s homepage.  It appears the search features are fairly limited; you can’t search only those people following you or one just one person’s tweets, which would be useful.

Twitter is also rolling out trend tools that allow you to see what people are currently discussing.  I don’t have any of these features currently on my home page but look forward to seeing them soon.

Social Media Saturday: three twitter tools

I see these exhaustive and exhausting list of twitter tools and while they are useful, I think a lot of them are just untested lists.  Here  are three tools I’ve found indispensable:

*twitterfeed.com

I’m very blog-focused in my social media outreach so I like being able to stream this content into my twitter page and twitterfeed allows me to do that very easily. 

*Twellow

A subject-oriented directory of twitters that I’ve found useful to explore relevant industry sectors for people of interest.

*TwitterDeck

I really like this interface and it has lots of flexibility.  Its set up in three panels and I currently use one panel for all friends, one for a legal group I’ve created and the last panel is a “buzz cloud.”

Social media Saturday: making it easier

Who has the time and what do I say?

There is the blog, the microblog, Linkedin, Facebook, Digg, twitter and so much more.  How can anyone person devote time to engaging with all of these outlets and what is there to say?

Stream blog content to multiple outlets

Most of the major sites allow users to upload or stream blog or other content into a profile page.  For some of them, its automatic and some provide ways to control the content.  For example, I automatically stream my content into twitter.   I benefit from flowing any content into that site and I think people benefit from timely content.  For LinkedIn, I’m more selective.  I tag the blog content I want to stream into my LinkedIn site.  I want my content  to be more professionally-oriented so I like having the option to pick and choose what I include.

What do I say?

I decide that when I blog.  What is my niche?  What do my readers care about?  What I do care about?  I’ve decided for this blog to include a mixture of topics; some things I find interesting and aren’t particularly popular but that’s okay.  I don’t want to just include material that you find on any blog.  But I also post about weird or popular topics within my range of legal, business and social media issues and try to add a thought or perspective to the discussion.

Not Set in Stone

I have a pretty clear strategy – for now.   But it will change.  I will learn new things and experiment.  I’ll make mistakes (I already have) and take a risk or two.    And I want to keep it fun.