Group items tagged

Let’s explore some of the best ones for the “big three” social networking sites for lawyers: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Taming Twitter

is a great way to network with other lawyers and potential clients interested in a given practice area.

an enormous number of tools have grown up around Twitter to augment and improve the user’s experience. Here are four ways to augment your use of Twitter, along with tools to get you there.

Once you start following more than a few people on Twitter, it can quickly become chaotic.

Organize your streams into groups

you need a way to organize your Twitter stream.

Third-party applications that allow users to create groups make quick work of imprinting order on the chaos. These applications let you organize your stream by your relationship to the Twitterer (e.g., family, friends, work colleagues) or by subject (e.g., law practice management, New York Yankees). You can even create a small VIP group for the people whose tweets you never want to miss.

Go multimedia.

the ability to send photos and videos change the way you can use Twitter.

TwitPic, which is free and easy to use, is our choice for photo sharing on Twitter.

to allow you to send videos to Twitter

it provides a means to extend your brand and demonstrate your ability to produce a deliverable service through relationship building.

Use Twitter to publicize your blog

Twitter can be an excellent avenue for publicizing your blog. Posting a short, simple tweet that says “New blog post at [insert blog name here]” followed by a link to the blog post is all that’s required. The authors are both bloggers who track our respective blog stats somewhat obsessively, and Twitter is often one of the biggest sources of traffic to our blogs.

There are several third-party applications that automate the process offeeding these short updates, including the blog URL, to Twitter.

Twitterfeed

Carry it in your pocket.

For many busy professionals, the number one objection to Twitter is “I just don't have time for it!”

There are many hyperbusy and productive people who use Twitter. The key is realizing that Twitter isn't something you make time for—it’s something that you fit into time slots that become available.

To capitalize on the small windows of time that become available in life

you must have Twitter available in your pocket. Which means the solution is to get a tool that lets you access it from your smartphone.

The options depend on your model of phone.

Figuring Out Facebook

Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a more complex social media site

TwitVid

Achieving that aim, however, requires using the correct tools on the site to focus the right content on the right people. Here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of Facebook.

Control where the information flows

Unlike Twitter, Facebook will open up your life (and your family and your old college friends) to the world unless you seize control. Consequently, you need to distinguish between people that get to share your life and those that don't. You do this by creating a “list” under the News Feed column on the left-hand side of your Facebook home page. For example, you can create one list for “Friends and Family” and a separate one for “Professional” contacts. Once you've created a list, you can then restrict the list members' access to certain types of information.

Test your restrictions by going to the top of the Privacy Profile page, where you can use the “See how a friend sees your profile” button. Very enlightening.

Monitor your Wall.

Go to Settings, Account Settings and then Notifications, where you tell Facebook to notify you (by e-mail or SMS) about what, when and where things are added to your Wall. Also, make sure that you know when you have been tagged in a photo, just in case you don’t like the view.

Remember Google in your privacy shield

At the Search menu, you can set your Facebook search visibility, which determines what content may be searched internally and, separately, you can choose whether to allow search engines to see your Wall.

Feed your blog post to your profile.

Facebook also allows you to extend the reach of your blog

by feeding your blog posts to your profile page.

You can do the same thing for your Twitter posts.

Try a more business-centric focus if you like.

If you believe your Facebook presence should be more about your law practice as an entity than about you personally, you should use the Business Page feature.

An alternative to a Facebook Business Page is the Facebook Groups option.

Living with LinkedIn

networking community that is targeted specifically to professional users

It offers excellent integrated applications for building your brand name and promoting your expertise, including the ability to create your own communities within the community. Here are the keys to using it successfully.

Develop a great profile.

profile that emphasizes your strengths and minimizes your weaknesses.

Be bold but truthful

Spread your message using the integrated applications.

The applications give you a number of opportunities to demonstrate your interests and your expertise

Get and give recommendations on the site

Actively participate in groups.

Using Your Time Slots to the Best Advantage

Last but not least, remember that social networking never stops. So, to stay in the game from wherever you are, you should go mobile with Facebook and LinkedIn. Based for your phone mode

There you have it—a whole list of great tactics for improving your social networking projects to get the most out of your online business development efforts. As they say, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Use the tips and tools covered here and you’ll see a whole lot more in the social networking world.

