Can blogging lawyers avoid using Facebook personally?

74% of the people in this country use Facebook. One-third of the time that people spend online is spent on social networks, primarily Facebook.

If you are looking to get out and network with folks, on personal or business matters, you’d be hard pressed to find a better place than Facebook, online or offline.

Yesterday I penned a piece on the leading way people find their lawyers. As I do with most of my blog posts, I shared the post on my personal Facebook page.

I didn’t just share a link to the post on Facebook. I penned a brief teaser summarizing the post. That way folks can respond without reading my entire post – if that’s what they choose to do.

The result? 2 people shared the post on their personal Facebook page, almost 30 liked it, and 17 comments were generated.

The comments generated good dialogue among lawyers and other legal professionals. We exchanged thoughts and ideas, with all of us learning a bit about the subject. We also learned a bit about each other and our backgrounds.

I am a blogger, not a Facebooker, at heart. It’s blogging that has enabled me to share my insight and commentary on issues I am passionate about and to engage reporters, bloggers, and other folks. My blog has enabled me to build a reputation and identity with content that is mine to keep.

But I have always looked at the Internet as a place to communicate – a place to get out where the people are and engage them. It’s the height of folly to look at the Internet as a place to create a website and then coax people to come to your website via SEO, social media and the like.

You want to get attention that’s deserved? Go out and engage people where they are. Almost 20 years ago it was AOL. As a practicing lawyer then, I built relationships and a reputation by taking my insight (call it content) to AOL’s message boards.

Today Facebook is AOL, except eight thousand times bigger. Take your blog posts out to your personal Facebook page to engage people, to build relationships and build a word of mouth reputation.

I understand your fear of sharing professional insight at the same place that you share pictures of family vacations. Rely on Facebook’s algorithms though.

Facebook can display upwards of fifteen hundred different versions of ones’ Newsfeed when they log in. Facebook is not displaying all of your posts to all your Facebook friends. Facebook looks to place relevant information in ones’ Newsfeed. Personal friends may never see posts relating to your legal insight.

View Facebook as a town square of discussion. A discussion as driven by algorithms involving people with similar interests. That includes colleagues in the law, clients, prospective clients, influencers, association leaders and the like.

Lawyers ignoring such a town square in the real world would be missing out on a significant business development opportunity. It’s the same with Facebook. We’re out there on Facebook.

As a blogging lawyer give Facebook a try. Not with a law firm page, but with shared posts on your personal page.

Use your content as the currency of engagement, get it out there to generate dialogue, relationships and word of mouth.