Zite's improvements make it a powerful listening tool for lawyers
I’ll keep telling you until I am blue in the face that the most important aspect of social media for lawyers is listening. It’s not about producing good content. It’s not about broadcasting your content across the various social media.
Enhancing your reputation and building relationships comes from networking through the Internet – the most important aspect of which is listening.
Getting you guys to listen as lawyers has been tough. Especially when it comes to leveraging technology based listening tools.
I may have the answer for you in Zite, and its recent upgrades. Zite is a personal magazine that brings you the information you are looking for on your iPhone or iPad.
With so much information available online today, it’s increasingly difficult and time-consuming to find the content we want. That’s where Zite comes in. Zite evaluates millions of new stories every day, looking at the type of article, its key attributes and how it is shared across the web. Zite uses this information to match stories to your personal interests and then delivers them automatically to your iPad or iPhone.
Like Pandora for music, Zite gets smarter in delivering what you want the more you use Zite. Do you want more from this source? Do you want more from this writer or reporter? Do you want more on these subjects (you’ll be presented with a list)? Give this piece a thumbs up or thumbs down?
Historically, the challenge for lawyers using Zite is that the subjects we need information on are precise and generally beyond that being demanded by the public. Because of that setting up custom feeds by subject on Zite has been tough for lawyers.
No more. On my recent uses of Zite, personally and to help LexBlog clients, I am finding very precise tailored channels available on my searches. Zite is going out and getting the information I and other lawyers want to listen to (read).
For example, on a search of social security disability I could subscribe to each social security, disability, law, and insurance. On a search for intellectual capital, I could subscribe to intellectual capital, copyrights, patents, law, and more. Privacy and security provided worthwhile tailored channels.
Perfect? Perhaps not. But Zite is getting better, especially as more lawyers and business people use it. The subjects and information available from millions of sources ranging from mainstream media, to academic journals, to blogs is improving.
I’m willing to set up feeds by sources and subjects and constantly dial in better ones on what I am seeing. I am willing to use Mr. Reader, which I believe is the best RSS reader out there. But most lawyers, because of their time and limited history of using social media, cannot.
Zite is the answer for you. And just another reason you need an iPad.