Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Trial

Online networking for lawyers: online social and business networking sites are a booming business. Tap into the success of these powerful tools by using them to strengthen your business and personal connections, share your expertise, and enhance your marketing and recruiting efforts.

Article Excerpt
The latest generation of online technology, called Web 2.0, has transformed the Internet from a read-only environment to a place where you can actively communicate, exchange ideas, and share expertise. There is now more user-generated content than media-generated content on the Internet--one of the reasons "You" were Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006.

Business networking sites, such as LinkedIn.com, and their social counterparts, like Facebook.com, allow people to use the Internet to stay connected with each other. LinkedIn claims to have more than 25 million professionals using its site, and Facebook claims to have more than 100 million users.

Growth in the use of blogs, which are essentially online journals, is exploding. Technorati.com, a Web site that indexes and tracks Web content, is actively tracking over 100 million blogs and says that more than 100,000 new blogs are created every day. According to Real Lawyers Have Blogs (http://kevin.lexblog.com), which monitors legal blog activity, 53 of the AmLaw 200 firms had bloggers as of March 2008, publishing 110 blogs. Justia.com listed over 3,000 blawgs (law blogs) as of September 2008.

Millions of people are using networking forums, and lawyers need to consider how to tap these resources for personal networking, generating business, marketing, recruiting, and staying in touch with colleagues.

Social media sites allow you to share information about yourself with the people you know or with the public in general, depending on your tolerance for disclosure. They are typically free.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to start. You set up an account and create a profile with information about yourself. You can publish less information than is printed on your business card or easily expand what's there to create an online resume. You might choose to start with just a little information and add more as you get comfortable with public disclosure.

LinkedIn is about creating "connections" with people in your firm, former classmates, clients, potential clients, and contacts in your address book. Those connections will get updates about you as you create new connections, update your profile, and participate in other LinkedIn activities.

For example, you can answer questions posted by...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!