Para controlar y gestionar esas herramientas sociales en beneficio de las empresas, tanto interna como externamente, ha nacido una nueva profesión, los

Debemos tener muy presente qué dice la Red sobre nosotros

Y no solo las empresas

Para evitar estos incidentes, algunos medios han creado códigos férreos

Casi todos estos medios prohíben expresamente difundir primicias, comentar la elaboración de las noticias o mantener un debate con los lectores o con medios rivales

Otros medios como The New York Times aplican una autorregulación, dejando manos libres a sus profesionales

These are the workers who will be your new supervisors and managers

workers in their 20s and 30s expect to be able to use the latest IT applications in their workplace. They are used to social networking online, and to online learning, often preferring these to classroom instruction

In addition, this also will encourage open communication between companies, employers, HR departments, owners, and managers.” 

Without appropriate technology tools and resources available in their work environment, they may look for help from non-work related services such as Facebook.com. Integrating social media into the development environment eliminates this potential challenge and at the same time increases the potential for success of the development effort and of the new managers. 

Can social networking provide a practical way to help prepare new managers for their duties? Considering the rapid growth of social networking adoption among younger workers, this is a question well worth asking

Creating a curriculum for training new managers and supervisors is a common task that falls to instructional designers

The typical approach for many decades has consisted of a combination of classroom events, each lasting from one to five days (or more). This default design has many problems, including travel expense and time away from the job for the managers. Not infrequently, there are severe mismatches between what is taught and the actual practices supported by the organization’s culture.

There is an increasing number of companies and online service providers who are convinced that social networking can help overcome at least some of the issues common to the classroom-only approach

By combining formal classroom instruction and online reference and performance support with online coaching, mentoring, and informal learning through social networking, a new manager can gain a solid theory foundation, just-in-time help, and culturally correct application pointers.

Informal learning, as an object of attention by researchers, is not a new topic. However, it only appeared on the radar screens of instructional designers less than ten years ago. The emergence of online social media has led to the notion of somehow tapping into the potential of this channel, that carries so much of the real learning that goes on in organizations.

In our current age, we have plenty of channels in which informal learning can take place: everything from microblogs (Twitter), to communities (LinkedIn Groups, discussion forums), to user-created content (wikis, Weblogs, YouTube), to social bookmarking (Delicious), and surely more to come.

But we also have plenty of examples of attempts at use of these channels in which the attempts failed. The virtual landscape is littered with the remains of abandoned wikis, content-less and comment-less Weblogs, and LinkedIn Groups where the spam has driven out the discussion and all but eliminated any possibility of learning.

Existing informal learning groups online include a surprising variety of formats

Jay Cross’ Internet Time Community,

Participants in the Twitter #lrnchat sessions also comprise an ongoing informal learning group

if informal learning is going to take place online, it must be self-sustaining

Focus

Focus

Social learning is how groups work and share knowledge to become better practitioners. Organizations should focus on enabling practitioners to produce results by supporting learning through social networks

Wirearchies inherently require trust, and trusted relationships are powerful allies in getting things done in organizations

Communications without trust are just noise

Think and act at a macro level (what to do) and leave the micro (how to do it) to each worker or team

there are five types of learning that should be supported by the organization

Implementing social learning

ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning: from Stocks to Flow

Learning is conversation and online conversations are an essential component of online learning

Online communication can be divided into Stocks (information that is archived and organized for reference and retrieval) and Flows (timely and engaging conversations between people, including voice or written communications). Blogs allow flow and micro-blogs, like Twitter, enable great flow due to the constraint of 140 characters

Stock on the Internet is everywhere and the challenge is to make sense of it through flows of conversation. It is no longer enough to have the book, manual or information, but one must be able to use it in changing contexts

Because of this connectivity, the Web is an environment more suited to just-in-time learning than the outdated course model

We are working and learning in networks and the only thing a network can do is share

PDL – Personal Directed Learning: from Clockwork & Predictable to Complexity & Surprising

the orientation of learning is shifting from past (efficiency, best practice) to future (creative response, innovation)

Work competencies will still need to be developed through practice and appropriate feedback (what training does well) but that practice will have to be directly relevant to the individual or group (group training is an area of immense potential growth)

Developing emergent practices, a necessity when there are no best practices in our changing work environments, requires constant personal directed learning.

