By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog
If you were sitting here at Avvo's Avvocating conference, you would see from the crowd of hundreds of practitioners that the answer is a resounding "yes." (Incredibly professional photo, which is just half of the 
room (the other half is also completely filled), is by my iPhone.)
And here is some of the insight I have heard that indicates why:
Keynote speaker Bob Ambrogi:
- "Conversation is really king, content is just a way of fueling that conversation."
- "Social media are a set of tools for building and strengthening your network of relationships."
- "The first thing you need do is to make yourself visible out there."
- "A blog is the single best way to enhance your visibility online.
- "The old ways of marketing just seem so antiquated."
- "We are headed toward consumers being able to shop for
legal services the same way they shop for everything else."
- "Consumers have never been more in control of their buying decisions than they are now."
- "The way consumers shop has changed radically in the last few years."
- "The Internet provides the power, but you need to plug it in."
And, from Mark Britton's introduction:
- "Dynamic content is king."
"It is not part of
lawyer DNA, but at least 10% of time should be on marketing."
"Facebook fan pages are a much more handy marketing vehicle than Facebook groups."
"If you're writing and offering interesting things, you push people back to your core."
"Working the social networks and sculpting your core web presence is critical."
"Blogs and websites are merging ... Search engines are looking for dynamic content."
"Lawyers run businesses. You can get it or work ultimately for someone else."
"Web 2.0 is about having everything out there transparent and rated."
