Social media panel with Doug Mandell (Linkedin), Maz Sharafi (Facebook) and Kathy Gill (University of Washington), moderated by Steve Willey of Savitt Bruce & Willey LLP:

-    Kathy Gill: Right now being on Linkedin is more important than being on Twitter
-    Doug  Mandell: I use Facebook because there are some people in my network who are better to contact through Facebook vs. Linkedin.
-    Doug Mandell: If you want to do only one thing, be on Linkedin.
-    Maz Sharafi: Let’s be honest.  Some of this stuff (social media) does not make sense for certain verticals unless you can be very creative.  Criminal defense can be difficult, for example.
-    Kathy Gill:  You will have first mover advantage if you move and actually do something.
-    Doug Mandell: Figure out what makes you good as a lawyer and build a social media strategy around it.  For example, for a prenup lawyer, she could build a whole brand around prenups, have a blog about prenups only, she could use Twitter and Facebook to push out things about her blog, and she could have a very prenup centric Linkedin profile.
-    Kathy Gill: Look at the demographics that visit social media sites and be on those that match what you do.  For example, Myspace is very music/entertainment centric, so maybe it would be good for an entertainment lawyer.
-    Maz Sharafi: A 45 second video can tell me more about your law firm than content on your page
-    Kathy Gill: Use video for the emotional sell.
-    Doug Mandell: Make sure if you’re using video you’re not violating any solicitation rules in your jurisdiction.
-    Kathy Gill: All these technologies are so new, that we’re all kind of making it up as we go along; what we do know is that old marketing tactics like the hard sell do not work in social media; you have to be more conversational.  Tone is very important.
-    Doug Mandell: If I had more time, I would do podcasts.
-    Maz Sharafi: Consumers do not want to digest law jargon.
-    Kathy Gill: On Twitter, it’s very important to say who the person is tweeting.  If there are multiple people tweeting, have each person sign tweets with their initials.
-    Doug Mandell: Employees, with your help, can create your Linkedin profile for you starting with your resume and outlook contacts.
-    Kathy Gill: Tweeting for an organization is intrinsically difficult because an organization is not a person.
-    Doug Mandell: Download the Microsoft Linkedin toolbar and get all the updates about people you care about through email.
-    Maz Sharafi: Social media is literally the future of marketing.  If you don’t engage in the conversation, the conversation will be had without you.
-    Kathy Gill: If marketing messages overwhelm Twitter, then people will leave Twitter.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 5:03 pm by Nick and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.