JD Scoop

Social media about cocktail conversation not content? Really?

Do you know that Facebook recently became the fourth largest source of traffic for News and Media sites, after Google, Yahoo!, and msn? (Source: Facebook Largest News Reader? Hitwise Intelligence.)

Interesting numbers in that report, well worth a read - and I agree entirely with analyst Heather Hopkins: "Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category."

 Much of what is being written about Facebook as a trusted news source in people's lives resonates with what we've thought (and said) for quite some time about the platform's 400-million-strong-and growing, engaged readers. (Not particularly smart of us, you'd have to be blind to miss Facebook's traffic-driving power in this regard. People see, read, and share links all day, every day, on Facebook. And that's a lot of people.)

Here's what Steve Rubel, noted writer and digital media analyst (with the enviable job title of Director of Insights) had to say in his recent post, Facebook Could Eat the Web (italics are mine):

In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months ... This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps to create a dedicated news list as Facebook suggests, there's no doubt that the social network is becoming a critical source of information.

This is not limited to Facebook, although the numbers do show the platform leading the way. From Ken Doctor at the Niemen Journalism Lab, The Newsonomics of social media optimization:

A recent study I did with Outsell said that 44 percent of news readers say they use social networks to share news and information. Of those, half use Facebook to do it; one in five use Twitter.

...Clearly, there's something big going on here. In my book, I characterized it as Law #1: "In the Age of Darwinian Content, You Are Your Own Editor. The old gatekeepers are disappearing. We've become our own and one another's editors."

Great. Facebook and Twitter deliver a lot of readers. Terrific. I'm a busy lawyer, what does this mean to me?

A lot, actually. Especially if you are one of those lawyers who've come to see the value of showcasing professional expertise by producing and dispersing legal content (ie, putting online your own articles, blog posts, alerts, commentary, favorable decisions, briefs, etc.). You are, afterall, a member of the new media - with your particular legal expertise and your ability to show it in your writing.

Remember those days not too long ago when you figured out that email was actually a valuable communications tool? And then - stroke of brilliance! - you realized that if you collected the email addresses of clients, colleagues, and prospects to send regular news and analysis, that would be a terrific way to stay in touch (and market your service)?

And remember when you learned that every "subscriber" to your blog's RSS stream was in some way not unlike every subscriber to your email newsletter? (Both opted in to hear from you - both vetted you as a source of good information. Both said, yes: tell me what you know.)

When we talk about the content sharing strengths of Facebook, we are, among other things, talking about this. Only, now it is on steroids.

As I have said many times before, I am a big fan of Facebook business pages because they're the latest and greatest to allow meaningful engagement between readers and producers of content. (Mashable.com was quick to note this after last year's page changes.)
 
Calling a reader in Facebook a "fan" doesn't seem to sit well with some professionals - and yet these same people are growing more comfortable with words like "tweet" and Twitter and Flickr and ... other cute Web names some of which end in an exclamation point.

Fact is, on Facebook pages, our fans are also our readers, should we choose to think of them that way.

Anyone who becomes a fan of a Facebook page that promises to deliver regular, substantive, tasteful, informed, expert content is opting in (think email signups, RSS subscriptions) to hear from us.

And then there is the engagement. With email newsletters, engagement was limited: delete it, reply to it, forward it. (Think back to the days of the giant email forward - usually something funny, shared between friends.) Otherwise, who knows which emails we like, which ones move and inform us?

With blogs came a big leap forward in terms of engagement: you could write comments (you could begin conversations) and you could (with a click of a button or the cut and paste of a link) share the post with friend and colleagues. 

Facebook's engagement is exciting because, in many ways, it brings a new level of viral transparency. When I "like" a shared link (video, news story, legal article) in Facebook, everyone connected to me sees that. I don't need to forward it; I don't need to click any additional buttons. I just "like" it and people see it.

If I want to, I can also "share" that piece of content by mailing to friends, or posting it onto my own profile. Similarly, when I comment on something on Facebook, all of my connections are also made aware of it - and so begins the easy, viral process of drawing in new people to new content. ("If Adrian likes it, I'll check that out, too..." - click.)

Random sample: here is a snapshot taken from my Facebook stream at time of writing. I'm already a fan of Justia's Facebook page - but if I wasn't, that piece of news (showing my friends connecting to it) would draw me in:



Activity on Facebook leads to increased exposure. Take advantage of it. Give people something to talk about.

We've seen the power of information sharing on Facebook both in our analytics and in the anecdotal evidence filtering back to us. Most recently, for just one example, we featured a new JD Supra article on one of our subject-specific legal news pages (Immigration Law) and within half an hour the attorney who'd written the piece was contacted by a reader (who'd read it on Facebook) who was looking for help with an immigration issue.  

