I haven’t always been kind to those who offer 10 rules for success. Naturally, this hasn’t endeared me to the cadre of folks who profess to tell others how to deal with such novelty items as blogs and twitter, seeing each new medium as either the path to great riches (for them) or the absolutely, positively, definitely future of the law. Call me a curmudgeon, or prickly for that matter, but everybody bought 8-track tapes and leisure suits once.
It’s gratifying, therefore, to find others joining the chorus of skepticism. At The Inquisitor, Duncan Riley questions whether a trust crisis is coming to social media experts:
But the most disturbing issue of trust is the dirty little secret underlying one’s social media existence. It’s not necessarily real. So many have reinvented themselves online, creating their carefully crafted personas, that the lawyer first coming into the blawgosphere wouldn’t have a clue who is worthy of trust and who is an unmitigated liar. And make no mistake, there are unmitigated liars out there. It just takes a while to figure out who they are.
Lawyers, like most people who enjoy meals, need to earn a living. While I’m not exactly convinced that the internet is the future of lawyer marketing, or that it’s really a very good way to find much of anyone whose services one wishes to retain, it’s undeniable that many lawyers have, and many more will, seek to use the internet as a primary means of communicating their existence to the world. My bet is that the more lawyers tout themselves online, the more likely the media will topple over from the sheer weight of it all. Every lawyer can’t be the most loving, the most aggressive, the biggest, baddest, smartest, meanest lawyer around.
But in the interim, while the media mature and the laggards in the law feel compelled to catch up to the early adapters, the social media experts will be there to teach them how to ramp up overnight and achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. Riley’s explanation of why this presents a trust crisis spells it out pretty well. The joke that every person with a blog or more than 12 twitter followers is a social media expert is no joke at all.
To the newcomer, they seem to know so much, be so savvy. The newbie, fearful that new technology has passed him by, is desperate to catch up and not be the only kid on the block who doesn’t twit. They turn to the person with what appears to be the shiniest credentials, never realizing that there’s no one behind the curtain. As those of us who have observed this happening for a while have come to realize, there are plenty of curtains out there, but not too many folks who have accomplished enough for themselves to have anything to offer anyone else. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from proclaiming themselves to be a social media expert. Trust is the first casualty of technology.
I disagree with Riley in only one respect. The crisis isn’t coming. It’s here.
It’s gratifying, therefore, to find others joining the chorus of skepticism. At The Inquisitor, Duncan Riley questions whether a trust crisis is coming to social media experts:
The label social media expert is being used by all and sundry just because they have used Twitter, or started a blog, or at the extreme, have a Facebook account. It’s not a title I’ve ever applied to myself, although it has been applied to me on occasion. I’m probably qualified to use it given my experience, but I have no particular interest in being a “social media expert.” I’d rather use my skills to build something quantifiable that doesn’t involve me telling others at every opportunity that I have some idea about what I’m doing.There’s something deeply troubling about people who have placed the mantle of expert around their own shoulders, and then offer themselves to others (for a fee). Twitter is lousy with social media experts for lawyers, my primary focus, all available for speaking engagements. The blawgosphere is replete with blawgers telling others how to successfully blawg. And yet I’ve never heard of half of them and can’t help but wonder how someone who has yet to achieve success deigns to tell others how to do it.
The problem here is that in many cases the implied trust is flawed: the audience expects to hear true experts, but that trust only extends as far as the audience’s knowledge level; once you get more knowledgeable audiences, those not really qualified to talk will be caught out. As a fundamental, that has to undermine trust, and once that stretches out across many, the whole sector suffers a trust crisis that even those qualified may be caught up by.
But the most disturbing issue of trust is the dirty little secret underlying one’s social media existence. It’s not necessarily real. So many have reinvented themselves online, creating their carefully crafted personas, that the lawyer first coming into the blawgosphere wouldn’t have a clue who is worthy of trust and who is an unmitigated liar. And make no mistake, there are unmitigated liars out there. It just takes a while to figure out who they are.
Lawyers, like most people who enjoy meals, need to earn a living. While I’m not exactly convinced that the internet is the future of lawyer marketing, or that it’s really a very good way to find much of anyone whose services one wishes to retain, it’s undeniable that many lawyers have, and many more will, seek to use the internet as a primary means of communicating their existence to the world. My bet is that the more lawyers tout themselves online, the more likely the media will topple over from the sheer weight of it all. Every lawyer can’t be the most loving, the most aggressive, the biggest, baddest, smartest, meanest lawyer around.
But in the interim, while the media mature and the laggards in the law feel compelled to catch up to the early adapters, the social media experts will be there to teach them how to ramp up overnight and achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. Riley’s explanation of why this presents a trust crisis spells it out pretty well. The joke that every person with a blog or more than 12 twitter followers is a social media expert is no joke at all.
To the newcomer, they seem to know so much, be so savvy. The newbie, fearful that new technology has passed him by, is desperate to catch up and not be the only kid on the block who doesn’t twit. They turn to the person with what appears to be the shiniest credentials, never realizing that there’s no one behind the curtain. As those of us who have observed this happening for a while have come to realize, there are plenty of curtains out there, but not too many folks who have accomplished enough for themselves to have anything to offer anyone else. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from proclaiming themselves to be a social media expert. Trust is the first casualty of technology.
I disagree with Riley in only one respect. The crisis isn’t coming. It’s here.
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Great Post Scott. I have just sort of learned on my own, with a little help from folks I’ve grown to trust.
Me too. I think that’s really all there is to it, and most of our beloved social media experts, some of whom have far less worthy credentials than the people they purport to serve, are likely no more knowledgeable than us.
I just highly recommended my attorney (civil matter) to another party in a similar situation. This, to me, is the type of social networking that is real. First hand experience and positive results say more than any twitter, tweet, etc.
How bad would it be if you had to give up twitter?
On the other hand, I just found out today that there are people twitting up crap like this:
Now for this person, it might be a lot harder than for me. My twitter and their twitter are very different.
I’ve decided I’m an expert at reading tweets. I haven’t seen anyone marketing that – maybe this is my chance.
I stumbled on it in a weird way. A Fresno lawyer had stolen a post from Bennett that included a link to me, so I took a look to see who it was. In the side bar, she had twits from others that derived from the search “criminal + defense + lawyer” which included a string of twits, clearly autogenerated, exactly like the one above with different names in them. So anyone searching CDL on twitter would come up with these overt solicitations and, naturally, immediately want to retain them for the defense. Or puke. Whichever came first.