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    Entries in social media (7)

    Thursday
    04Mar2010

    Digital downtime

    DateThursday, March 4, 2010 at 10:00AM

    This is one of those posts where I don't practice what I preach. If I am watching TV I will pretty much have one eye on Twitter on my iPhone or be checking emails or catching up on RSS feeds.

    However, since our son arrived on the scene last June, I have thought more about setting an example for him...

    It may be hopelessly unrealistic and old fashioned, but I would like to think that when he is a little older we will be able to go out for dinner and he will sit and talk to us rather than being glued to his PSP (or whatever has replaced them by that stage).

    To be fair, when I spend time with him in the evenings and weekends (or the occasional day when I am working from home) I do put down  the iPhone and give him my undivided attention... not least because otherwise he is more interested in the shiny screen than in me!

    I think this is one of the (many) parenting challenges of the 21st century... how to set an example to our kids about how important it is to put down the gadgets from time to time and focus on the people who are sitting around the table with you.

    After all,  if we don't do it then how can we expect them to?

    How do other parents deal with this? Is the answer to enforce some kind of "digital downtime", or should we just embrace the inevitable... a Neuromancer reality where the implants in our brain keep us constantly connected to the matrix?

     

    Photo credit and attribution:-

    

    AuthorPeninsulawyer | Comment2 Comments | |
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    Tuesday
    23Feb2010

    Law Web 2.0?

    DateTuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6:38PM

    What is Web 2.0?

    I ask, because a criticism I have seen levelled at a number of law firm websites is that they are "flat", "brochure ware" and most crushingly of all... "so Web 1.0".

    The recent comments about the Shoosmiths Access Legal site on the Law Society Gazette LinkedIn group give a pretty good flavour (unfortunately you have to be logged into LinkedIn to follow the group link... sorry).

    Wikipedia has a very detailed definition of Web 2.0, but to me the core of the concept is the move from "information" sites to "participation".

    Some lawyers and (to a lesser extent) law firms have proved enthusiastic users of Web 2.0 social media tools for business development, but how many law firms have actually embraced Web 2.0 in their own web sites?

    Looking deeper than this, to what extent is it even possible for a law firm site to make this "information to participation" shift?

    The expeditionary force in the Web 2.0 infiltration was the blog, which has found its way into a number of sites (although in many cases what is termed a "blog" is more of a re-badged news feed which lacks the comment facilities to give it real Web 2.0 credentials).

    The other area which is seeing some real marketing spend at the moment is the integration of online legal drafting technology into sites. Jon Busby blogs about this over at his Legal 2.0 blog for those who want a more detailed rundown (disclosure:- by day, Jon is the business director at Epoq Legal... other online drafting platforms may be available!). Some firms are also taking the next logical step into e-commerce (i.e. clients buying and paying for their legal work via the site itself).

    A number of sites have incorporated "follow us on Twitter / Facebook" buttons (my favourite being a local firm I won't name whose Twitter button on the main site of their page links to an account with a single follower and one tweet dating from July 2009 - well done guys!).

    Social sharing and bookmarking buttons seem to be less common, but the Access Legal site referenced above does have these. I haven't managed to track down a site with the Tweetmeme button and counter to allow articles to be easily re-tweeted, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some out there.

    So what else does Web 2.0 have to offer which law firms could be incorporating into their sites?

    Looking at the Wikipedia page for inspiration some other options might be:

    • social networking elements (maybe via Ning or similar?)

    • wikis (Wikivorce is great, but I don't think it is really a wiki in the Web 2.0 sense of allowing users to edit content)

    • web-based communities (client forums?)

    • video sharing (maybe not ideal for law firms, but who knows?)

    • Mobile applications tying back into the site

    I may have missed a site somewhere which has one or more of these features, but my gut feeling is that law firms won't necessarily incorporate these more "social" aspects of Web 2.0 into their main sites.

    Law firm web sites are effectively providing information and branding for the firm. This requires control over the content and the level of user participation requiered for a wiki, a forum or even unmoderated blog comments is likely to conflict with this.

    This isn't limited to law firms. Even the parts of the Twitter site which are about Twitter, Inc. are effectively a flat Web 1.0 site combined with a blog - and there is probably no need for them to be anything else.

    So what would the perfect law firm website contain? Online drafting technology and the associated e-commerce functions seem to be the most logical next step, but other than that the focus seems to be on integration with external social media and Web 2.0 (rather than building them into the site).

    It is risky to make this kind of prediction, but I wonder if law firm web sites (in the sense we currently recognise them) have much further to go? Will the next stage of development actually be to strip out features rather than adding them in?

    We are already seeing this to an extent with LinkedIn. A public LinkedIn profile is already the first port of call for many people when preparing for a meeting with a new business contact. Why not just replace your lawyer "bio" pages with a link to their LinkedIn profile?

    In ten years' time maybe firms will just maintain a "core" site which is used to provide online legal services, e-commerce, client areas and basic information about the firm. The more social and participatory elements would come from the blogs, wikis, tweets and buzzes of their individual lawyers, which would orbit around this core.

    What do you think? Is there more Web 2.0 functionality left to be built into law firm sites... or is it time to streamline things?

    AuthorPeninsulawyer | Comment10 Comments | Reference1 Reference | |
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    Sunday
    21Feb2010

    I am not a social media expert

    DateSunday, February 21, 2010 at 10:16AM

    I am not a social media expert.

