The bottom line is simple: articles that many people tweeted about were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than those who few people tweeted about. Its implications are even more interesting. It generally takes months and years for papers to be cited by other scientific publications. Thus, on the day an article comes out, it would seem to be difficult to tell whether it will have a real impact on a given field. However, because the majority of tweets about journal articles occur within the first two days of publication, we now have an early signal about which research is likely to be significant.

The relationship is not even marginal. 11x more likely is a huge influence. The research appeared in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, and was conducted by its editor Gunther Eysenbach.

There has been some push back on the study because some tweets from scientists and publishers were sent out automatically, without human interaction. People have also argued that certain works tweeted about were not peer reviewed.

But the BMJ Group, publishers of the British Medical Journal, nails the bottom line:

Whether or not you agree with the validity of Eysenbach’s study, the very fact that it has been published and discussed so widely is surely a testament to the increasing importance of social metrics in evaluating article impact.

Like science, we're hearing in the law, "But these blogs and open source articles published on line are not peer reviewed." To which Shaughnessy responds as to science in way which applies equally to the law:

Peer-review has served scholarship well, but is beginning to show its age. It is slow, encourages conventionality, and fails to hold reviewers accountable. Moreover, given that most papers are eventually published somewhere, peer-review fails to limit the volume of research.

As scholars migrate their publication to the web, and publish earlier, the web offers a better way to filter science or as Altmetrics (project set up to discuss the post-peer review environment) puts it: “Instead of waiting months for two opinions, an article’s impact might be assessed by thousands of conversations and bookmarks in a week.”

Two take aways for me as to attorneys and our legal profession.

One, get involved in social media beyond your blog. If you build up social media equity on Twitter by sharing niche news and commentary other than your own, you'll build up a significant number of loyal followers. When you post to your blog, your articles will then be widely shared on Twitter.

You'll then get cited in blogs, news sites, and publications. Just ask lawyers who blog well. Getting cited on-line as an attorney is highly influential. In time you'll be viewed as a subject matter expert and sought out as a reliable and trusted authority in niche areas of the law.

Two, doesn't what Shaughnessy points out regarding science and social media apply to legal scholarship?

• We are creating knowledge in new ways but have a philosophy of science modeled on a pre-web way of working; we still tend to think of science and any rigorous thinking as an object that we collectively cultivate and grow. I wonder if this is a useful analogy any longer.
• Eysenbach’s research may be a useful early indicator of how social is changing science publishing but also a lesson for the wider community of opinion formers that opinion forming is itself changing and we need to understand its more fluid nature
• What we know will change. For decades it has mattered where you publish and peer review has been a brake on some innovative perspectives. It has tended to defend established viewpoints. The possibility is that new interpretations of experience can evolve and evolve rapidly. It needs a new philosophy of knowledge.

Though I am on the periphery of legal scholarship no longer practicing law and having never been smart enough to pen law review articles, I think I see enough of what's going on in legal publishing to comment intelligently.

We do have pockets of legal scholars advancing the law through blogging and real time publishing. We also have a limited number of our endowed law professors citing the now on-line published legal commentary of practicing lawyers. The Volokh Conspiracy and some the blogs listed at Paul Caron's site, Law Professor Blogs come to mind.

But by and large, law schools and the large legal publishers (LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer, Thomson Reuters) remain focused on peer reviewed and edited legal work.

Expect to see big change. Like open source software, you cannot hold back what comes naturally to smart people.

In the law that means open source publishing. As a practicing attorney you have a wonderful opportunity to jump in.

In the U.S., social networks and blogs reach nearly 80 percent of active U.S. Internet users and represent the majority of Americans' time online, accounting for 23% of their time spent online, compared to 7.6% for email and 2.6% for current events and global news.

Beyond America, across a snapshot of 10 major global markets, social networks and blogs reach over three-quarters of active Internet users.

