To a Lawyer, what is a tweet? i.e. a definition for an attorney.
Lawyers need to understand the basic definition of a tweet. Twitter is only one aspect of Social Media that Legal Professionals need to master. My Project Social Media presents my thoughts regarding the impact of social media marketing on the practice of law. See my page to for more information.
What is a Tweet?
A tweet is 140 characters long. This is the bane of the legal community and any one that appreciates proper English, although a tweet can be in any language. We in the legal community have a tendency to be verbose. We want to add a lot of wherefore's and whereas' to clarify what we are trying to communicate. You can't do that in 140 characters. About the only thing you can communicate is a headline. Good grammar goes down the drain. If you start to think in headlines you will start to get the hang of Twitter.
Here's the real limit. A space is a character. A period is a character. So a period and two spaces between two sentences is a total of three characters. A special character is also a character. So that quote marks and apostrophes count towards the 140 limit.
This be comes problematic when you want, and you do want, to link to a website. Website addresses are long by their very nature. They, without difficulty will push you over the 140 limit. Services have developed to help circumvent this problem by shortening a URL. The added advantage is that they will also track how many times the link on your tweet is accessed.
You also do not want to use all 140 characters for your tweet because it will limit the ability of someone to retweet your tweet. We will deal with retweeting later.
**Why the picture of flowing water? Twitter is a constant flow of information and communications.
About the Author: Ken Strongman (www.kpstrongman.com) has years of experience and a growing national reputation as a mediator and arbitrator. He has successfully resolved more than a thousand disputes in the fields of construction defects, real estate, intellectual property, and employment. He is also a Mediator and Arbitrator for FINRA.
Categorized as Social Media & Legal Profession, Speaking & Training Tagged Ken Strongman, kenneth strongman, Legal Marketing, mediation, Social Media for lawyers, Twitter
By Ken Strongman
As a full-time, Mediator and Arbitrator since 2004, Ken's overarching purpose is to leave the disputing parties in a better position than when they came to him. Ken works to unite people into purposeful and unified directions, actions, and efforts by getting under surface appearances. By doing so, he facilitates the parties in developing their unique solutions. Disputes addressed include business, securities, construction defects, real estate, intellectual property, employment, environment, energy, and trusts & estates.
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Dani Renan says:
Even worse is that people who tweet begin to think in 140 characters. It is hard to formulate a whole thought, but impossible to even attempt an analysis beyond Why? Because.
Seeing politicians tweet about policy is, in the least, cognitive dissonance. And we are beginning to see bumper sticker policies.
And this is from someone who believes that computers are the greatest invention since the alphabet.
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