Make your partners social: future business depends on it.

• Author: Hellerman, John

For lawyers wary about social media--and there are many of them--we've got good news and bad news.

First, the bad news: Social media platforms have long passed the stage when they were the province of a few enterprising attorneys building contacts with equally tech-savvy client prospects. Today, nearly everyone that matters to your business is online, and they expect you to be there as well.

Consider that one and a half million attorneys are now listed on LinkedIn, up from just 120,000 three years ago. According to recent research by BTI Consulting, 70 percent of corporate counsel use LinkedIn to conduct lawyer searches, and more than half of corporate counsel report that they would hesitate to hire a lawyer without a credible online presence beyond his or her law firm bio.

Let that last sentence sink in. While lawyers are notoriously reluctant to incorporate technological advances into their practices--see that senior partner who just got email last year--social media use has now become so pervasive that failure to participate is viewed with skepticism.

Here's the good news: While not easy, establishing an online presence is not difficult and, when utilized properly, can be an extremely efficient and fruitful way of creating ever-expanding business relationships. But aside from being where an increasing number of your clients are gathering, the purpose of being online is not so much to promote yourself, per se, but to promote the ideas that are valuable to what you do.

Therefore, the question to ask is: "How do I become part of other networkers' and influencers' conversations (i.e., the online dialog that swirls around news and events)?" Luckily, the answer is fairly obvious: You do it by identifying people who are relevant to the audience you want to influence and you enable them to talk (and write) about your issues (and/or you) by providing them with stories that are easy to tell and content that is easy to share.

Here's how to do it:

Target Properly

Understanding how your prospects are influenced--and knowing how to reach them--is critical to the success of any marketing effort, and the unique reach of social media perhaps makes it more so.

LinkedIn offers several ways to identify and find appropriate influencers. The first is LinkedIn Answers (under the "more" heading), which allows you to see what people are asking and sharing as answers in a specific industry. You can connect and begin conversations with other thought leaders or...