On February 1, 2011 I attended a Seminar on Social Media. The primary focus of the seminar was on Linked-In. Linked-In is often used by professionals to contact and interact with other professionals regarding job availability, changes in the law and other types of ideas.
I must say it was a very informative morning session. The seminar was sponsored by the Allegheny County Bar Association and the meeting occurred at the Bar Association headquarters in the Koppers Building in Pittsburgh.
One of the things I took away from the seminar was the overwhelming amount of sources available to interact with the public. Everything from Facebook to Linked-In to My Space to Twitter is often encouraged by media experts who attempt to get the attorney’s message out to the public according to the speaker.
I think the other message I took away from the seminar is that, like it or not, our society has moved from the printed word in the form of newspapers to the Internet and social media settings.
Like most attorneys, the biggest fear I have of getting involved with the social media outlets is the enormous amount of time involved in constantly updating and linking material to the source. I was not at all surprised that the majority of the attorneys who were at the seminar did not have a Linked-In account and if they had a Facebook page at all, it was not used very much.
Believe it or not, at one point the sponsors of the seminar even said to the participants, including me, if you want to, we can set up a Linked-In account for you right now during the seminar. Guess what? No one, and I mean no one, raised their hand to allow that to happen. I don’t know why I didn’t agree to it because I would have at least been aboard in the preliminary stage of some social media outlet. There is still that resistance with most older attorneys to social media and social change.
You know it’s kind of funny. Logically, it is abundantly clear that attorneys should be on the forefront of social media networks.
However, in practicality, few of us really are.
Okay, I promised myself by the middle of the year I will at least try to have some interconnection with the social media. You readers of this Blog can hold me to it. Maybe that will put some pressure on me to take some action.
What do you think about this? Are attorneys naturally reluctant to get involved in this social setting? If so, why do you think that is?
Come on, I want to hear from you.