The ILN has offered a webinar series to our members for the past two years, and in 2010, we're offering a three-part series on social networking. Wednesday kicked off our first webinar in the series, "Social Networking Strategy & Blogging," with Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog.

After a short introduction from ILN's Executive Director, Alan Griffiths, Kevin treated the audience to an overview of social networking strategy and blogging. He shared his experience with getting involved with the internet and what it has meant for him, in order to give the audience some context for the presentation and the benefit of his experience.

The bulk of Kevin's presentation focused on how lawyers can be successful using social networking tools and why good lawyers tend to gravitate towards using these types of tools. He began by talking about how few people trust advertising - only 14% - and most law firms on the internet are advertising with their websites.

He added that a website is necessary for law firms as one point of contact, but said that it doesn't do much for the firm's word of mouth reputation. He likened it to bringing potential clients to see a billboard and expecting that to encourage them to hire their law firm. For this reason, Kevin said that using social networking tools to drive traffic to the firm's website is not an effective use of the tools.

In today's world, people are getting most of their information not from newspapers, but from people they trust both offline and online. Kevin suggested that lawyers need to be thinking "how do I become trusted as a source of information."