Reason #1: You actually blog about what you are doing. Reading your catalog of what you are actually doing throughout your day is boring. For example:

• Just woke up. Making coffee.
• Sitting down with the morning paper.
• Leaving for work. Lots to do today!
• Sorting through the mail. Lots of bills, no checks.
• Eating a turkey sandwich from the corner deli. Yum!

Not reading that.

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Time seems to be one of the most-common reasons why attorneys who do not use social networks do not start. In the world of hourly billing, all time has a value, and many attorneys seem to believe that (1) networking online will take a lot of time and (2) may not be worthwhile in the end.

The second belief may or may not be true, just like having lunch with a potential client or colleague may not result in a new client or referral to the firm. The first belief is a misconception, at least partially.

Networking takes time, whether that networking takes the form of a bar association event, a happy hour with colleagues, or online social networking. Just like “regular,” offline networking, time spent networking online is up to the person doing the networking online. Networking online is “real” marketing. It should be a necessary part of your job, not just frivolous web surfing. But you do not need to spend more than 15-20 minutes a day to benefit from networking online.

So let’s take a look at three major online social networking tools—LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter—and how much time you will probably have to spend to see some benefit.

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Avvo has finally come to Minnesota. The controversial lawyer rating site has been sued, panned, and lauded. Whatever your feelings on it, Avvo is here, and soon your clients will be looking you up on Avvo and reviewing your performance.

On the plus side, Avvo lets lawyers claim their profile and add information like practice areas, contact information, publications, etc. Lawyers can also raise their profile by answering questions in the “Answers & Advice” section of Avvo.

Like it or not, people will soon be shopping around for attorneys. Best get to Avvo, claim your profile, and ask your favorite clients to review you.

Luis Suarez, who works for IBM from the Canary Islands, got tired of wading through piles of e-mail, so he moved most of his communications to social networking tools, especially blogs. To keep up with his co-workers, he used an RSS reader (I use Google Reader for the same thing) to stay on top of their blogs.

Lawyers can make use of social networking tools, as well. A litigation team could make extremely effective use of a blog to track ideas, due dates, documents, and more. It would need to be a non-public blog, obviously, but this would be easy to accomplish.

One of the problems with e-mail is it is sent, received, and then lost. If team members communicated on a blog, that information would be constantly available and frequently reviewed.

I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip | New York Times

To play, go to twitter.com/samglover and follow me. I will select one winner from everyone who adds me by tomorrow.

To play, go to twitter.com/samglover and follow me. I will select one winner from everyone who adds me between now and June 30th. The tickets are two vouchers for the lower reserved section, and you can use them at any home game.

To play, go to twitter.com/samglover and follow me. I will select one winner from everyone who adds me between now and June 30th. The tickets are two vouchers for the lower reserved section, and you can use them at any home game.

To play, go to twitter.com/samglover and follow me. I will select one winner from everyone who adds me between now and June 30th. The tickets are two vouchers for the lower reserved section, and you can use them at any home game.

I know the Twins are not exactly hot right now, but hey, maybe they just need you in the stands.

When it comes to marketing, what Web 2.0 tools are part of your plan? Jon Gordon asked me how I would describe Twitter’s usefulness to a group of communications lawyers, and I told him I would recommend it as a way to help create an “ecosystem” around a law practice (or, sans buzzwords, to help build one’s online relationships and reputation).

Twitter is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of the blog and the social network. But the end result is not absurd, it is potentially very useful to the attorney-marketer.

Twitter is the essense of personal blogging: it provides a simple space to answer the question “what are you doing now?” and see what others are doing (or thinking, or saying), as well. While blogging and online social networking take a lot of time, Twitter does not. And since many lawyers are tempted to wax poetic, Twitter posts are nicely limited to 140 characters.

In other words, Twitter is one way to build one’s reputation 140 characters and a few seconds at a time. And keep up with colleagues, as well.

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(Cross-posted to solosmall, mypractice, and SoloSmallTech.)

At the Practice Management and Marketing Section meeting yesterday, Roy Ginsburg asked me about the difference between solosmall and mypractice, a listserv and an online social networking site.

The quick distinction that came to me is that a listserv is like a conference, while an online social network is more like a cocktail party.

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