Tara Alemany, the founder of Aleweb Social Marketing, writes that social media is not going away because it’s all about relationships.
People buy from individuals they know, like and trust. Social media makes you approachable, establishes your expertise, and allows you greater interaction with your readers than ever before.
A word of mouth reputation is the most powerful business development asset there is for a lawyer. Much of establishing that reputation takes place on the Internet these days. Not through a website, but by engaging your target audience.
Maybe I am nuts, but I look at lawyers questioning the value of social media as akin to lawyers in years past questioning the value of fax machines, email, and cell phones. Virtually all lawyers will be using the Internet for networking — call it social media or anything else — it’s just going to happen.
Just as the case with email and cell phones, you’ll simply not be connected if you are not using social media.
If you must resist, perhaps a better way to look at the question of whether social media will go away, giving you a pass, is to acknowledge that the fundamentals of social media have always been with us. What’s to go away?
We have always networked as lawyers to build relationships and grow our word of mouth reputation. Much of it just takes place on the Internet today.