Book Review: Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers
The ABA Law Practice Management Section has a series of “one hour” books that covers technology and social media. Dennis Kennedy was kind enough to send me a copy of Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers, and while on a plane from Tulsa to Dallas, I gave it a read. Whether you’re new to Facebook or an old hand, you’ll get something out of this book.
It’s super easy to dive in and get started. If you’re already familiar with Facebook, and its nomenclature, you can skim it and zoom in to the parts that catch you attention. If you’re unfamiliar with Facebook, the Glossary, simple explanations and graphics make it easy to follow along. You can even open up Facebook in a browser window and go step-by-step.
I was struck by the section on privacy settings and the detailed walk through they provide. Facebook is notorious for changing its settings, often, and I learned something: the Password setting tells you the last time you’ve changed your password, or if you’ve ever changed it. I’m forever forgetting passwords and thus resetting them, and it’s nice to be able to check and see how often I’ve done that.
The book takes you through the various settings, and explains the differences between your Facebook profile, and a Facebook Page for Business. It also breaks out an Advanced Topics section, which goes over ethical considerations, litigation and discovery which is an increasing important area, separating your personal from professional on Facebook and then four pages of Resources.
The one thing that struck me about this book is its continued reference to social media as a relationship building tool. On page 3 of the Introduction, under the heading “Why Should Lawyers Use Facebook”? it says:
But at its core, all social networking, whether online or in the real world, is most effective when it is used to communicate and build relationships.
If you follow threads on Solosez, comment threads on blog posts about lawyers and social media, you inevitably encounter the debate “usefulness” debate. And more often than not, in the context of marketing. This book makes a point of broadening the picture a bit, and illustrating how social networks like Facebook are tools to build, or augment, relationships. And it goes a step further: social media is individualized. No one person uses Facebook, or Twitter or Google+, the same way.
Each person’s use of Facebook is individualized.
I’m an avid social media user, avid Facebook user, and reading that sentence produced an “ah-ha” moment for me. I read the book a little differently then, not so much as an “I already know all of this so how can I write a review” to “how are other people using Facebook in ways that I am not that might be useful for me?”
Indeed. The individual is what makes Facebook interesting, and social media for that matter.
Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers has something for everyone.
About Gwynne Monahan
#Writer. #Editor. Problem Solver. Equal Opportunity Retweeter (EORT). #privacy advocate....
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