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The ILTA Annual Conference yearly provides attendees with an excellent forum for considering ideas and innovation centered around the legal profession.  Last year’s “Strategic Unity” themed event was no exception – with one of the most interesting areas of discussion being the growth of professional communications through the medium of social media.

Provided below for your consideration are a combination of cogent observations and transformational thoughts – refined and revisited by the author during last year’s 2010 ILTA Annual Conference – shared with the hope of accelerating understanding and stimulating thinking amongst legal professionals as they consider communicating via social media.

Transformation Of Dialogue: One-Way to Two-Way Communications

  • Social Media serves to help people and organizations accelerate the transformation of dialogue from one-way conversations into two-way conversations.
  • Social Media supported conversations may or may not manifest themselves immediately in the communication mode being used in initial dialogue – meaning one may follow someone on Twitter, send personal messages to them via LinkedIn, and listen to their feedback by reading their blog.
  • Increased dialogue results in a deeper relationship (good or bad) experienced between those participating in the two-way conversation. This growth in relationship can also be referred to as an increase in awareness.
  • Awareness certainly is a precursor to directly or indirectly influencing others over time to accept a certain point of view or to make a certain decision.
  • Awareness does have business implications for those who use social media environments to interact with others – good use of it can accelerate behavioral changes in others and bad use of it can decelerate behavioral changes in others.
  • Awareness is tough to measure and quantify in the social media realm, thus it makes acceptance of its importance difficult for some to accept. Additionally, based on the challenge of measurement and quantification, it also is difficult for believers in the beneficial impact of social media on awareness to share exactly how social media activities are in fact an effective part of awareness efforts.

The Use Of Dialogue: Listening And Response

  • Many people and organizations understand the importance of dialogue in driving awareness for ideas, thoughts, projects and products, however to be really effective in leveraging the power of social media, one must be prepared to listen and respond from the outset of the dialogue.
  • From a social media perspective, many people and organizations hear what is being said during dialogue but really do not listen to what is being said. Said in another way, many want the immediate awareness and feedback provided by social media enabled quick responses but they are not prepared to take thoughtful action on the feedback provided.
  • As listening takes incredible discipline and the tools available for online dialogue allow for almost instantaneous responses, many social media conversations may be reactive in nature.
  • Reactive responses many times are manifested in the ignoring, dismissing or discrediting of differing ideas or approaches without the responders really and actively seeking first to understand the reason for the original comments. (Unfortunately this type of reactionary response is many times accelerated by the speed of online dialogue and enters the arena of face-to-face dialogue and results in intentional damage without the fairness of trying to confront and address the issue.)

The Importance Of Experts: Understanding Reach, Expertise and Influence

  • The competitive edge of having information fast is rapidly decreasing based on the proliferation of information sources and online information distribution mechanisms.
  • The competitive edge of having information fast AND being able to act on it fast is increasing because of the need for experts to help determine how to use the information.
  • Being able to properly act on information fast requires domain experts/expertise.
  • In today’s online environment, there is an incredible blur between reach and expertise – with a many people confusing social media reach with expertise in a certain domain.
  • Reach might be considered as “how many of the “right” people does one have the ability to touch based on their online approach to dialogue (i.e. how many followers? how often published?, etc.).
  • Expertise might be considered as the credibility and credentials one has to consider and comment in a certain domain of expertise. (i.e. what are the contributions to the domain? what are the credentials in relation to the domain?).
  • Influence might be considered as some type of aggregate of a person’s reach and expertise. The exact weighting of each would certainly be an interesting exercise – but in the electronic discovery arena I would think – based on the importance of domain expertise – that expertise/knowledge in electronic discovery would certainly be more heavily weighted than one’s online reach when determining the reality of one’s influence.
  • Reach and expertise both play important roles in social media – and in the subset of social media users who operate in the peri-eDiscovery world. It is just important for those following electronic discovery in the social media realm to not confuse Reach and Expertise.

While each of the aforementioned areas can be abstracted and dissected ad infinitum, the value of the comments shared may be more in the thinking that they stimulate rather than any absolute they may appear to portray.

 

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