Lisa Kennelly at Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs take a look at the issue in this post:

How do you measure the ROI on social media? Can you even measure it? At LexBlog we hear these questions often from attorneys who want to know how to measure the success and investment in blogging...

Quick: how many friends do you have in real life?

If you were able to quickly answer that question, the response was probably "none." (If so, please close your browser now, get up from your desk and go interact with a real, live human.)  We don't keep an exact count of how many real life friends we have because the number itself is irrelevant.

How many friends do you have on Facebook (or connections on LinkedIn or followers on Twitter)?

Click to read more ...

If the sheer pop cultural weight of Oprah, CNN and Ashton Kutcher haven't instantly caused Twitter to jump the shark, I don't know what will. I'm a Twitter fan, but I confess to feeling a little Twitter-weariness setting in. Every time Rick Sanchez tweets another little part of my soul dies.

Just in time to revive me, though, is a thought-provoking post by Jordan Furlong, who writes the fantastic Law21 blog. In his article "Figuring Out Twitter" Jordan provides an in-depth analysis of Twitter as a communication tool and why that is different than Twitter as a marketing tool, a great list of things not to do on Twitter, and his own smart take on how to use Twitter well. Highly recommended.

I disagree with Jordan on a couple of points though.

I like to read the personal as well as the professional tweets (if that distinction even means anything anymore) of the people I follow. One of the great things blogging and microblogging has done to publishing is to knock down the fourth wall (as the theater people might say) separating the reader from writer. And yes, that is just a highfalutin way of continuing to tweet about where I eat lunch.

I also am not a fan of the "Twitter is a river" school of thought which Jordan credits to my friend and SEO whiz Steve Matthews. I'm not interested in a river. I'm interested in having conversations about cool things with interesting people. Sticking around long enough to hear, er, read, what my friends (the term "followers" makes me feel all David Koresh-y) have to say is a pretty important part of it. I may be in the distinct minority on this, but that's how I like using Twitter.

Read the article and do it quickly; I heard Dwayne from What's Happening just challenged Phil Donahue to a Twitter contest.

LinkedIn has reached the tipping point for lawyers.

More and more lawyers sign up for it every day and recognize that it is low hanging fruit in the world of online networking. It's free, easy to use and safely professional in demeanor. Like most things in life, though, the people who get the most out of the service are the ones who put the most in.

In that vein, here are 3 easy ways to get more out of LinkedIn:

1. Check the LinkedIn inbox regularly.

One of my chief complaints about LinkedIn is that the notifications from the inbox are not as dependable as they ought to be. I have received several messages in my LinkedIn inbox that were never delivered to my email inbox. I verified that they were not caught in my overactive spam filter, either. These emails just did not come through, much to my later embarrassment.

I've learned over time that I just need to double check the LinkedIn inbox manually once or twice a week. It's not a big problem, and is probably beneficial as it keeps me more active in the site, but it is another inbox I've had to incorporate into my organizational system.

2. Send your Wordpress blog posts to your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn has incorporated some cool applications to help users get more functionality out of the site, and one of the easiest is to send your blog posts to your profile via the Wordpress application. You spend time writing the content and you spend more time maintaining your network on LinkedIn, why not put the two together? I have recently switched blogging platforms from Wordpress to Squarespace, so I have to (unfortunately) disable this application for myself. If you are blogging on Wordpress, though, this is a winner.

It probably goes without saying that you should only add your professional blog to your LinkedIn profile. If you maintain a personal blog where you rant about religion, politics, your boss and the world in general, you might just want to keep that one to yourself.

3. Use the RSS feed attached for network updates

The home page of your LinkedIn account has a rolling update of what your contacts have been up to. It says who has added contacts, who has made a recommendation, and other adjustments your contacts have made to their LinkedIn profiles. There is, at the top of this screen, an RSS button.

I'm an avid RSS fan and I am far more likely to read the items that end up in my RSS reader than I am to read the home page of LinkedIn. Having all of the updates go to my reader allows me to bypass the homepage when I am in LinkedIn and know that I can quickly scan all of the updates in my RSS reader at my convenience. I normally catch one or two updates that are useful each month, so the benefit significantly outweighs the 10 to 15 minutes a month I spend reviewing that feed.

There are a lot of strong feelings out there about Twitter -- some folks claim it is the greatest thing since sliced bread while others decry it as an emblem of all that is wrong with the world. The polarization doesn't really help a lawyer to know what Twitter is, how to use or whether it is worth her time. 

To that end, here are two good blog posts to provide a primer on Twitter for lawyers: Reid Trautz put together a nice post on his blog laying out the basics of Twitter for curious lawyers.  If you have been wondering about Twitter but not quite ready to jump in, that's a good place to start. Lee Rosen, a divorce lawyer from Raleigh, also has penned (pardon the anachronism) a nice post on the marketing worth of Twitter.  As you might be able to tell from his website, Lee is a lawyer who knows a thing or two about marketing.

If you know of other good blog posts to help orient lawyers who are considering Twitter, please post them in the comments section.

The ABA has recently opened its new law-related social networking site, LegallyMinded, for beta testing. It's positioned somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn -- it is designed for professional networking (like LinkedIn) but with a fuller feature set (like Facebook).

The site is free and, while still under development, is incorporating many of the features of other popular social networking sites.  You do not need to be an ABA member to join or participate. There are quite a few people on there already. 

Only time will tell if LegallyMinded will find an audience in the increasingly packed social networking world.  In the meantime, check it out and see if it is your cup of tea.

So, maybe you are not yet a big believer in Facebook, Twitter, blogging or other mainstays of the social networking universe.  I can understand that; spending hours messing around with a computer is not everybody's idea of fun, and there are certainly other ways to develop business for a law practice.

But here is a new reason to get involved -- at least a little:  to avoid losing your identity in a social networking land grab.

There is only one www.your_name.com domain.  Once it is gone, it is gone.  Have you registered yours yet?  Do you know how much it costs?  About the cost of two lattes from Starbucks.  Per year. 

If someone gets there first and registers www.your_name.com before you do, not only do you lose the opportunity to build a presence there, you also can't stop the person who registered it from putting anything they want on the site. It is starting to happen. 

What began as cute little jokes, like the Twitter account for Fake Steve Jobs, are now morphing into real trouble as internet ne'er do wells (trolls, in geek speak) start exploiting the power of social networking sites to really irk people. What do you figure would be the impact on your career of having a website at www.your_name.com that features, oh, say, pornography?  Or a Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/your_name sends out consistent messages about your allegiance to the Nazi party.  It can't help.

Once your name is gone, it is gone, and you really can't do much about it.  Even if you are not pining away to post on Twitter or join Facebook or even to register a domain name, think about doing it defensively, if for no other reason.  Just like all that stuff from law school, it can be used as a sword or a shield. It doesn't take long, cost much or require great technological sophistication and may save you a bunch of anguish in the long run.

Update on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 10:57AM by Erik Mazzone

Protecting your name in social networking land just got easier.

There is a site called Knowem.com that, for $65, will register your name at 120 social networking sites to prevent becoming the victim of "Cyber Squatting." (Hat tip to Security Fix, a Washington Post blog about computer security.) For no fee at all, Knowem will check allow you to check if your name is already in use at the various social networking sites.

I tried out the free scan (it only takes a second or two) and it found all of my various social networking sites as well as a couple where my name has been registered and I have no recollection of registering it.

Check it out.