Building your brand with social media

Constantly working on branding and IP projects means that I’m always coming up with new ideas on what I can offer clients to help them get more from my service. One example of this is my newest product and forthcoming book, provisionally called Brand Tuned – How to Create an Inimitable Brand to Win Business […]

Social media distancing: marketing

In the last issue of the Newsletter, I made a case for individual lawyers cutting back on use of social media. Let’s now consider some alternative marketing techniques to which firms’ social media budgets can be diverted, which may deliver more bang for the buck. Content You may expect a copywriter to extol the virtues […]

Social media distancing

2003 marked the dawn of mainstream social media, with MySpace and LinkedIn both launching the same year and Facebook hot on their heels in 2004. Since then, social media (or “social” for short) seems to have permeated every aspect of our culture and daily lives, simultaneously bringing people closer together and driving them further apart. […]

Content moderation oversight board proposed by Facebook

Social media companies have traditionally argued that they are merely internet platforms as opposed to publishers with the ensuing editorial responsibilities (despite the odd court case where it has been to their advantage to hold themselves out as publishers). But in the face of increasing public controversy about malicious content plaguing social media sites, the […]

Information overload: time to take a break?

Information overload is defined by Wikipedia as “the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue” – although, ironically, it offers alternative definitions based on multiple sources! History The concept of excessive information is nothing new. Back in the 16th Century, renaissance scholar Erasmus blamed […]

The enigmatic Twitter

Twitter is the social media platform of choice for journalists, free speech campaigners, Russian trolls and American presidents. On the social media spectrum of formality, it sits somewhere in between professional networking colossus LinkedIn and lolcat empire Facebook. Twitter is essentially a “social” messaging service which enables you to maintain a minimalist profile, broadcast short […]

LinkedIn – the lawyer’s social media channel of choice

LinkedIn, acquired by Microsoft in 2016, has over 250 million active monthly users and, according to research from Attorney at Work, it is the most popular social media channel in the US legal sector, used by over 90 per cent of lawyers and forming part of the overall marketing strategy in around 70 per cent […]

Facebook as a marketing platform for lawyers

Facebook is the grandaddy of social media. Founded in 2004, it is by no means the oldest service, but by a huge margin it is the largest, boasting in excess of two billion users worldwide. Although it is used primarily for personal networking purposes, documenting the lives and thoughts of its users to help them keep in touch with family and friends, it is also a highly effective business marketing platform.

What we learned in 2017 (2): AI, robots and social media

Our 2017 review continues with AI, social media, machine learning, algorithms and robots taking jobs.

A snoopers’ charter for employers?

With Michael Salter

As the line between work and personal life blurs the media has repeatedly made reference to a right to snoop, with headlines such as “Bosses can snoop on workers’ private emails and messages” (The Telegraph), “Britain has a new human right … freedom to spy on employees’ emails” (The Daily Mail) and “Private messages at work can be read by European employers” (BBC News website). These three attention grabbers followed the decision of the ECHR in Bărbulescu v Romania (Application No 61496/08), 12 January 2016. Perhaps predictably, a proper reading of the case reveals that matters are not quite so clear-cut.

Twitter: how it works

Twitter is a minority pursuit. Nevertheless, it is increasingly influential and likely to be used by many Newsletter readers as an important resource for latest news, comment and analysis.

This is not primarily an introduction to Twitter. Nor will I presume to tell you how to use it: there are more than enough self-proclaimed experts who will pretend to do that; in the end it’s entirely up to you. Rather I will try to explain the “mechanics” of Twitter. I’ve been using Twitter since 2008, so by any measure I’m an old hand; yet Twitter features change frequently and I was unsure enough of the exact effect of many of its features that I had to review my own experience quite carefully and consult Twitter’s (very good) Help pages before penning this. Below I will refer mainly to the experience on the desktop Twitter platform; many features are implemented slightly differently on mobile and some are implemented only on (Android) mobile.

My Social Media: Sir Henry Brooke

Continuing our series by lawyers on how they use social media for professional and personal development.

I have always been intrigued by the possibilities which electronic communications might open up for judges and lawyers. 30 years ago I led for the Bar in discussions with BT about the usefulness of an early email system called Telecom Gold. As a judge I used FELIX, a bulletin board devised by John Mawhood and Sean Overend, and then I was into the world of the internet and the opportunities for getting our judgments online swiftly via BAILII. I moved from analogue to digital, from slow modems to ultra-fast broadband. What more was there to learn and do?