This post is for all of my friends, acquaintances, business associates, clients and others who have asked about my disappearance from Facebook and Twitter.
Yes, it’s true. A couple of months ago, I jumped off the Facebook and Twitter bandwagons. I deactivated my accounts.
I realized that I needed to simplify & declutter some areas of my life and frankly my involvement in social media was near the top of the list.
You would have had to be in a coma over the past several years to not have noticed that social media is taking our American society and culture by storm. Even the normally staid legal profession, of which I am a member, is all giddy and abuzz over applications like Facebook and Twitter.
I have several friends whose occupation encompasses teaching, training and coaching lawyers on issues such as law office management, effective marketing and the latest technological advances including blogging and the use of social media.
I’ve learned a lot from these guys. But now that I’ve jumped off the social media bandwagon, they think I’m nuts.They believe that by turning my back on social media, I’m missing out on the marketing and public relations benefits that social media done well can deliver at very little cost.
And they’re probably right.
But the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of my time spent on Facebook and Twitter was for personal and not business purposes. And it was my personal use that grew to hours upon hours of my time each week.
I wasn’t just an occasional user. Oh no. I was a regular and frequent user of both Facebook and Twitter.
I had many Facebook friends. I had many Twitter followers.
And I tried to post mainly regarding what I believed where important issues of substance (faith/religion, politics, culture, etc.) as opposed to what I was eating, wearing or watching on TV.
On a quick aside, I’m reminded of what David French had to say about his experience with Facebook and Twitter. I found David’s story to be quite humorous. (I had the pleasure of meeting David this past June when I attended the Alliance Defense Fund’s National Litigation Academy. David is Senior Legal Counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund and also serves as Director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.)
Anyway, it became readily apparent to me that Facebook and Twitter were sucking huge amounts of my time into some black hole from which they were never to return.
And because I, like you, have only 24 hours or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds in each and every day that God gives me, I believe it’s critical to evaluate where and how I’m spending my time. One thing we all know for sure is that we can’t reclaim time. Once that second or minute or hour is gone, it’s gone for good. It’s never coming back.
So my explanation to those friends of mine who think I’ve made a grievous error in jumping off the social media bandwagon is this:
I recognize the value that social media can hold for a small business owner like myself. And I’m not turning my back on that opportunity. No way.
It’s been my use of new innovations and the latest technology that has allowed me to reinvent my law practice from the traditional brick-n-mortar law office with multiple staff, lots of paper, and extremely high overhead to a solo home-office lawyer using the latest technology to operate a low overhead, paperLess, digital law office.
I read, study and do my best to stay on the latest wave of technological innovation.
That’s why I long ago abandoned the Yellow Pages as a marketing tool. It became evident to me that the Yellow Pages was fast becoming a dinosaur bearing a poor ROI (Return on Investment).
And that’s why I designed and launched the Oklahoma Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog that you’re now reading.
Now that I’ve had a few months to think about the issue of social media, I’m ready to re-engage in a more limited way. So look for me to reappear on Facebook and Twitter after the New Year but with a focus related primarily to my law practice.