"As the influence of social media - and those using social media - continues to grow," per Nielson, "it's crucial for traditional media, retailers, brands and advertisers to understand how different consumer segments use and share content." (emphasis added)

Other interesting stats from the report include:

• If you hold a bachelor's degree or greater, you are 7% more likely to visit social networks and blogs than if you only have a high school diploma.
• Americans aged 35-49 are 4 percent more likely than average to visit social networks and blogs than they do any other site and 27 percent of these sites' audience.
• 7% more women visit social networks and blogs than men.
• Men are more likely to use LinkedIn.
• Facebook reaches 70% of active U.S. Internet users, making it the most website by American.
• 62% of Facebook page views are by female visitors.
• 53% of active social networkers follow a brand

If you're going to be successful bringing in new business as a lawyer, you have to go out and press the flesh. Today the flesh you press and the people you'll want to meet is moving online - reading and publishing blogs and networking on social networks.

How long can you remain on the sidelines?

Hat tip to Scott Peterson at Relay Station for turning me on this report.

The New York Times' Somini Sengupta jumped on the fundings to proclaim another milestone being crossed with over one half of all Americans using social networks.

That’s 50 percent of all Americans, not just those who say they are online. Six years ago, when Pew first conducted a similar survey, only 5 percent of all adults said they used social sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.

It is a sign of how deeply and widely social networking companies have penetrated the lives of ordinary people and in turn, transformed the ways in which people communicate, authorities govern and companies sell things.

For those adults online, which includes virtually anyone who would be hiring a lawyer, the rates of participation are higher at 65 percent.

Sure social networks attract more people in the 18-29 age group (63%), but 51 percent of those in the 50-64 age group are using social networks. The core group of clients, prospective clients, and referral sources for lawyers.

Per the survey, neither income nor education seemed to have any statistically significant bearing on the use of social networking sites. No matter the demographic group of clients you represent, there's a far greater chance they are using social networking than not.

Your clients and prospective clients do not look at social networking as a waste of time. From Pew Research:

...[W]hen social networking users were asked for one word to describe their experiences using social networking sites, “good” was the most common response (as seen in this word cloud). Overall, positive responses far outweighed the negative and neutral words that were associated with social networking sites (more than half of the respondents used positive terms). Users repeatedly described their experiences as “fun,” “great,” “interesting” and “convenient.” Less common were superlatives such as “astounding,” “necessity,” and “empowering.”

It's funny how good lawyers and legal marketing professionals continue to debate the merits of social networking. They're ignoring reality.

In addition to comments here, you may discuss the subject of this post at Google Plus.

Boyd cited a recent Pew Foundation study which found those who use the web more trust people more.

The typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted, with regular Facebook users the most trusting of all. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as non-Internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

A Fast Company story by Adam Pennenberg on How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming, cited by Boyd, digs deeper into the concept trust being established online. You can read the neuroscience references on your own, but make note of why we value trust and how trust is the key to business.

Pennenberg citing Neuroeconomist and author, Paul J. Zak, a professor at Claremont College, says "...[T]rust goes to the heart of our economic and social systems." Similarly, Zak says that "Trust is the lubricant that makes economic transactions possible."

Further from Penneberg's article:

In his own research, Zak and a co-researcher found that nations with higher levels of trust (Sweden, Germany, the U.S.) have stronger economies than those on the other end of the spectrum (the Congo, Sudan, Colombia). "Where there is more trustworthiness, there is more prosperity," Zak says. This trust also influences what we buy. A 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey study found that shoppers value the opinions of people they know the most, followed by online reviews written by strangers or in online communities.

There's a good reason for this. We humans are hard-wired to commingle with one another offline and on- and the web and its platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it more efficient than ever. That's because virtual relationships can be as real as actual relationships. The truth is we're all one step removed from reality, living life through the prism of our own minds.

Following me, you know I am all about lawyers establishing trust with people as the basis of business development. It's all about trust.

People like you and trust you as a person, and as a lawyer, and you'll have more work than you can shake a stick at. So long as you get out and network with the right target audience to establish this trust.

The Internet provides lawyers the opportunity to establish an intimate relationship of trust in an accelerated fashion.

