Monday, October 10, 2011

Book Review: Social Media for Lawyers

Professionals such as attorneys and physicians are using social media to establish their professional reputations, promote discussion of important topics, and, yes, build their practices. Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier offers practical tips for attorneys who are new to the idea of using social media such as blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as a part of their marketing and outreach. The book walks you through the setup of these services and suggests some best practices for using social media specifically and marketing in general. The book concludes with the expected notes of caution regarding ethics. You can see the table of contents here (PDF).
The book is useful, but could be a lot more so. The biggest problem, by far, is the lack of an online resource to help the reader with the number of lengthy links used in the book.

The book includes a number of sidebar notes. The trouble is that they're called Factoids. Norman Mailer coined the phrase to describe "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." (via Online Etymology Dictionary).
At $50, the book is too expensive for what it offers. A bit of web research and perhaps even a copy of Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies would be more useful and less expensive.

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