I’ve noticed a lot of discussion in the last week or so about ways lawyers (and others) might use Twitter. There have been some good primers on Twitter and Kevin O’Keefe, in particular, has talked about ways lawyers might use Twitter.
I’d suggest that you start with Adrian Lursson’s post listing lawyers who use Twitter and Grant Griffiths’ Twitter tutorial for lawyers if you want to get some more background.
Here’s an example of Twitter use that I’ve found compelling.
I’ve experimented with Twitter (I’m @denniskennedy on Twitter) for a while now – actually quite a while – and I have a few thoughts on the subject. They aren’t too original, frankly.
Twitter is another possible channel of communication that for the right people with the right audiences might be quite successful for certain purposes. For others, it probably won’t be very useful. And, as Jerry Lawson once presciently said about lawyer blogs, for some lawyers, it would be a disaster.
For a variety of reasons, I’ve found it easier lately to maintain a regular presence on Twitter than on my blog or other channels.
My friend, Marty “The Trademark Blog” Schwimmer, recently pointed me to a possible use of Twitter that I found compelling and launched the subject mentioned in the title of this post.
Marty started using Twitter to create a companion “microblog” for The Trademark Blog. I emailed him immediately when I saw it to tell him that he was a genius. He deflected my praise and said that he got the idea from Techmeme, but I’ll still give him credit because we talked about some of the nuances of this approach over the last two weeks.
Typical of my approach, I became convinced about how the idea would work for my blog and then, rather than hopping right in, I let the idea incubate for a while and thought it through. At least for a couple of weeks.
Here’s my thinking.
I’ve said before that the true difficulty of blogging is not the time commitment or the usual things people ask bloggers about. No, the real burden of blogging is the “everydayness” of blogging. How do you maintain a consistent, regular presence?
This is especially true when your style of blogging centers on longer, essayish posts. Or, God forbid, you commit to a series of posts. That final unwritten part (or two) of my series on “my new laptop computer is an iPod Touch” has blocked many a new post for me, as has the yet unwritten ILTA reflections post.
My idea then was to use Twitter as a microblog that worked with this blog. The Twitter blog will be a place for short items – quick links and observations of the “one quick thing” nature (another of Marty’s great ideas). Then, to integrate with this blog, I’ll collect them every week or so into a post on this blog with its own category.
It’s a new and different approach, and definitely an experiment. I also expect it to find its own, somewhat different, audience. It can also see the Twitter posts turning into seeds for extended posts on this blog. I’m also planning to try using the hash tag #legaltech as a way to help people find the posts.
How to find the new DennisKennedy.Microblog? It’s at @dkennedyblog (the Twitter character limit on user names got me there). I start there with the obligatory reflexive post and, of course, the obligatory Babylon 5 reference.
I welcome you to the new experiment and invite you to follow the new microblog. Let me know what you think about it.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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