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Building social media equity and meeting people at LMA

social media equity

There’s been a good amount of discussion in sessions at the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference today about building social media equity as a lawyer and law firm.

Nancy Myrland (@nancymyrland), a legal marketing and social media strategist, discussed raising social media capital before you have a crisis at hand. A press release, press conference, or exclusive interviews with key reporters are not likely to cut it today when bad news moves like lightening across social networks. You better have people on social media who you have relationships with and whom trust you.

This social media capital only comes from having a real and genuine online presence. Rather than websites and press releases, we’re talking of individuals using social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It’ll take the lawyers as opposed to the law firm’s communications and marketing professionals carrying the water.

This is also a sound message to the professionals at the LMA Annual. Whether you’re looking for mentors, networking opportunities, deeper relationships with friends and colleagues, looking to meet speakers and LMA leaders or, in the case or companies serving LMA members looking to meet attendees, you have a golden opportunity to build social media equity and relationships.

The easiest way to do so is to follow the #LMA15 hashtag on Twitter. When you see valuable information shared  (it will usually be a point from a presenter), retweet it. You’ll be including the Twitter handle of the person who tweeted as well as the person who was presenting as the person presenting will almost always have their handle included. By including the hashtag, you’ll get seen by all of the other attendees on Twitter.

Now watch the people who retweet you and favorite your tweet. These represent opportunities to meet these folks while there. At a minimum, look to connect on LinkedIn.

When attending sessions, Tweet out what you like, giving the attribute to the presenter and again, including the hashtag.

Be discriminate in your tweeting. You don’t need to look over-chatty. You can also space out your tweets and retweets using Hootsuite.

Haven’t used Twitter like this before? It’s okay, you need to start to get out of your shell sometime. If you’e an introvert, perfect. This type of thing gets people coming your way as opposed to feeling clueless in trying to network in a room or a conference — I always did.

Take it up a notch with a blog. Share other people’s stuff and your observations about what you are learning. Talking about yourself and your company can be a turn off, focus on others and offering value.

No blog? Try Facebook or LinkedIn. You can post directly on Facebook or on LinkedIn publishing in a about 15 minutes. Include the hashtag at each and the share the title, link, and hashtag on Twitter.

Maybe this just represents notes to yourself, that’s okay. Growing a network while making notes is a heck of a lot better than notes you toss on the shelf.

There’s 18 other things you can do with social media and social networks at LMA, these are just a few of my thoughts.

I wish I was at LMA Annual. I cannot be there this year. It’s an excellent conference presented by people who know all about giving.