Do lawyers really have time for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook et al?
Josh Fruchter, in sharing my post on lawyers using Twitter, raises a good question.
...[I]f a lawyer spends substantial time each day blogging, and updating Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other networks to which they belong (Pulse anyone???), what about life outside work? At some point, it seems to me, there isn't enough time in the day to participate regularly on EVERY site, and still maintain a healthy work life balance.
Other lawyers do regularly tell me that these goofy social networking tools you're talking about are great for you, but I'm a practicing lawyer and I simply don't have the time.
And I'm sure it seems that those of us referencing and using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the like must be spending a lot of time on these mediums. That's not necessarily so.
In one case, you use them for news - so you go there when you have the time for catching up with what's going on just like you would browse a local newspaper. Here the news and information is coming from trusted friends. They're sharing links and quick snippets of news and information. And like a newspaper, you don't read every story, you glance and browse when you have a few minutes.
In another case, you use social networking tools for networking. Duh. And like networking in real life, you do it when you have the time. And knowing that it's networking that leads to some of your best work, you work networking into your schedule. Otherwise your family goes hungry.
It's 4:30 p.m. on a Friday here on the West Coast and I haven't used any social networking tools or sites today except for leaving a comment on Josh's blog just now, posting a correction to my blog early this am, and writing this post.
So though I am a 'user' of these mediums that some may call mad and all time consuming, they do not absorb all my time. I was involved in meetings with my CFO, VP of Client Development, and Creative Director until 2 or 3 today and then working on client development matters after that.
Having said that, the seeds I planted yesterday via Twitter and LinkedIn are bearing fruit today. Took me 20 or 30 minutes yesterday to publish a blog post with links to a powerpoint and webcast of a recent webinar I did. Then shared the post with folks on Twitter.
Between people getting my RSS feeds and people following me on Twitter, I've seen mention of that powerpoint and webinar all over the place today - blogs, other folks mentioning it on Twitter, and in copies of emails my readers sent to their business associates telling them about the powerpoint and screencast. Also received some nice emails thanking me for sharing the materials.
I also spent 15 minutes on LinkedIn yesterday inviting people I had the occasion to meet via the net recently to join my my professional network at LinkedIn. I received notice today that a number of those folks accepted my invite as well as one or two thank you notes for my asking them to hook up on LinkedIn.
Bottom line is social networking tools can be used effectively without them becoming all time consuming. And like Josh guesses, 'one has to try different services and then see over time which network pays the biggest dividends, and then focus on that one.'
Now, just don't ask my wife and five kids if I spend too much time on the net. ;)
Is it possible to actually get business through tools like facebook?
Maybe I'm getting old but I'm beginning to feel positively overwhelmed by all these "advancements." People I highly respect like you and Anne Reed (Deliberations) for instance say Twitter is great but I genuinely don't "get" it. And, I must say, I worry that if I DID get it, Twitter would be to blogging like crack is to cigarettes. And thank goodness no one ever passed me a crack pipe; the cigarettes (14 years smoke free) were bad enough!
I had coffee with an attorney this morning who was feeling both excited about the options out there, but also overwhelmed (twitter+blog+linkedin+facebook+billing+family=stress). She asked what she should be doing and how much time she should spend. I told her to pick a medium (twitter, blog, facebook, etc) and a topic or focus she really enjoys (and that will help her meet her goals, whatever they are) and focus. Thanks for the timely post--I will send it her way.
As someone with little time to spare, she's got a good eye for how things can become more streamlined, asking, "Why can't twitter and facebook talk so that my facebook status is the same as my current twitter?" I haven't seen that app out there yet (only the one that feeds tweets into your page), but maybe I have missed it.
Thanks for the feedback guys. Looks like it may be helpful to do a free webinar on the topic of social networking - what works and what doesn't. I'm in Las Vegas at Community 2.0 this week and in Chicago at an Ark Group conference the following. Perhaps the week after.