    I am an enthusiast. I am happy to share anything useful I may have learnt (for whatever that may be worth), but I make no claim to be able to advise others on how to use SM to grow their business.

    However, as Charon QC pointed out in his Outsourced and Ghostwritten post this morning, there are all manner of experts or even "mavens" and "gurus" who are staking their claim as paid social media experts.

    I have been participating in a debate on Twitter this weekend about the wisdom (or otherwise) of outsourcing your law firm's tweets to legal marketers or other social media rockstars.

    For what it's worth, the solicitors and barristers I follow on Twitter (many of whom are using Twitter very succesfully for business development) were universally against the idea... but then again none of them would claim to be "gurus" either.

    I may not be a maven, but I know enough to recognise an attempt to court controversy and boost web traffic for a new business when I see one so I am stepping back rather than fanning the flames.

    What I will say is that if your web marketer, PR agency or guru suggests you outsource your tweets to them then it pays to ask them a few questions about their social media credentials and track record.

    Ian Lurie's post on his Conversation Marketing site:- 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media 'Expert' is a good starting point if you are looking for some relevant questions to ask.

    If they have radical ideas about outsourcing social media content and the like then ask them for hard details about the clients they are using them for and some solid data on the ROI those clients have received (Olivier Blanchard's slide deck on the Basics of Social Media ROI which I have linked to before is an excellent resource if you are struggling with how to define this).

    If your social media "expert" can't answer these type of questions convincingly then think long and hard about handing over your money.

    Anyone can have a theory on how best to use Twitter, but my personal view if they can't lay out their track record convincingly and actually demonstate some ROI?

    I couldn't give two hoots.

     

    AuthorPeninsulawyer | Comment6 Comments | |
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    Thursday
    11Feb2010

    Twitter analytics

    DateThursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:47PM

    There is a fascinating post on the official Twitter blog from yesterday entitled "Super Data".

    The core of the post is a simple graph showing the number of tweets about the Super Bowl game itself and the number of tweets about the adverts shown during the breaks (which are apparently almost as hotly awaited as the game itself?).

    It seems to me that this opens up a whole new world of metrics for marketers.

    Rather than just seeing who tuned in to a show at a specific time they can focus on what they were saying and thinking at specific moments and how they reacted to every twist and turn of the game.

    Obviously you need a huge audience to gather the data (it probably won't be that useful for your firm's next employment law seminar for example), but I'm sure the companies who paid a fortune for Super Bowl advertising slots will find it very interesting.

    If the level of Twitter takeup were high enough then I could easily see this being used to target dynamic ads during popular TV shows which were selected based on the demographic, location and interest of the twittering audience. Even if a third if the audience were tweeting, I would imagine you could extrapolate from that with some accuracy.

    It is also a little scary - whilst I know that anyone can read my tweets, the thought of someone being able to use the "back channel" in this way to target advertising at me seems a little 1984!

    AuthorPeninsulawyer | Comment1 Comment | |
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    Monday
    08Feb2010

    Vodafone - a tale of two twitters

    DateMonday, February 8, 2010 at 3:37PM

    I expect to see the recent news stories on the suspension of a Vodafone employee for sending an obsecene and homophobic Tweet referenced in any number of press releases and legal updates issued by solicitors over the next few months. The Telegraph report above doesn't include the text of the Tweet itself, but to be honest it wasn't clever or funny so I didn't see the need to include a link to it.

    At a rough guess the incident will be held out as an example of the "dangers of social media in the workplace" or, at the very least, a justification for implementing a social media policy for your business.

    The reality is that this isn't a social media policy issue. There isn't an IT use policy in existence which would permit this kind of use of a network by employees. I am not an employment lawyer, but it can't be difficult to argue that issuing homophobic and obsene material in this way justifies disciplinary proceedings - regardless of any specific policy which might be in place.

    At its core it isn't really even a social media issue (although the ease with which content can be created and disseminated certainly helps to increase the damage). There have been a minority of employees who act irresponsibly since long before Twitter came on the scene.

    What will probably be overlooked in the excitement is that there was another incident involving Vodafone Hungary at the end of last year which is much more relevant to the question of social media policies.

    Morgan PR blogged about this last December in a post entitled "PR blunder as Vodafone sack marketer over funny Twitter" which came to my attention via Twitter. Please check out their post for the full detail of the incident, which involved the sacking of one of the Vodafone PR team for re-tweeting an update from T-Mobile in Hungary announcing that their network was experiencing problems together with the addition of a humorous "so give us a call".

    Personally, I thought the Vodafone marketer's tweet was an excellent use of Twitter. Clearly Vodafone disagreed and suffered what Morgan PR term in their post a "sense of humour failure".

    The point is that this second incident is a much better illustration of why social media policies are necessary. If your employees are using social media then this is the kind of grey area where they need guidance on what is and isn't acceptable.

    This is partly for their protection so that they know what to expect, what the company's social media "ethos" is and how to avoid overstepping the line. However, it is equally for the protection of the employer to ensure that appropriate action can be taken if the policy is breached without risking a claim by the employee.

    If you are thinking about social media policies then I would recommend focussing your attention on the Hungarian incident than the UK one.

    However, I suspect that the focus from solicitors and HR consultants will be the other way around!

    I will be following up on this post in a few months' time so If you do come across any legal updates or press releases featuring this then please let me know via the comments.

    AuthorPeninsulawyer | CommentPost a Comment | Reference1 Reference | |
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