So, what to do? A handful of suggestions:

1. Set up a Facebook page and regularly program it with useful content that showcases your expertise (including content from your blog, if you have one).
2. Post your work on JD Supra, because we'll also do this for you, via our subect-specific news channels/pages.
   
3. Install the JD Supra Legal Publishing application on your page and profile (of course I'm going to say this! We created the app and the above pages to leverage the viral quality of the Facebook platform).
4. Encourage your contacts, clients, and readers to connect with you on Facebook via a professional firm page.
   
5. Use social media to make new friends and to converse. But also use it to deliver content that breaks the ice on your behalf and creates new friends, new contacts (new clients!) you otherwise might never have met. While you're busy at work being a lawyer, no less.
   

We're pleased to announce the launch of  a new Facebook page for Clio, the legal software as a service (Saas) company. As you know, Clio provides a suite of web-based online practice management tools for solo lawyers and small firms.

Powered by our own in-house applications, Clio's Facebook page:

• automatically streams the company's blog and JD Supra document portfolio,
• allows visitors to sign up for Clio's monthly newsletter (as well as connect to the firm's other online platforms, like LinkedIn and Twitter),
• publishes a daily social transcript of tweets on any subject (at time of writing, all tweets for "goclio"), and
• features a custom-built About Clio section, complete with press mentions, a tour of Clio's software offerings, and the ability to sign up for the Clio service.

In the words of company president and co-founder, Jack Newton:

We see this as an excellent way to engage with fans and clients on a more personal level, and look forward to building an active community around Clio on Facebook. We'll be able to keep our readers informed and up-to-date with daily posts and with the tools JD Supra has provided us, such as our Blog connection, Social Transcripts, and JD Supra Documents.

As we've noted elsewhere, we are big fans of the way Facebook pages allow businesses to engage with their readers by delivering "shared" content into Facebook news streams. Clio is able to create community with content using many of the apps we've built into their page.

For regular updates about software as a service, online practice management tools, company news and information, become a fan of Clio's Facebook page today!

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Related:

- You Should be on Facebook - Here's Why
- 3 Apps for Your Law Firm's Facebook Page
- Lawyers and Law Firms on Facebook

Want a custom, professional presence on Facebook? Start here.

File under: weekend reading.

Here's a quick look at some of the articles and news (mainly to do with online matters) that recently grabbed our attention.

Meant to be helpful, this reading list is by no means comprehensive. Before we file away, we thought we'd share with you:

• Facebook Now Allows Comment Replies by Email (Facebook blog)
• How Google Ranks Tweets (Technology Review)
• Why Are We Still Debating? (Are You Writing This Down?)
• LinkedIn Wants Users to Connect More (WSJ)
• Social Media Marketing Explained in 61 Words (WebInkNow)
• 3 Ways to Use Search & Authenticity in Personal Branding (Personal Branding Blog)
• 30 Content Marketing Truths for 2010 (Junta42)
• Seven Ways to Get Your Marketing Back on Track (Clickz)

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I'm a fan of author and speaker Joe Pulizzi - he's written the book on Content Marketing (Get Content Get Customers; highly recommended if you don't already know it). Joe's e-digest of marketing articles is one of those emails I still very much look forward to reading every week.

Recently Joe put together 100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010, a collection of thoughts and opinions by some of the best and the brightest in this field.

I recommend reading the entire post. In the meantime, here are a few choice excerpts from the original. Highlights for any legal professional using content to showcase expertise and market their service online.

100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010 - excerpted...

From Jason Falls:

...I think more will become aware that making content highly portable is the key to engaging an ever-more-mobile audience. Whether it's implementing RSS and mobile feeds on a website, funneling brand messages to social networks, etc., I think more will start to see the power of content distribution and customer engagement through that content. 2009 was about learning social media. 2010 will be about figuring out how to use it well.

From Brian Halligan:

...I think 2010 is the year brand marketers figure out that interrupting their way into people's lives through advertisements just does not work anymore as we consumers are sick-and-tired of being marketed to and are getting better-and-better at blocking the interruptions out ...  They will start creating remarkable content that spreads via social media, draws in links from other content creators, and ranks in Google's search engine.

From David Meerman Scott:

...The phrase "social media" will soon be considered obsolete as more and more organizations publish online content.

From Scott Abel:

...User expectations have changed and consumers are no longer willing to settle for mediocre experiences. Today, they expect all content to be accessible, consumable, and shareable - no excuses.

From Simon Payn:

...Marketers will get more feisty and opinionated in their content to build trust with their best prospects and clients. I've tried it...and it works!

From Mike Arauz:

...Transparency FTW!

From Kim Kleeman:

...there will be a clear division between quality customized content and content created in a factory-like fashion. Just like junk mail began to dilute our mail system, poorly created content will become a nuisance. If you are looking to protect and market your brand, focus on engaging your customers with content that will build trust and the relationship your brand seeks.