Online relationships are not a replacement for real world, face to face, relationships for you as a lawyer. But establishing relationships online does establish trust with your target audience.

The key for you as a lawyer is to use the net, via blogging and other forms of social media, strategically and in a fashion that does not betray people's trust. That's an acquired art you may need some help with.

But no question trust can be established online.

• About 35% of Generation X (age 34 to 45) read blogs
• About 28% of Younger Boomers (age 46 to 55) read blogs
• About 25% of Older Boomers (age 56 to 64) read blogs
• About 75% of Generation X (age 35 to 45) use social network sites
• About 65% of Younger Boomers(age 34 to 45) use social network sites
• About 48% of Older Boomers (age 35 to 45) use social network sites

Here's the chart from the Pew Internet & American Life Project from which I pulled the above figures.

Better yet for lawyers and law firms is that the influencers and amplifiers you are trying to build relationships with are reading blogs and using social network sites at a much higher rate.

Hat tip to Kansas City Ad Agency CEO, Shelly Kramer, who blogged yesterday about the survey.

Unfortunately, the offshoot of that study has been bloggers telling us that Twitter may not be as relevant as thought. Only 8% of Americans are using it.

As a lawyer or law firm you may be apt to dismiss Twitter now. "There's only 8% of people using it. We don't see many of our clients using Twitter." That would be a mistake.

Twitter has become an information network for the influencers of your clients and prospective clients. Bloggers, reporters, publishers, and association leaders use Twitter heavily, not only to receive information, but to share it.

Though I don't see Twitter as a PR tool, imagine a press release is a good analogy when thinking of Twitter. How many people receive press releases? It's far less than 1% of the population.

But would you dismiss press releases to reporters as inconsequential because they represent only a small slice if America? And because none of your clients and prospective clients receive press releases?

Twitter is viral. When you share on Twitter the relevant news and information you're reading others with similar interests will begin to follow you. They'll share it with their followers on Twitter, many of whom will also have similar interests.

As a result both the people following you and those following them see you as someone who has a keen interest in a particular area of the law or business. They also see you as someone who stays up to speed for business purposes.

This is exactly how you, as a lawyer, want to be seen. This is how you develop a word of mouth reputation as a trusted a and reliable authority.

Rather than viewing Twitter as limited, look at study's findings which demonstrate Twitter's pervasive use.

• 8% of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. With 74% of American adults as internet users, Twitter users amount to 6% of the entire adult population.
• Twitter is one of the most popular online activities among tech enthusiasts and has become a widely used tool among analysts to study the conversations and interests of users, buzz about news, products or services, and announcements by commercial, non-profit, and government organizations.
• College-educated are slightly more likely than average to use Twitter.
• 36% check for material posted by others on a daily basis or multiple times per day.

And look at how Twitter is used. Opportunities abound for you as a lawyer.

• 62% post updates related to their work life, activities or interests, with 12% doing so on a daily basis.
• 55% of these Twitter users share links to news stories. One in ten (12%) do this at least once a day.
• 53% of these Twitter users use Twitter to retweet material posted by others, with 18% doing so on a daily basis.

Rather than look at the glass as half empty on Twitter, look at the glass as half full. You'll be way ahead of your competition.

The survey found four measurable ways which blogging helped business development.

• Visibility. I have much greater industry visibility in my industry. (64%)
• Client acquisition. Prospective clients have read my blog and purchased products or services. (58%)
• Thought leadership. My blog has helped my company be regarded as a thought leader within our industry. (54%)
• Speaking engagements. I have been asked to speak at industry conferences because of my blog. (32%)

Only 14% of business bloggers said that their blog has not had any impact on their business.

For lawyers on the fence about whether to blog, this ought to push you over. For lawyers and other professionals making the case that their firm ought to begin blogging, here's your ammunition.

Visibility. Client acquisition. Thought leadership. Speaking engagements. Hallmarks of traditional client development in the legal profession.

Technorati's survey was conducted by Penn Schoen Berland from September 21-October 8, 2010 and included 7,205 bloggers around the world.

