Twitter Spaces started to launch publicly a few weeks ago. I was excited when I received “The mic is yours” message in my account. I was even more excited when I saw health and fertility lawyer Lisa Feldstein tweeting that she’s been vegan for 14 years and was inviting anyone to ask/DM questions about reducing meat, dairy, or eggs in their life. This was a chance for me to meet someone I follow on Twitter and to expand my vegetarian/vegan diet. I asked Lisa whether she would be interested in answering questions over Twitter Spaces. As an early adopter of technology, she said yes. After ou ..read more

At the end of January 2021, I had the pleasure of leading an online escape room I had created. It was part of my “How To Network Online & Build Your Brand” presentation for The Advocates’ Society’s Young Advocates’ Standing Committee Social. To prepare for presentations, I always try to learn what the audience would be interested in hearing about. The committee members mentioned a number of challenges to me. I address some of them below. 1. How to Find Networking Opportunities A challenge committee members expressed was finding opportunities to network with people they do not know. For exa ..read more

LinkedIn implemented several changes in 2020 to help users get more out of the social networking platform. I discuss below three new LinkedIn features that were rolled out this year. Use them to build and strengthen both your profile and network as a lawyer. 1.  Featured Section Similar to pinning a tweet in Twitter and pinning a post to your Facebook page, you can select a LinkedIn post or article to appear near the top of your individual LinkedIn profile, namely under the About section. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, you can feature more than one post or article on LinkedIn and re-arrange ..read more

Creating and sharing content on a consistent basis on social media can be challenging. It may have become more so during the pandemic with other priorities taking over. One way to help keep your social media presence alive is to seize the holidays and other celebratory days. They occur each year on certain days, which can be motivating deadlines. They are celebrated by others, which provides a shared activity that is relatable. If we take Halloween as an example, what can we do to seize the day on social media when it’s a few days away? Below are some ideas to get you, your colleagues, and you ..read more

Remote working is not new to me. Yet the pandemic did throw me off my routine. Regardless, I am always open to new strategies to be more effective when working from home, especially with fitting in personal priorities. I am happy that last month I did something different. I bought my first e-book. It was The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home by Laura Vanderkam. From Productivity to Well-Being Naturally, I was expecting productivity tips on how to succeed when working from a home office. Vanderkam does deliver in this area, such as by writing that we sho ..read more

Five years ago when I started as a social media consultant for lawyers, the challenge was getting lawyers to be comfortable with the idea of using social media. Although more lawyers have now embraced the use of social media, they need to overcome their hesitancy in posting videos of themselves on social networking platforms. Expect the use of video as part of one’s social media strategy to grow as we continue to physical distance. Social networking platforms continue to expand their features to support further use of video. For example, Facebook plans to roll out the ability to charge for onl ..read more

Although you do not literally need to shout out that you are interested in a speaking role, you should tell people about this interest. Inject the speaking opportunity you seek into someone’s mind. They may be approached for speaking engagements they are unable to accept (such as due to timing) or for speaker suggestions from their network. Increase your chance of being part of their consideration. Social Media Examples One way to let others know about your interest in speaking is to state it on social media. For example, Department of Justice lawyer Naiyna Sharma once had a pinned tweet stati ..read more

Are you seeing I’m-taking-a-break-from-social-media-and-will-be-back-in-January posts? Have you scheduled time to do something in the next few days you really enjoy? You’ve worked hard all year. Take the time to do what you like this holiday season. Reflect on why it personally fulfills you. When you revisit your business plan in 2020 (or actually start it), incorporate this personal-fulfillment thought process into your marketing and business development strategy. Consider whether there are those in your target audience who share in the same personal interests as you outside of the office. If ..read more

Mentors and mentees, are you discussing the mentee’s business plan during your meetings? The goals within that business plan help guide the creation of a relevant marketing and business development plan. In turn, those plans influence the development of a strategic social media plan. Even if only one of you is a social media user, here’s why discussing business plans and social media during mentor/mentee meetings can be beneficial: 1.  Refine your plan(s) Mentees For mentees who haven’t written down any plans to define career, marketing, or business development goals, this is a must-do activit ..read more

Twitter is testing several features. One that intrigues me is the ability to follow topics instead of “people” (i.e. tweets about a specific subject matter over tweets from specific accounts). This test causes me to wonder what effect it will have on saved searches and lists. Twitter Topics As written by reporter Margi Murphy in The Telegraph article “Twitter will offer option to follow interests rather than people”, the topics feature is “part of the company’s wider commitment to improve conversation and break users out of their so-called “filter bubble” in which users are never exposed to co ..read more