From Nettie Hartsock:

...more brand marketers will come to understand that content is only valuable if it is deeply rooted in their expertise. They will stop creating "bait and switch" content and instead empower content that is free, extraordinarily valuable and not "back to me - yakkity yak content."

From Jon Wuebben:

...more companies will understand the value and effectiveness of content: creating and distributing it, but also leveraging it. How will brand marketers do it in 2010? By having a presence in the blogosphere, in social networking, in local search and everywhere their customers and potential customers are online.

And a favorite, from Don Philabaum:

...A global shortage of electricity will require content producers to distribute content in wheel barrows and deliver content from door to door!

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That last prediction notwithstanding, we think these are exciting times for the legal profession. As we've written elsewhere, many lawyers are prolific writers - and that can put you ahead of the game in an online landscape where quality content counts for so much.

Here's looking forward to helping you make the most of content marketing opportunities in the new year.

Lawyers, spotlight your expertise: post your articles, alerts, commentary, blog posts, filings, on JD Supra now.

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Related:

- Legal Marketing: 3 Ways to Get Attention for Your Online Content
- 5 Articles to Read on Search, SEO, and Content Marketing
- Content Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

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I've been holding on to last week's "The Media Equation" column by David Carr in the The New York Times: The Fall and Rise of Media - worth a read if you haven't yet seen to it.

Like many of us in the Digital Age, I usually do the equivalent of clip a piece like this one: tweet the link, share it on Facebook, bookmark it on delicious or digg. Then I'm done; on to the next article, the next post, the next nugget of information.

But for the past week this particular article has lingered on my desktop in an open browser, not ready to be archived.

On one level, it is personal: I am the son of an old-school, print media journalist - a South African journalist who happened to chronicle life in that country during some of its most turbulent years (1960s to '90s). I will forever remember (and miss) the typewriter sounds of a busy newsroom, and the smell of ink and paper and hot metal as important news went to print.

Yet, there is optimism in Carr's piece about the changing media landscape. ("...cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago.")

A few standout statements from The Fall and Rise of Media:

"...the supply of both editorial and advertising content more or less doubles every year.

"...on the Web, pretty good -- or even not terrible -- is often good enough."

"Certain stalwart brands will survive and even thrive because of a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information."

Especially the last half at that last sentence:

...a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information.

When you overlook the carnage that is the decline of traditional media ("if you ignore all the collateral gore"), you see opportunity.

This includes opportunity for lawyers and law firms - who are without question terrific sources of expertise (and that missing quality content) at a time when the best you can say about most user-generated content (the golden child of new media) is: "pretty good -- or even not terrible -- is often good enough."  

I am unsure how many lawyers and law firms understand their place in this changing landscape - and see the opportunity available to them.

Quality Content for Niche Audiences

Our efforts at JD Supra have always been informed by the understanding that lawyers are prolific generators of top-quality written work; our job is, among other things, to place that work in front of the niche audience(s) who want to read it.

Your expertise - covering every endeavor, every profession and industry, showcased in the form of client alerts, articles, newsletters, blog posts, court documents (incl. favorable decisions) - holds wide interest among numerous people. Business owners, managers, consumers, parents, employees, musicians, politicians, entrepreneurs, doctors, patients, homebuyers, landlords, tenants, scientists, manufacturers, immigrants, and on and on and on.

 So what does the changing media landscape mean for lawyers and law firms? Simply this: participate.

Participate in the new media landscape. In the words of Jordan Furlong (repeated here by me, frequently): think like an editor.

Start posting your analysis, commentary, news alerts and other legal content online. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, JD Supra, even YouTube: these are your tools. An audience is waiting. 

What you bring to your "niche" (read:" target") audience can help fill a void currently filled, in no small way, by content that is either "pretty good" or, more likely, "not terrible."

Lawyers and law firms can do better than that.

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We've added another feature to our Facebook pages that makes it even easier for you to grow your network on the popular platform as you participate on JD Supra.

Now, any LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook URLs entered on your JD Supra profile will appear wherever we list your information on Facebook. And list it we do:

[File under: quick tip - using Twitter in your professional outreach and marketing efforts.]

Among its other benefits, Twitter can be a terrific editorial resource for lawyers who understand the value of sharing useful content (aka: "writing") as a way to showcase expertise and market professional services. Here's one way:

Listen to the crowd: let the Twitter conversation help guide your next piece of writing.

We all know that Twitter is a terrific tool for connecting with people across vast distances, conversing in real time, networking with peers and colleagues, expanding your circle of influence, making yourself available, finding new friends, engaging with clients, letting the world know what kind of sandwich you just ate, etc.

One additional value is that all of the conversations Twitter facilitates are available to us with mere clicks of the mouse.

