Welcome to the 5th installment of our series on Social Media.  In the past two weeks, we have discussed the ins and outs of blogs.  We’ve gone over the best ways to use blogs as a knowledge source, and an introduction to blogging for yourself.  Over the next few weeks, we will discuss a few networks that you should start to use.  Each of them can also be used to promote your blog, using the blog as the base of your online identity, or brand.

First, we will cover Twitter.  Twitter has become the “hot commodity” of the web of late, and it is important that everyone at least be aware of what it’s all about.  Twitter is a site where people can share experiences and ideas in 140 characters or less.  It is like a miniature blog (or microblog) that brings together many people to comment and discuss certain topics.

Signing up is easy, if you haven’t already.  Simply go to www.twitter.com and select Get Started Now.  Fill out a short form and you are ready to join the conversation.  Once you are up and running, the operational process is very intuitive.  You can update your status whenever you like, as often as you want.  You can invite friends and colleagues to join using an email address.  You can find other people on Twitter and begin to follow their updates.

Following someone simply means that you will see their updates on your own Twitter page.  And when someone decides to follow you, they will get yours.  To take advantage of this service as a business development and promotion engine, you’ll want to add as many followers as possible.  Do this by getting involved with other users, start conversations, and discuss interesting topics.  The followers will come.

To find people who may be discussing things of interest to you, you can use search.twitter.com to search any conversation topics.  If you find people you’re interested in, follow them.  Common practice on Twitter is to follow those people that follow you.  So searching for these people and following them will lead to more followers for you, a good thing.

In addition to the normal conversations, you can send direct messages, both public and private, to other users.  If you want to reply to someone, or start a conversation, use the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name.  For example, if you type @Lawline before your message, that update will come directly to Lawline.com’s twitter account.  This is how you can start more one on one conversations to discuss specific topics and build a relationship.  The more people you involve yourself with, the more popular your Twitter identity will become, and the more you can get out of the experience.

Past Installments of this Series:
Part One – Intro to Social Media for Attorneys
Part Two – Signing up for the Networks
Part Three – Using Blogs as an Information Source
Part Four – Start Blogging Today