For adults age 18-29, 60% visit a social networking site daily, and relatively the same number (62%) send and receive email daily. In addition, already 39% of the 30 to 49 age group visit a social networking site daily. These are findings of the Pew Internet and American Life Project report on email vs. social networks.

What's the significance of these findings for your law firm?

• All of your new hires are as apt to use a social network as email on any given day.
• Nearly 40% of your lawyers in the 30 to 49 age group visit a social network daily.
• With the use of mobile devices, both in and outside the office, there is no way you are going to curtail your employees daily use of social networks.
• An increasing segment of your cliental are using social networks daily.

I hear every day from lawyers and law firms like yours that our clients don't use social networks, that we're just studying the use of social networking as a means of client and professional development, and that are lawyers are too busy to use social networks. You need to face reality. You need to move beyond your committee for really slow action.

Social networks are becoming a way of life for an increasing segment of our adult population. And that's good for your law firm. After all, networking, word of mouth, and relationships are the cornerstones of client development for the best lawyers.

More than half of web users will read blogs this year. By 2014, readership will rise to more than 150 million Americans, or 60% of the internet population in the US.

12% of the online population will update a blog at least monthly this year. By 2014 that proportion will increase to 13.3%.

Per Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report:

Trends in blog reading are expected to maintain an upward course as blogs continue to gain influence in the mainstream media. But there is a caveat to this forecast: Over time, blogs will continue to become indistinguishable from other media channels.

I don't see that caveat as a negative. For bloggers it means that they are becoming an accepted part of online media. In time, lawyers and other professionals who are blogging are unlikely to be viewed any differently than reporters and columnists from major mainstream and trade publications.

Though the growth in the number of bloggers will only increase by 10% in the next four years, having 12% of Americans blogging is an amazing figure in and of itself. That's a lot of folks contributing to online media.

Also to be factored in is the fact that blogging for business by U.S. companies is on the rise while the growth in personal blogs is slowing. Business blogs, including blogs by lawyers and their business clients, are going to make up a larger percentage of the total number of blogs.

Despite the growth in other social media such as Facebook and Twitter and their ease of use, the popularity of blogging continues to rise.

What should lawyers and law firms take from this information?

• That though other forms of social media (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc) may be taking away from personal blogging, business blogging continues to rise.
• Companies need to own and control their principal social media presence. Blogs permit that. Other forms of social media do not.
• Blogs allow your intellectual capital - your insight and commentary - to be stored in one place under your name. Other forms of social media do not.
• Companies need to control their brand, or, in the case of lawyers, their reputation. Blogs allow this.
• Blogs allow company leaders to establish themselves as thought leaders, something much more difficult to do with other social media.
• Blogging as an industry leader so as to engage your target audience is much more becoming of company leadership than the use of other social media.
• By not blogging you're going to look more and more like laggards to your business clientele.
• For business lawyers, if you're not blogging you are losing an effective means of engaging what will be 43 percent of your clients by 2012.

Thanks to the folks at eMarketer, a leader in research and trend analysis on digital marketing and media, as well as Mark Watanabe, Technology Editor at the Seattle Times, whose publishing this research in the Times brought it to my attention.

• The social networking and new media tools that in-house counsel most frequently use for professional reasons are LinkedIn, blogs, and Wikipedia.
• While in-house counsel continue to rely on “traditional media” as their leading sources for business-related news and information, 43 percent cited blogs among their top “go-to” sources.
• New media platforms receiving the highest ranking by in-house counsel for their credibility as information sources include Martindale-Hubbell Connected, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and blogs.
• Blogs are the most frequently used tool among in-house lawyers at the largest companies (revenue of $1.5 billion to $9.9 billion) with 35 percent having visited a blog in the past 24 hours, and 54 percent in the past week.
• 45 percent of companies with revenue of less than $10 million cited blogs among their top sources of information as did 48 percent of companies with revenue of $1.5 billion to $9.9 billion.
• Blogs ranked 4th ahead of General Business Web sites, Web Sites Covering Your Industry, Broadcast Media, and Social Media Web Sites, again reflecting growing acceptance of the medium among in-house counsel as an increasingly important source of information. Legal industry trade media, general business media, and industry trade media were the top 3.