In other words, Twitter gives us a rich stream of data (call it " What lots of people are thinking about, right now") that is available for us to mine, for free, whenever and however we like. An editor's dream.

Here are three tweets I found this morning after searching for instances of "H1N1" and "workplace" in the Twitter conversation:

Should an employer notify employees about potential H1N1 exposure? What can an employer ask a sick employee to reveal? What are best-practice guidelines for H1N1-related workplace policies?

All worthwhile topics to write about, with broad interest. In just three tweets, real concerns expressed by real people that a labor lawyer can use as editorial fodder, the basis for a new client alert, an article, a blog post, what you will.

The phrase "Think like an editor" comes up again and again in discussions about the online marketing landscape - it's exactly the way to think when undertaking to showcase your expertise by producing a regular supply of legal content. (Hat tip to consultant Jordan Furlong, whose early use of the phrase was one of the first I read.) 

Content marketing requires thinking like an editor, which requires putting yourself in your audience's shoes. What are their interests? their needs? their concerns? They don't care about you; what do they care about?

The answer? I don't know, but if you search the Twitter stream you're bound to get a new angle on it.

...

Don't just think like an editor, also think like a publisher:

Once you have written your new article, post, alert, newsletter, etc. make sure it finds an audience. Follow up with the people who asked the question in the first place; show them you have crafted a thought-piece as response. Tweet about it; I suspect some of your early retweets will come from the people who inspired the article in the first place. And put your work on JD Supra where we think like a publisher on your behalf: it will hit the Twitter stream in our subject-relevant news feeds.

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Related:

- Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter (Mashable)

- Twitter for Lawyers: One Benefit You Might Not Have Considered

- Legal News Feeds on Twitter

Are you showcasing your legal expertise on the JD Supra network? Post your legal content today: upload articles, alerts, blog posts, newsletters, filings, and other documents on JD Supra.

Here's a look at some of the latest lawyers and law firms to be publishing their work on JD Supra. We're happy to welcome them to the site:

	Malcolm Ruthven, a consumer bankruptcy attorney in San Rafael, California. Malcolm is a member of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy attorneys, and has received the Wiley M. Manuel award from the State Bar of California for pro bono legal services. Featured Doc: Bankruptcy, We Don't Want To Do That!...
	Attorney Jeffrey Crown, managing member of Trustlawyer, designs wealth transfer plans which benefit families, employees and charities. He has extensive experience representing both executors and contestants in will contests and has settled many large and complex estates. He has served as an expert witness on estate and trust law in several courts. Featured Doc: Most Living Wills are Seriously Flawed...
	Jason Molder is the founding member of Molder Legal Group, P.A., a family-owned law firm in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Florida area offering legal representation across almost all aspects of Florida construction, condominium & community association, creditor's rights, information technology, and e-discovery law. Featured Doc: Recent Changes to Florida’s Pre-Suit Process for Construction Defect Claims...
	Dallas, Texas attorney Amy Stewart represents corporations in complex business and commercial litigation, including insurance coverage and bad faith litigation, contract disputes, business torts, breach of fiduciary duty claims, non-competes, fraud and misrepresentation, deceptive trade practice claims; construction litigation; healthcare litigation; ERISA litigation; and professional liability litigation. Featured Doc: Glenn: Emerging Issues...
	Intellectual property attorney Dana Newman has negotiated and drafted complex, sophisticated contracts involving technology, licensing, joint ventures, and asset purchases and also managed an extensive intellectual property portfolio (trademarks and copyrights), and handled the prosecution of domestic and international trademarks, software licensing, domain name enforcement, and copyright registrations Featured Doc: Copyright Grants: as Powerful as Kryptonite?...
	Dennis Scardilli is a New Jersey real estate and development attorney. Among other things, Dennis has developed the legal framework & implementation strategy for Atlantic City's first-in-state property tax revaluation phase-in and first-in-state trust fund for the monetization of a municipal asset (est $800 M); Featured Doc: Get Ready for NJ's Tax Increment Financing Program...
	DCBA Law & Policy, a law and public policy firm principally located in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the nation's capital. Practice areas include business & contracts, domestic relations (paying special attention to the needs of non-traditional couples), estate planning & administration, and non-profit management. DCBA's policy expertise is focused on public health, civil rights, and small business matters.. Featured Doc: Addressing Prescription Drug Abuse Requires Focus...
	Attorney Laura Hazen is a shareholder and director with Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe, one of Denver's oldest law firms. Laura's areas of focus include labor and employment law, discrimination disputes, non-competition issues, civil and commercial litigation, arbitration, mediation, negotiation, trainings, HR audits and consultation.  Featured Doc: Colorado Extends Emergency Unemployment...
	Chris Bennett is head of Vancouver-based Davis LLP's Trade-marks, Technology & Outsourcing and Video Games & Interactive Entertainment Law practice groups. He is also a member of the firm's Intellectual Property Law and Franchise & Distribution Law groups, and chair of the firm's Environmental Sustainability Task Force.  Featured Doc: Case report: Crookes v. Wikimedia Foundation Inc....
	Illinois attorney John Callahan handles criminal and DUI defense for clients in the Schaumburg, Illinois, area. Featured Doc: Changes to Illinois DUI License Suspension...
	Donna Seyle is founder of Freelance Law Firm, which serves as a resource for lawyers and law firms who find themselves without the resources to take on new business or respond to matters needing immediate attention, and to in-house counsel faced with a temporary overload of projects. The firm's mission is to provide real estate and business firms or practitioners and in-house counsel with cost-effective, time-saving, high-quality legal services so they can increase their billings without increasing their overhead. Featured Doc: Reverse Mortgages: The Good, the Bad and the Be Careful...
	netDockets, a bankruptcy precedent research tool specifically designed for the needs of corporate restructuring professionals, by restructuring professionals. netDockets hosts a database of over 1.4 million documents filed in over 700 of the largest chapter 11 cases of the last decade.  Featured Doc: In re Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc. Chapter 11 Voluntary Petition...

