I am going to take a different tact here regarding the social media panel. I actively use various social media sites in my personal and professional life. However, I am very conscious to separate my personal social media activity from the professional. For example, I have accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and IPAlly. It’s not that I am looking to conceal a hidden personal life, rather it is about tailoring messages to distinct audiences.
I use Facebook almost exclusively for personal use. Though I announced the opening of my law firm on my Facebook page, I have refrained from using Facebook as a business development tool. I know for a fact that my friends from high school and college have absolutely no interest in my opinions of the latest developments on ACTA. It is the equivalent of the friend who writes daily updates on what they made for dinner.
Instead, I use LinkedIn, Twitter and IPAlly as my professional face. The main reason is relevance. As Lisa Simon (@legalmediagirl) noted, the barriers to entry for creating a social media account are negligible. The difficulty for the professional social media user is to distinguish yourself from the millions of others with Facebook, Twitter, or other social media options. My strategy for rising above the white noise is to take a segregated approach to social media that tailors messages to the targeted audience.
LinkedIn is the Facebook for my law firm. I use LinkedIn to maintain contact with professional contacts. For example, at the INTA conference in Boston last week, I met a number of attorneys outside of Colorado and the U.S. LinkedIn is a tremendous resource for maintaining contact with people who I otherwise would be unable to meet with for lunch or coffee.
Now, I also mentioned IPAlly. IPAlly is a ning-based network focused on global intellectual property issues. Ning allows users to create focused social networks. There are thousands of social media available worldwide, the majority of which you may never know exist. As attorneys struggle to distinguish themselves among millions of other social media users, so too do the many thousands of unique social media sites.