The popularity of law blogs for in-house counsel is only going to increase. 53 percent of in-house counsel expect that their consumption of industry news and information via new media platforms, including blogs, will increase over the next six months to a year.

Blogs are a part of in-house counsels' preference for on-line news. 62 percent of in-house counsel prefer to access their news online via publication web sites compared to 42 percent who prefer the print vehicle.

It's going to become increasingly difficult for legal publications to compete with law blogs published by practicing lawyers. In-house counsel need timely, reliable, and insightful information and commentary. A lawyer with personal, hands-on expertise is better equipped to provide this than reporters and editors employed by legal publishers.

Thanks to the folks at Greentarget, American Lawyer Media, and The Zeughauser Group for conducting the survey.

This per Corporate Counsel New Media Engagement Survey (pdf) conducted by strategic communications firm Greentarget, American Lawyer Media and legal consulting firm The Zeughauser Group.

In-house counsel ranked the following activities “most important” for helping them vet and research outside counsel for potential hire:

1. Recommendations from sources you trust - 73%
2. Articles and speeches the lawyer has authored - 38%
3. Bios on the firm’s Web site - 30%
4. Blogs published by lawyers - 27%
5. Rankings and directories -25%
6. Twitter feeds from lawyers - 22%
7. Endorsements and connections on LinkedIn - 18%
8. Quotes by lawyers in relevant media outlets -15%

Whether a lawyer publishes a blog is going to be increasingly more important for the vetting of lawyers by in-house counsel.

• 37 percent of counsel aged 30-39 already rated “blogs published by lawyers” as the second most important activity for helping them to research outside lawyers for potential hire, following “recommendations from sources they trust.”
• Half of in-house counsel agree or somewhat agree that in the future, high-profile blogs authored by firm lawyers will play an important role in influencing clients to hire that law firm.
• 63 percent of counsel aged 30-39 agree or somewhat agree that they envision a future in which a law firm's prominence through a high-profile blog will play an important role in influencing clients to hire that law firm.

With articles and speaking engagements ranking so high in influencing in-house counsel's hiring decisions blogs become all the more important. Ask any lawyer who publishes a good topic centric blog and they'll tell you that their speaking opportunities have increased dramatically with blogging. Blogging lawyers are also likely to tell you of their blog posts being re-published as articles and of increasing requests for them to write articles.

Many lawyers and law firms are still quick to dismiss blogs for business development. "Our corporate clients don't read them." It's going to be awfully hard to hold on to unfounded views of the past with blogs being of such increasing importance to in-house counsel's vetting of law firms for potential hire.

Such are the findings of the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center Survey of ABA member lawyers in private practice about the technology in use at their firms.

Why do lawyers maintain a presence on social networks?

• Professional networking (76%)
• Socializing (62%)
• Client development (42%)
• Career development (17%)
• Case investigation (6%)

What social networks do lawyers use?

• LinkedIn (83%)
• Facebook (68%)
• Plaxo (18%)
• Martindale.com Connected (4%)
• LawLink (2%)
• Twitter (2%)
• Avvo, LegalOnRamp, and LegallyMinded (1% each)

Thanks to the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center for the survey and its director, Catherine Sanders Reach, for the summary of the survey's findings in Law Technology News.

Social networking use (LinkedIn and Facebook) among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010 pursuant to a survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and author of the report explained “Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users."

I'm routinely asked to meet with law firms to discuss the principles of social networking and social media and how they may be applied to business development. Lawyers and legal marketing professionals find what I offer enlightening and intriguing. But nine times out of ten they'll nod in agreement when someone in the firm assuredly says our target audience doesn't use social networking - our audience is older.

The assumption that your clients, prospective clients, and referral sources don't use social networking because they're too old has no basis in fact. Look at the stats from the Pew survey.