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What about you? Are you looking for an effective way to showcase expertise and connect with new clients, colleagues, and the media?

Join JD Supra. Create a professional profile and start posting your legal work online!

(Truth be told: five rules, really, depending on how you count...)

Recently in a telephone conversation a new contributor was astounded to hear our recommendation to include outbound links in the articles he was posting to JD Supra. (We routinely recommend that contributors link key phrases in their docs to relevant content on their blogs, websites, etc.)

He asked: "What about my readers? How will they feel about clicking somewhere and finding themselves on another website not necessarily of their choosing? Will they mind being taken away from my article?"

One lawyer's thoughtful consideration for his readers aside, it is remarkable that even today hypertext markup language seems to some such a novel way to deliver information. This is the atmosphere in which so many of us still operate, even now, in the Web's second decade. Before we get too carried away with social media and social networking and cloud computing this and crowd sourcing that ... worth acknowledging: for many of us, this is all still very new stuff. Even the basics.

- The Rule of Three: Make your text and links work together

In the mid-90s I used to tell Web writers that their work had to succeed on three levels:

1. If a reader only read the body of words on the screen in front of them, the text should "work" (resonate, make sense, be a good read, etc.). 2. If a reader only clicked on the links before them, those links should be worthwhile (and go to interesting places, contain worthwhile information, etc.). 3. If a reader read the words and clicked the links that, too, should resonate. The package deal and its component parts should be worthwhile, no matter how you sliced it.

I think this remains a fairly good rule of thumb today for lawyers who are blogging, uploading to JD Supra, guest writing articles, and generally making an effort to showcase their expertise through substantive legal content. Hold yourself to a standard whereby your words, your links, and the combination of the two resonate for your readers. Call it a rule of three.

- The Rule of Two: Write for people and computer programs

Jump ahead to 2009 and now, more than ever, we not only write for people, we also write for the search engines. (It would be folly to dismiss the role of search engines as drivers of attention to your written work. Even in the Age of Social Media, Google leads the way as a source of organic traffic to most websites.)

What does this mean to a Web writer?

1. Write for people, who as readers are often compelled to click and read something because the title is catchy, interesting, enigmatic, on-target, and so on. (This isn't brain surgery: what titles catch your eye? Write those.)

2. Write for computers, which have become extraordinarily sophisticated in determining what is relevant but are still just computers. Smart? Yes. As nuanced as the human reader? No.

Simply put: if you want to be found in search for certain key words and phrases, use them. If you don't use them you won't be found for them.

We live at a time in which information comes to us in the form of titles and links, and so I am talking very simply about writing good titles. Write your titles with two different influencers in mind: people and the computers they use to find you.

We know what it looks like when a writer does just one of the above. Writing solely for search is at best tacky, at worst black hat. Writing only for human eyes is, on the other hand, wasted opportunity.

If consumer bankruptcy is your specialty (or, rather: the specialty for which you'd like to be found) add the prefix "Consumer Brankruptcy:" to your titles whenever it makes sense.

Intellectual Property? Add the phrase. New York Real Estate? Ditto. Non-profit Organizations? Same.

You get the idea. But be balanced about it. In fact, maybe there's just one rule: as a writer, strive for balance between the various exciting forces at play within the online landscape.

Actually wait, no. Here's the one rule: post your work on JD Supra.

We're pleased to announce our new iPhone application, which allows lawyers and legal professionals to reach mobile users with the content they upload on JD Supra.

Our 'Legal Edge' iPhone app streams by subject all of the latest alerts, articles, newsletters, blog posts, court filings, and other legal content uploaded to JD Supra. Subjects include immigration, bankruptcy, real estate, banking & finance, tax law, insurance, intellectual property, and law marketing, among others.