In complex environments it no longer works to sit back and see what will happen. By the time we realize what’s happening, it will be too late to take action.

GDL – Group Directed Learning: from Worker Centric to Team Centric

the real work in organizations is done by groups

With work and learning merging in the network, groups need to find ways that support each member’s learning, while engaged in tasks and projects

Developing social learning practices, like keeping a work journal, may be an effort at first but later it’s just part of the work process. Bloggers have learned how powerful a learning medium they have only after blogging for an extended period.

IOL – Intra-Organizational Learning: from Subject Matter Experts to Subject Matter Networks

Subject Matter Networks as a new way of finding organizational knowledge. Instead of looking for subject matter experts from which to design training, we should extend knowledge gathering to the entire network of subject-matter expertise.

Good networks make for effective organizations.

Networked communities are better structures in dealing with complexity,

can help facilitate fast feedback loops without hierarchical intervention

Collaborative groups are better at making decisions and getting things done.

the emerging knowledge-intensive and creative workplace has these attributes

FSL – Formal Structured Learning: from Curriculum to Competency

There remains a need for training in the networked workplace but it must move away from a content delivery approach.

Organizing our own learning is necessary for creative work.

Think of it as social ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation) for the complex workplace.

Our workplaces are becoming interconnected

Reaction times and feedback loops have to get faster and more effective

We need to know who to ask for advice right now but that requires a level of trust and trusted relationships take time to nurture

Therefore, we need to share more of our work experiences in order to grow those trusted networks

This is social learning and it is critical for networked organizational effectiveness

Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation, and the development of emergent practices, through conversations.

The manner in which we prepare people for work is based on the Taylorist perspective that there is only one way to do a job and that the person doing the work needs to conform to job requirements

Individual training for job preparation requires a stable work environment, a luxury no one has any more.

owever, when you look at the modern organization, it is moving to a model of constant change

A collective, social learning approach, on the other hand, takes the perspective that learning and work happen as groups and how the group is connected (the network) is more important than any individual node within it.

Several web tools can be used to develop critical thinking skills; the foundation of PKM:

Wirearchy as the organizational framework, coupled with active personal knowledge management processes, is a step in that direction

how important an open source framework is as we move more of our computing to the cloud

issues on how Ning treats its customers, users and their data.

While Ning may be free, it is not open source, and the company can make changes at will, just like Facebook, Google or Twitter may do.

I advise my clients that they should consider how important their data is to them before using software as a service (SaaS). Can the data be easily exported? With social bookmarks, it is easy to export and import OPML files from one platform to another. It is also simple to export from WordPress.com SaaS to your own open source hosted version

With Ning, Facebook and many others, there is no such export function

So what is the alternative to Ning?

For large enterprise projects I have used Drupal as a community management platform and it works well, though it requires solid technical support.

Elgg, an open source social networking platform that attracted me because of its unique underlying mode

The key differentiator of Elgg is that the individual is the centre of all the action

This is real user control

The Elgg platform has matured in the past six years and has a strong community and a solid product (v. 1.7).

One major advantage of Elgg will be the ability to take your data and have it hosted elsewhere.

Supporting communities like Elgg and Drupal means that we can have more control over our use of web technologies. As business and education move to the web and the cloud, open-source platforms will help to ensure that some corporate board doesn’t decide our future for us.

however,

"It's no longer just social media that's social any more – all media is becoming social thanks to the maturation of creative tools and digital distribution,

This is important to brands because they want to be in passionate environments. Their challenge, however, is how best to integrate within this space."

Evidence of the rise and rise of social media is not hard to find.

This, in turn, has resulted in a new breed of media businesses that see themselves

These companies aggregate and package content drawn from a plethora of sources

"In a world in which people feel disenfranchised when it comes to big issues beyond their control, online communities represent a kind of glue making them feel part of something bigger that's real and authentic,"

For example