Page 43 - Social Media Musings

Social Media Musings – Part III My Reflections on the Practice and Life
LinkedIn Advice
Set a daily alarm on your phone to post daily on LinkedIn.
My approach to LinkedIn has been “I help you, you help them.” By giving stuff away - books, articles, podcasts, info - I am asked by followers how they can help me. I share my practice areas and let them know I’m available to address their legal needs in South Florida. But in addition, I encourage them to pay it forward and help someone else. Our influence on social media grows when our purpose is to help others and empower them to help even more others.
Posting regularly on LinkedIn (or on any platform) starts with capturing your random thoughts throughout the day, either on your phone or on a pocket sized journal. You’ll be surprised how many ideas you have that you can share. You have plenty of ideas. You just have to listen to yourself more carefully.
If you’re a young lawyer and want to start posting daily on LinkedIn but feel you don’t have enough to say, get in the habit of sharing new cases, laws and regulations with your summary of them. Also, share others’ articles and hot takes on subjects you’re practicing in. Once you get into the habit of posting regularly, it’ll become second nature and the ideas, topics and thoughts will come to you.
LinkedIn offers lawyers an opportunity to get to know other lawyers worldwide and learn one another’s judicial and legal systems,
and we can learn that even if we have different legal systems, we are not all that different from one another. Consider sharing your stories, your experiences and ideas with other lawyers from other countries
and consider mailing a token of your life and experiences to these lawyers. These exchanges bring us together.
Folks ask me about developing a following on social media. Ask yourself two questions: Will I post regularly, preferably daily? Will I be posting regularly a year from now? If the answer to either question is no, consider not doing it at all. If you’re not going to commit to it, you’re better off using that time and energy toward other ventures.
If you want to develop a following on this platform, be authentic.
Most of us have profile pictures on this platform. That’s the first thing we see when we see someone’s profile. And many of us are preoccupied with this image we share because we feel judged. Some of us don’t think we’re attractive enough, handsome enough, pretty enough, to share our photos. We think we’re too thin or too heavy, too gray or too wrinkled, too plain or too simple. If
we stop for a second to think that we’re on LinkedIn because we’re professionals and we want to interact and do business with other professionals - the idea that our skills, our work product, our value - can be defined by a solitary image of ourselves, and that our worth can be tied to how others perceive us based on our looks, is problematic, sad, and disheartening. If you’re a great lawyer, you’re great irrespective of how you look, and no one has a right to judge you, certainly not judge you as a lawyer, based on your looks. Post your photo and let those who judge you on your looks be damned. You do you. You
be you. You’re amazing, magnificent and created in God’s image.
©2021 Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel
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