Available for free download at the iTunes store, the 'Legal Edge' app allows iPhone users to browse legal news by any subject of interest and to read documents in the phone's Safari browser or PDF reader. The PDF option includes 'landscape' view and zoom functionality for easy reading. Users can also contact authors directly with a "Contact Contributor" button (available for documents posted by JD Supra premium account holders).

San Diego bankruptcy attorney Carl Starrett said in this morning's press release:

Now, my work on JD Supra doesn’t only appear in email digests, Twitter news feeds, Facebook pages, RSS streams, and third-party news sources – it also goes to the iPhone. All I do is upload the document.

Indeed, this iPhone application is the latest delivery on our promise to place the legal content that spotlights your expertise in front of the people you want to reach, wherever they gather. 'Legal Edge' is the first of our mobile applications, a program that will extend to other popular platforms.

Custom iPhone Apps

We also now offer custom, firm-branded iPhone applications for lawyers and law firms interested in streaming exclusively their work to a mobile audience. These firm-specific applications are entirely customized according to each firm's needs. More information about custom iPhone apps available here.

Click here for more information about JD Supra's iPhone app - or visit the iTunes app listing to download 'Legal Edge' now.

The next version of this app is already in the works and includes Search functionality, document sharing, and other features to optimize an exciting distribution stream that delivers your legal expertise to a mobile audience.

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Related:

- JD Supra Legal Edge (iTunes App Store Listing)

- Lawyers Connect with Mobile Users Through JD Supra's New Legal Edge iPhone App (Reuters/Business Wire)

Are you posting your written work on JD Supra? Get started now. Showcase your legal expertise around the Web, including via email digests, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, news services, and now also iPhone.

The past few days have seen a flurry of discussion about the type of conduct appropriate for lawyers and firms participating in social networks.

Trying to make sense of it all, law firms and legal marketers too often analogize social platforms to familiar, off-line venues (e.g. MySpace is a bar, Twitter a cocktail party, Facebook a barbeque, and LinkedIn an office meeting). Or they make generalizations like: Facebook is for social networking; LinkedIn is for professional networking.

At the end of the day, though, these semantic constructs are simply that – constructs. They do little to help lawyers successfully network online. Worse yet, these constructs are based on the false premise that the participants are one-dimensional demographics.

If they are to be analogized to anything offline, social networks are simply virtual buildings – with rooms and accoutrements by which people can share information and connect.

And the participants? They are people – and people are not one thing in one place and another somewhere else – solely interested in one thing when they are here and in another when they are there. They are like you and me.

Whether I’m scanning my home page on Facebook, reading my Twitter stream, or checking out the latest discussion on LinkedIn, I’m a CEO who hires lawyers for corporate matters; a mother who needs a Trust lawyer; and I could have a car accident tomorrow for which I’ll need a personal injury lawyer. I also love good mystery movies, The Daily Show, and witty jokes. I was a business litigator, but have a passion for constitutional law. And all of that is true whatever website I happen to have up on my monitor at the moment.

No matter which URL is at the top of my screen, if something of interest to me shows up there, I’ll follow the path – which inevitably leads to the person who shared it.

There are CEOs on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And they sometimes get pulled over for drunk driving – and their parents die – and they get into disputes with their employers – and…

Use any of these platforms to share information about your favorite music and sports teams – seek out people with similar interests - and it’s a cocktail party. Use them to distribute your legal articles – seek out people interested in the subject on which you are writing - and, voila, it’s a channel for distributing your legal content.

It is whatever you make of it.

Successful online engagement is simple: properly set, and then meet (or better yet exceed), the expectations of the community you build – wherever and around whatever you choose to build it.

If you think legal content is not especially engaging, does not lead to personal connections, or - for example - that lawyers don’t have a ready audience on a "personal" platform like Facebook, take a look at JD Supra's presence there (a growing community of thousands that also includes numerous subject-specific legal pages.) Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the engagement you’ll see:

 

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Join JD Supra today. We'll help you build your online audience.

Last week via Twitter I stumbled upon ProBlogger Darren Rowse's excellent 9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom. It's well worth a read if you're trying to generate more attention for your content online (blog content or any other).

The post had been written on the heels of another, titled The Myth of 'Great Content' Marketing Itself. Rowse's point at the heart of both pieces: great content does not necessarily sell itself. You have to work to find an audience (or to have an audience find you).

If you build it (a website, a blog, whatever), they might come - but unless you follow up with promotion, it is more likely that they will not come:

The reality is that many blogs produce quality content that doesn’t get read. The reason isn’t that the blog’s not worth reading - but in many cases it’s because nobody knows to go read it.

