Our first host was Grant Griffiths on April 23, 2009. In this recording from our initial webinar, we discuss how blogging can help you grow your law practice and help you position yourself as a “thought leader” and “opinion shaper” in your particular practice area.

Social media gives you a means for even more prospective clients to find you and the ability to network with other “thought leaders” in the legal industry.

About Grant:

In February of 2005 Grant’s first blog was born. This blog was used to market and promote his family law practice. Soon blogging became his only form of written advertising because of its reach and effectiveness. What he also discovered is blogging is one of the most powerful marketing tools available for the small business, home business and professional service firm. Grant is co-founder of G2WebMedia.

To learn more about using social media in your law firm, download our free resource kit: “Understanding Social Media for Legal Professionals: Facts vs. Fiction“.

South by Southwest Interactive wrapped up on Tuesday, drawing the leading high-technology design conference to a close. Founding Partner and User Experience Designer Ariel Jatib was in the thick of it, meeting other top-tier designers, examining trends in software interaction, and verifying that Rocket Matter is as cutting-edge as anyone in the business when it comes to our software creation process.

He was also tweeting from the trenches under both @rocketmatter and @arieldesign. Here’s some of the highlights:

Panel Suggests: Best way to find lawyer is through referral, pref from another colleague in the same industry #GameDevNeedLawyers #SXSW

Problems managing client expectations and hourly billing seen as an issue. #GameDevNeedLawyers #SXSW

RT @nancymyrland: #LMA10 The Tyranny of Choice: We can only pay attention to 160 choices in the grocery store. Everything else is “noise.”

“(the Internet) is about the democratization of information” – @ev #keynote #SxSW

“It’s about reducing the walls between the people who have a lot of influence & the people they influence” – @ev #keynote #SxSW

It’s your fault. Own your mistakes. Do not become a victim. Build up your “trust bank” with the client. #SXSW

Make hard decisions. Take action. Don’t shy away from difficult conversations. #SXSW

Having information not just be searchable, but discoverable delivers value. #newpublish #SXSW

RT @buttershug What you knew and designed 2 years ago may no longer be relevant. Test your users and don’t assume. #sxsw #interfaceisyourlab

More panels, tabs, filters & hovers are not the right solution for information design challenges related to key metrics. #whybabyisugly

How is the 15 minute UX standup at Google different from a traditional SCRUM standup? #longdistanceux #SXSW

Tim Berners-Lee’s dream of a Semantic Web, a Data Web, could make a world of richer infographics a reality. http://bit.ly/bxPhI7 #interinfo

Data visualization is more like fashion design in that it’s always forward thinking / driving. – Rodenbeck #interinfo

Fair amount of SxSW 2010 talks now available on YouTube – http://bit.ly/crTI7i

So when Peek announced a Twitter-only device, reviewers and consumers reacted in the same way:  what a colossally useless tool.  Who wants another device just for Twitter?

It may be useless as a productivity tool, but as a marketing tool I think it’s genius.  It probably took a very minor investment to outfit a Peek device with a Twitter client.  It creates a huge buzz as a silly device that only does one thing.  Peek gets play in the news because of the oddness of the device (and the concept) while reinforcing their core message:  they make devices that do one thing, and do it well.

The New York Times today featured an article about business and celebrity use of Twitter to reach out to people and engage them.  It’s an interesting story, and what caught my eye was this blurb:

In its short history, Twitter — a microblogging tool that uses 140 characters in bursts of text — has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal.

The idea is this:  Rocket Matter is easy to use.  But a lot of its productivity features go undiscovered.  So, using Twitter, we can send out the very basic instructions.  This way, in about 2 minutes someone can learn how to leverage some pretty powerful functionality that they may not have discovered yet.  Here’s a sample:

Tweet 1:

How to Mail Merge with Rocket Matter: 1) Open up your CRM and navigate to a contact. 2) Add a Tag to that contact ->

Tweet 2:

3) Using Search, navigate to the Tag results for your Tag. 4) Click Export to download a CSV of these contacts ->

Tweet 3:

5) Fire up Word and pick Mail Merge Mgr from Tools and 6) Select the CSV as your data source. Voila!

Training Via Twitter, Online Videos, Training Tuesday Sessions, and each firm’s complimentary Rocket 101 session are four ways you can obtain FREE training for Rocket Matter! 

If you’re not following us already, give us a read at twitter.com/rocketmatter.  And if you want to find out more about using Twitter, check out our blog post for newbies.

Someone I knew forgot their cell phone charger at home. They shall remain anonymous. To help out and avoid a needless $30 purchase, I sent out a Tweet asking if anyone at the conference could loan a charger. Before you know it, Andrea Cannavina (@legaltypist) responded to my call and I had a charger in my hand.

Kevin O’Keefe, Matt Homann, and Chris Winfield led a session called “What is Twitter and How Can I Use It?” I would say 150 people attended. Many of those attending, such as Bob Ambrogi and myself, were Tweeting about the session. I can only describe this as Twitter in stereo: Matt and Kevin presented while almost instantaneously Tweets on their Twitter talk came pouring in.

We came to Legal Tech with a head start on some relationships we built via Twitter. It’s a beautiful thing – you get a sense for people via social media, so when you meet them in real life, you shake hands and pick up the conversation where you left off. For people who truly enjoy networking and getting to know other people, Twitter’s advance work adds a whole new dimension of richness to the experience.

Now I get it.  It took me a while to learn the ropes, but gradually I began to appreciate the appeal of Twitter.  Once I followed enough people and enjoyed their reciprocal following, I came to understand that Twitter is a massive, real-time conversation happening all over the world at once.  It’s an incredibly rich informative and social experience.

Some tools have helped me leverage Twitter’s capabilities. I discovered Summize, which became search.twitter.com, to look for mention of our product in the Twittersphere.  After experimenting with several Twitter clients, I downloaded TweetDeck, which makes the experience much more enjoyable and usable.

Taking a look at our Tweets, I’ve classified them into distinct groups: