Join online conversations to get passionate about what you do as a lawyer
No question participating in online conversations with others in your area of expertise helps you build a network. But digital marketing professional and Google Product Marketing Manager, Adam Singer (@adamsinger), writes that building a network, though a benefit, may not be the reason to join conversations through social media.
The real reason is you should nurture a passion for what you do and be curious enough about it to engage with your peers. It is such an amazing time and opportunity to input to the future of your field that to not do so really says “I don’t care.” Even if it’s not the case, that’s what we might take away.
Think about the last time you connected with someone to work on a project, then searched for them to see what they’ve been up to online. And you come up short. No blog, no participation in social news or networks, silence other than perhaps a static resume or single quote in a media story.
Now imagine you look and you’re able to see their ideas, projects and contributions to the web and simple mechanisms to connect with them.
Who do you prefer to work with? Someone accessible and interested or someone invisible and passive. And while it wasn’t always this way, we’re at the point now there are enough passionate people contributing it’s easy to choose to work with them.
The physical world has completely blurred with the social web, and I think we’ll soon get to the day we won’t even consider it “not being online.” You just won’t exist.
All too many lawyers went to work this morning begrudging that the weekend was over and that they were facing another boring Monday. What if they were passionate about they did for a living? It’s possible.
As a practicing lawyer, I found it totally energizing to attend board meetings of my state’s trial lawyers association, annual trial lawyer association conferences, and American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) meetings. Heck, I could get charged up reading a good business book or listening to a business leader on tape on my Sony Walkman while out running.
Joining online conversations through blogging and other social media has been like nothing before it for me. I am connecting with and engaging business leaders I could have only dreamed of connecting with before the Internet.
What chance was there for a snot nosed kid from rural Wisconsin to sit down and shoot the sh.. with the national legal editor of the New York Times before social media? Or meeting with CEOs and General Managers of major publishing companies? Or presenting at the same conference as the General Counsel of Microsoft (just preceded him on stage)?
This all happened for me by nurturing my passion for networking through the net — by, of course networking through the net, or as Singer puts it, joining industry conversations. Heck, I frankly didn’t know I was passionate about the net and how I am using it today until I started using the Internet for networking.
How do you start as a lawyer? Follow thought leaders in the area of the law and in the industry you are passionate about. Follow subjects, companies, and people within those areas. Then engage those folks through the various social media platforms available to you.
You need not already be working in those areas today, look for what you get passionate about. If you don’t know what gets you fired up, try something.
Sure, you don’t understand what joining an online conversation even means. Or why you would want to do so until you experience the benefits of it. We all started like that — and the many lawyers like you who are going to join online conversations are going to start a little fearful and not knowing what it’s all about.
You have to get started and you need to start somewhere. The alternative is not nurturing a passion you may already have.
Image courtesy of Flickr contributor Rafael Acorsi.