Seeding Content

Rowse uses "seeding content" to describe how he promotes his work online. I like the phrase; it brings to mind the idea of judicious and thoughtful placement of your writing wherever something meaningful might grow:

I’m not really a great gardener but I do know that in order for me to have a new plant grow in my garden I need to go to some effort - but that if I do too much I can actually hurt the growth of the plant.

Agreed. For one thing, as you promote your own work online you don't want to be perceived as a spammer. No one will read you (or follow your links) on an ongoing basis. For another, we all only have so much time in the day; what we do should make an impact. ("Seeding content" is, I think, another take on the figurative "hub and outpost" strategy of participating online wherever a worthwhile audience happens to gather.)

Rowse's nine suggestions for seeding content include Twitter, Facebook, guest blogging, links in email signatures, social bookmarking, and more. All terrific ideas. I recommend reading the original post to see what tactics might fit into your online strategy.

Here are my three additions to Rowse's list, written specifically with legal professionals in mind:

3 Ways to Get Attention for Your Online Legal Content

1. Post on JD Supra - well of course I am going to say JD Supra! The fact is, over the last year we have built (and continue to build) a network that distributes your content widely across multiple platforms, to targeted audiences around the Web. We build it so that they come to you (or, more specifically, we take you to them.)

Take a look at the index of subject-specific legal feeds gathered in our new and always-growing list, JD Supra Everywhere. Your work uploaded on JD Supra (including blog posts) is fed to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; is emailed out monthly via digests; and is distributed via third-party providers Newstex, complinet, and others. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Suggestion: if you are a legal professional looking to find more readers for your work, upload it to JD Supra.

2. Start a Facebook Page - over the past year we've seen a growing trend towards businesses of all kinds adopting Facebook pages to extend reach online (as covered by numerous media outlets). We love Facebook pages for their ability to grow a willing and viral audience of readers, who in turn promote your work to their connections as they read it, comment on it, share it - engage with it. I've written about this before ("Why You Should be on Facebook.") Most recently, the ABA Journal picked up the story with a piece about Massachusetts-based Vetstein Law Group's efforts to grow an audience for their blog on Facebook.

Suggestion: create a Facebook business page for your professional legal service. Tether your blog and your JD Supra portfolio to the page in order to automatically feed new content to Facebook. Promote your page to clients new and old, colleagues, and your closest network of family and friends. As you grow your audience and feed it good content, it will in turn grow itself.

3. Participate in LinkedIn Groups - we see very real and worthwhile engagement with JD Supra content in LinkedIn groups. As you perhaps know, groups on LinkedIn have a "News" section where members can recommend individual articles or stream an entire RSS feed. If you're not participating in this way on LinkedIn, I recommend starting now. It's an easy way to find a trageted, professional audience for you work.

Suggestion: search LinkedIn groups for gatherings of professionals you serve. Join those groups that make sense to join - do not spam with advertising or, for that matter, only with links to your articles. Rather, become an active and worthwhile participant in the group. Whenever and wherever appropriate, suggest your new content via LinkedIn "News."

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What other ways do you seed your content around the Web? Share your tactics here, with a comment to this post.

Related:

- JD Supra Everywhere: Legal Feeds Around the Web

- You Should be on Facebook

- Lawyers and Law Firms on Facebook

 

Are you posting your work on JD Supra yet? Get started now.

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For your reference: here are five articles that offer good advice to anyone writing for a Web audience.

As usual with our quick-hit reading lists, descriptions are brief. We hope you have the time to dip into all five posts. (One recurring theme that always deserves repeating: know your audience.)

Writing on the Web - Five Useful Links:

- The Structure of Persuasive Content - by Brian Clark of perennial favorite Copyblogger. Also worth reading: How to Write Headlines that Work, among others...

- 5 Rules for Better Web Writing - "...before you lay any words down on the page, figure out who you’re speaking to, and write with them in mind." (Mashable)

- 10 Tips for Writing on the Web - "...provide accurate headings and subheadings, [so that readers] will be able to quickly locate information when scanning the page." (RONB Marketing Blog)

- How to Write Great Headlines - applies equally to article titles, email subject lines, blog posts, etc. A series of tips with bad and good examples for each. (Modern Life)

- Writing for the Web - interesting collection of links to studies old and new about how readers interact with content online.

There you have it; the tip of the iceberg when it comes to writing about Web writing. Do you have any articles worth sharing here? Post a comment and we'll include your link.

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Related:

- SEO Writing for Search Visibility

- 5 Articles to Read on Search, SEO, and Content Marketing

- Legal Marketing: 5 Things to Read About Content

 

>> Are you posting your writings on JD Supra? Start now: showcase your legal expertise to a wide online audience.

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For your reference: a reading list of recent Employment Law articles and alerts posted on JD Supra.