• Social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88%--from 25% to 47%--in the last year.
• Use among those ages 65 and older grew 100%--from 13% to 26%.
• 61% of internet users ages 30-49 use social networking, up from 25% two years ago.

The below graph further highlights the rate of growth in the use of social media by those in the age group likely to be leading American businesses and accumulating wealth.

Look also where your target demographic age group is spending their time on line each day.

• 39% of internet users ages 30 to 49 are using social networking sites (Facebook and LinkedIn) daily.
• 10% of this same age group are using Twitter daily.

And don't be so quick to dismiss these figures on the belief that your clients and prospective clients fall in the majority who don't use social networking and social media on a daily basis. As I've blogged before, it doesn't matter if your clients/prospective clients use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or blogs. Their influencers (bloggers, reporters, association leaders, conference coordinators, and publishers) do.

It's a new day folks. Don't be insular by limiting your discussion on social networking and social media to those in your law firm. Law firms are notorious for talking down the innovative. Lawyers tend to be experts on everything. Look around you at what leading businesses are doing. Read the studies. Read the business articles.

Social networking and social media is not only here to stay, it's use among your target audience is exploding.

Tell a law firm communications director that they would be better served to have one of their lawyer's blog posts shared on Twitter than to have the lawyer quoted in the New York Times. No way they'd buy it.

But law firms are going to come to understand that newspapers and other traditional main stream media are not the primary way many people receive their news today. News today is a shared experienced.

Based on their study this spring, the Pew Foundation Internet & American Life Project describes the manner in which Americans get their news and information as foraging and opportunism.

To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. For instance, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails.

Specific findings of the Pew study include:

• 50% of American news consumers say they rely to some degree on people around them to tell them the news they need to know.
• 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites.
• 52% say they share links to news with others via those means.
• 51% of social networking site (e.g. Facebook) users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow.
• 23% of this cohort follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites.

Rather than be scared by the perils of social media and shortsightedly limit access to social media in the workplace, you as law firm leaders ought to embrace this sharing of news and information. It's to your firm's benefit - and frankly, you have no other choice. The world is changing and we're not headed back.

Other than blatantly linking back to the firm's website (with anchor text describing what a practice group or lawyer does), she also wants to discuss other ways to increase the search performance of the firm's website through the use of their blogs.

We'll talk this week. I hope she's not disappointed when I ask why the firm would ever want to drive traffic from a lawyer's blog to the firm's website. Or why the search performance of the firm's website would be a motivator for blogs.

I can think of 99 other ways to measure the success of a blog other than generating traffic to a website or a blog's generating higher page rankings on Google. In fact, driving traffic to the website may be counter productive.

Websites and blogs are two entirely different creatures. One is a business development tool, while one is an advertisement. One is an engagement, networking, and relationship building tool, while the other is where you talk about yourself. One is used to generate more business by word of mouth, while one is used to generate business from an informercial ala a brochure.

Law firm administrators looking at the time a lawyer takes blogging want to measure the return on the investment. "Why are we having lawyers blog? Why are we paying LexBlog an annual subscription for their services?" With a blog being on the Internet, they can't get their minds beyond anything the firm does on the Internet being other than to generate traffic to the firm's website.

In the case of many law firms which have spent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on websites, let alone the expenditure in human resources, I can understand the frustration in not getting work from their website. But driving traffic from blogs to the website is not the answer to client development success on the Internet.

Look at a recent report sponsored by marketing solutions provider Alterian making clear that consumers do not trust advertising and companies talking about themselves.

• 95% of respondents indicated that they did not trust advertising.
• Less than a tenth (8%) trust what companies say about themselves.
• More than half (58%) agreed with the statement "companies are only interested in selling products and services to me, not necessarily the product or service that is right for me."
• Only 17% of respondents believe companies take what they say seriously.

Contrast that with the 33% of those actively engaged in the use of social media who believe that 'companies are genuinely interested them.'

Alterian CEO, David Eldridge, is spot in his comments.

