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Mary P. Mooney of the Mooney Law Office in Minneapolis asked on the MSBA Solo/Small Firm Listserv:
I am wondering how many of you have a Facebook presence professionally. I am also wondering how many of you have a personal Facebook page and how you keep clients from looking at the latter/how you maintain your privacy. I am aware that one can choose who are "friends" etc. but wondering if there are any other issues. I presently do not use Facebook for either professional or personal purposes but it seems like a lot of others are.
My thoughts in response:
Facebook is something of an interesting case study. You need a critical mass of people who want to communicate to make a social networking site like Facebook work. I've been on Facebook for about three years now and hardly ever used it because there just weren't that many folks on it who I would be communicating with. While the demographic was not as young as, say, MySpace (I and my band also are on MySpace), it wasn't the place for my generaltion, let alone working professionals.
About three months ago, that started changing. I noticed a big up-tick in "Friend Requests" from people I knew. Then people started coming out of the woodwork - friends from my childhood who I hadn't heard from let alone seen in 30 years started contacting me. It seems the demographic of Facebook has aged considerably.
What I haven't seen, however, is Facebook becoming a more professional, business oriented networking device. It still seems to be heavy on the social and decidedly light on business. I doubt seriosly that Facebook can ever make that tansition with all kooky little apps for sending people virtual beers and the like.
LinkedIn is supposed to be the more professionally oriented, and to a certain extent has been successful, but has always felt more like a big on-line business card. In concept, it is all about networking and maybe folks are using successfully as that. However, it strikes me as a bit too earnestly in-your-face about the networking and linking and let's face it, if I want that I'll go to a Rotary meeting and actually see people and have some fun parties to go with it. I guess we do want some of that "social" part of social networking, ala Facebook....
So where is the happy medium? I never would have predicted this a year ago, certainly two years ago, but the micro-blogging world of Twitter is doing a good job of filling that niche. I was even skeptical of that six months ago when I had Jon Gordon of MPR's (actually PRI here in MN) "Future Tense" into the studio and he flat out said Twitter's demographic is older and more professional than Facebook.
Case in point, there is a very active and growing number of lawyers who are on Twitter. Since it is limited to 140 characters and you can do it from anywhere, it actually fits into a busy work day. Since it is about immediate conversation and not keeping up on every detail, you do not (or should not!) feel bad about the Tweets you missed while you were in a client meeting, researching in the library, or whatever. I started a Twitter account for the www.SmallFirmSuccess.org website (www.twitter.com/smallfirm) two weeks ago and have over 600 followers, most of who are lawyers or legal professionals. I can tell you from experience, it is a great bunch of folks and conversatons are interesting - from the legal to the secular to the whimsical. It is what the best networking always is, friends and colleages who know, like, and trust each other. www.LexTweet.com is a website just started to aggregate the Tweets of lawyers - it has well over a thousand members and is growing daily.
So, if you want to connect with clients - I think you would do better having a good website and/or blog to get you higher in the Google search rankings. You might want to think about buying some Google search terms. Let's face it, people are looking to Google to categorize the world for them - and that includes finding a lawyer. If you want to connect with other lawyers and network with them, I would get on Twitter and join the conversation and be sure to sign up on LexTweet so other lawyers know who you are.
Mary, thanks for the question, it's a good one.
Peter H. Berge
Web Education Director
Minnesota CLE
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