Written by leading lawyers and law firms, these documents cover timely issues in the area of labor and employment law, including employee rights, workplace privacy, the Family Medical Leave Act, online networking policy, H1N1/swine flu considerations, and more:

• Fenwick Employment Brief - August 2009 ... [by Fenwick & West LLP]
• The Legal Pitfalls of Online Social Media ... [by Ryan Lobato and Dara Wanzer of McAfee & Taft]
  
• Swine Flu Pandemic - Advice for Employers ... [by Ford & Harrison LLP]
• Recent Legislation and Regulations Require Changes to Health and Welfare Benefit Plans ... [by Littler Mendelson]
• Supreme Judicial Court Holds That Worker Misclassified As Independent Contractor Is Entitled to Damages ... [by Foley Hoag LLP]
  
• Multi-Million Dollar Jury Verdicts Serve as Reminder to Beware of Retaliation Claims... [by Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP]
• DOL Issues Proposed Rule Implementing Executive Order Requiring Posting of Employee Rights ... [by Ford & Harrison LLP]
• The Fair Employment and Housing Commission Updates Its FMLA/CFRA Comparison Chart ... [by Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP]
• Notification Requirements for Employers of Religious Workers ... [by Robert Kraft]
• Many Tax-Qualified Plans Require 415 Amendments by September ... [by Morrison & Foerster LLP]
• Labor & Employment Bulletin - Summer 2009 ... [by Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP]
• Conducting Workplace Surveillance - California Supreme Court Identifies Guidelines for Employers ... [by Mintz Levin Employment, Labor Benefits Section]

For additional articles and updates, stay in touch via one of JD Supra's distribution channels: Labor & Employment Law (Law Center) | Labor & Employment Law (Facebook) | Labor Law Alerts (Twitter) | Employment Law RSS Feed ...

Have work to add to the mix? Join JD Supra today: deliver your legal articles to a wide online audience.

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Twitter - what is it good for? (More to the point: what's it good for ... for lawyers and legal professionals?)

Like a bad rash that won't go away, the Twitter value debate continues - given new life this week in the legal space after a post by Larry Bodine titled Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing.

I'm not going to rehash the many responses to the original post here. If you follow me at all, you know my position. You know that I am online and talking to lawyers and law firms every day - on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, by email, even - gasp - sometimes by telephone. I'll use whatever communication tool is available to me, even smoke signals (if only I knew, re: the latter, how to say something other than "Fire!").

What I do want to say is this:

For a while now JD Supra has delivered one value to lawyers and legal professionals that involves Twitter, and you might not have considered it. But you should, because you stand to benefit from it.

 

 

Twitter as News Channel: An Audience for your Expertise

Last year, we saw that Twitter is not only a terrific conversational tool (and boy is it ever that) - it also serves as a robust and engaging news channel.

We're not alone in that thought - which is why traditional outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, the BBC, and many, many others started streaming links to their stories via Twitter. And why new news outlets used the platform to either expand their reach (Global Voices) or define their model (BreakingNews).

We began streaming legal information posted to JD Supra via subject-specific Twitter news feeds: Employment Law, Securities Law, Real Estate, Taxes, Bankruptcy, Intellectual Property, Energy & Environmental Law, Law Practice, and numerous others.

For every subject or practice field represented on JD Supra, we created a Twitter news service, aggregating all of the work and feeding it out to a willing audience. (In fact, each feed is now included in its respective Law Center on the site.) And the willing audience found it.

We noticed, from the start, that a considerable number of professionals in any given field  (the very audiences many lawyers and law firms hope to reach) started following those feeds.

For example, readers of our Real Estate Law News Twitter feed (currently surpassing 2,600 people) are mostly professionals within real estate: agents, landlords, real estate investors, property managers, media services, and the like. 

Our Labor and Employment Law Twitter news feed is read in no small part by human resources professionals, recruiters, and others within that field (including HR associations and, again, media outlets).

Environment and Energy Law feed? Read by numerous professionals in the green-tech, sustainability, and environment and energy space.  All of the feeds are also read by fellow lawyers; a frequent source of referrals in this profession (I don't need to tell you that).

How do we measure the value? Just look at the numbers. Some of the older and more active news channels number followers in the thousands. Every day we witness the audience and exposure grow as readers "retweet" the links to their own followers - and in this way even a feed with just a few hundred followers can become an audience of thousands.

And we watch the engagement (the retweeting) daily.

  

 

What does this mean to you?

Start posting your work on JD Supra. We've grown an audience for it on Twitter. It's really that simple.

As to the conversational aspects of Twitter, that's for you to decide. Don't let anyone else tell you what to think about it - jump in and evaluate for yourself. You'll find plenty of us in Twitter ready to connect whenever you are...

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Related:

- Legal News Feeds on Twitter

- Lawyers to Follow on Twitter

- Twitter Not Effective For Law Firm Marketing - Not So Fast! (Nancy Myrland)