It is no longer adequate to adopt a strategy of mass broadcast and one-way conversations. Brands should be trying to understand communities rather than focusing on siloed communication channels......Traditional marketing is dead. To know and communicate to individuals, to a specific individual, should be the strategic and tactical goal of all brands and organizations.

Driving traffic to a law firm website is driving traffic to a message your clients and prospective clients don't trust. If your blog is engaging your clients, prospective clients, and their influencers (bloggers, reporters, association leaders, publishers), you ought to be leveraging the networking and relationship building potential of your blog.

Your law firm, if it's like most firms, has always generated its work from word of mouth via networking, engaging people, and relationships. Your website is not about engagement and relationships. Why would you play to your weakness when it comes to business development?

A successful rainmaker for your firm who generates work by participation on local civic boards is not going to get the third degree on why her activity isn't generating more traffic to the firm's website. She's not going to be told to tell corporate executives, civic leaders, and reporters she's building relationships with to 'click through' to the firm's website. She's not going to feel threatened to generate website traffic or else her rainmaking activity will need to cease.

Please don't check your common sense at the door when it comes to networking and business development on the Internet. Sure, you're all consumed in your website because that's all you know when it comes to the Internet and where you've spent so much time and money. But be open to the fact that your lawyers are blogging to build relationships and generate work the old fashioned way. A way that your clients and prospective clients trust.

Driving traffic to your law firm website shouldn't be the motivation for a blog nor a measure of a blog's success - anymore than the success of lawyer's offline networking should be measured by the traffic they drive to the firm's website.

Measure the success of your firm's blog by the success your lawyers are having in building relationships with the target audience you strategically identified when you began blogging.

If your lawyers are not developing the desired relationships examine their approach to blogging and your strategy. Don't fall back on driving traffic to your website.

Lawyers holding on to the belief that Twitter is not a powerful professional and business development tool are misguided. Twitter is ubiquitous among the influencers of your clients and prospective clients -- bloggers, publishers, reporters, association leaders, and conference coordinators.

And though it doesn't matter if your clients ever use Twitter for Twitter use to lead to business development success, Lawyers will find innovative clients and prospective clients among regular Twitter users -- executives, in-house counsel, venture capitalists, and local business people.

Lawyers can use Twitter in multiple ways (I'm missing many).

• Share news of interest with your target audience (clients, prospective clients, referral sources, and the influencers of those three). Read how lawyers can serve as an intelligent agent on Twitter.
• Following leaders in the law, media, academia, business, and finance on Twitter is tremendous for professional development. I was told to follow advance sheets and bar publications when I began practicing. Twitter gives you better info in a more timely fashion. Social media and the Internet are not all about marketing, they're powerful learning tools for lawyers looking to get better at what they do.
• Building relationships with clients, prospective clients, and their influencers. Sharing what you're learning from news and commentary in blogs and mainstream media and re-sharing what influencers are sharing on Twitter reinforces your client's belief that you're the right lawyer and builds an intimate relationship between you and people you may have never met.
• Builds trust. People who follow what you share on Twitter and those who see what you share because it is re-tweeted view you as a trusted news source. It's a small step from being trusted for legal insight and commentary to being called when someone has a legal need, a reporter needs to talk to an expert, or a conference coordinator is looking for a speaker.
• Building a network to call upon. There's no way I could have found five or six social media policies in 15 minutes while sitting in a coffee shop in Rockefeller Center without asking my Twitter network.

Larry Bodine recently blogged that Twitter may be unlikely to go 'mass market' as only 7% of people use Twitter. If his point was that Twitter does not offer significant business development value for lawyers and law firms, he's misguided.

Lawyers and law firms have spent billions of dollars in public relations and business development efforts to reach a select group of people -- often influencers.

No one found it alarming that only a fraction of a percent of the public had AP subscriptions, had a printing press, or put on Industry conferences. You built relationships with the people who did as they helped build the reputation of you and your firm.

I'd be more apt to follow the counsel of Betsy Munnell, a large firm attorney of 25 years and now business development coach. Munnell explained why a senior lawyer ought to use Twitter, including how Twitter's unsurpassed as learning tool.

...Twitter is an unparalleled filter for the massive, unwieldy worldwide web, vastly superior to Google Alerts, blog composites and the like. So I get all my news, and a lot of good ideas, off Hootsuite [Twitter web app] and the reliable links my super bright Twitter friends provide.

It's easy as a lawyer to discount those things you don't understand and have not used effectively. Don't do it to Twitter, it'll be your loss.

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Despite the stereotype of teens spending every waking moment on a mobile device, Nielsen data suggests their parents actually spend more time performing mobile web surfing. Only 7% of mobile social networking activity was represented by 13-to-17-year-olds and only 16% by 18-to-24-year-olds in December 2009.

The leaders in mobile social networking activity are 35-to-54-year-olds, who accounted for 36% of mobile social network usage in December 2009. Close behind them were 25-to-34-year-olds, who performed 34% of the month's mobile social networking activity. Users ages 55 and up combined for the remaining 7%.

The overall growth in the mobile use of Twitter and Facebook last year was staggering.

Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112% in the past year, while mobile Twitter access experienced a 347% jump, according to a new study from comScore.

In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. While only 4.7 million mobile users accessed Twitter from their mobile browser in January 2010, this represented 347% growth from 1.05 million mobile users in January 2009.

Building relationships by engaging your target audience is the essence of client development for you as a lawyer or law firm. Client development success for law firms is not all about websites, search engine optimization (SEO), and pushing out digital alerts and newsletters by email. It's about listening to your clients, prospective clients, referral sources, and the influencers of those three. And then engaging them. The result is relationships and legal work.

In order to listen and engage your target audience as a lawyer or law firm, you need to go out to where your audience is. Today your audience is increasingly at Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. It behooves you to start learning how to engage your target audience at these places.

Eye opening findings from the study include:

• Social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent.
• Americans spend more time on blogs and social networking sites with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009.
• Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination.
• The time spent by users on Facebook has increased to six hours per month.
• The time spent by U.S. users, for both Facebook and Twitter.com, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively.
• Among the top five U.S. social networking sites, Twitter continued as the fastest-growing in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009.

Where Americans are spending their time is clearly depicted in the below graph.

And 45% of US law firms block the use of social media and social networking sites in the work place?

The study covered six types of social media tools, including blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards, and wikis. Highlights from the survey include:

• America's fastest growing private companies adopt social media marketing initiatives at much higher rates than other companies.
• 91 percent of companies use at least one social media tool, compared with 77 percent of companies surveyed in 2008.
• Of the six social media categories covered, the one that continues to be the most familiar to Inc. 500 companies is social networking, with 75 percent saying that they are 'very familiar with it.'
• Twitter is the most widely used, drawing activity from 52 percent of the respondents.
• 26 percent cited Twitter in particular as an important vehicle for communication with outside partners.
• 34 percent of companies reported that they were using social media to communicate with vendors and suppliers.
• Interest in some older social media tools such as message boards and podcasting has declined.
• 44 percent of companies without a company blog say they plan to start one.
• 36 percent intend to use some form of online video.
• 68 percent were monitoring mentions of their company name or their brands on social media sites compared with 50 percent just two years ago.

Eric Mattson, CEO of a research firm named Financial Insite and one of the head researchers in the study commented:

Inc. 500 companies are focused on doing anything they can to grow faster and social media is an innovative tool that may give them an edge over their competition.......From a big picture trend standpoint, these results show how prevalent and widespread social media is becoming in every aspect of business now.

If you're a law firm not using social media, how are you to engage and network with corporations who are effectively using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like to build relationships? Aren't you going to be viewed as an outsider looking in? To leaders of America's fastest growing companies, isn't your law firm going to look behind the times?

If you're leading a law firm looking to get business from the Inc. 500, and which good sized general practice law firm wouldn't be, I'd be asking those questions. I'd be asking the same as a lawyer. I'd be recognizing that if my firm doesn't get aggressive in the use of social media, we're going to lose work to the competition.