Social Media can be a time dump. It can also be a scalable way to communicate with a mass volume of people all at once. And it’s based on permission marketing. For many sales people and recruiters, I recommend using ‘interruption marketing’ as a way to open up doors with people. For example, most of the candidates that our firm wants to present to our clients aren’t looking to make a move, so the odds are high that they won’t be ‘following’ a recruiter. What’s the point? For that reason in some industries, it can be a waste of time. For my recruiter training practice I coined this phrase for Twitter: Time Wasted In Trying To Escape Rejection.

But if you have a group of people who want to hear what you have to say, perhaps a client prospect that heard you speak at an industry conference on legal issues, then I would recommend that you encourage them to connect with you through social media. The more they receive content from you, then the more they feel connected with you. And when the time is right and they have a need, then THEY will call YOU. Consider social media to be just one facet of your portfolio of rainmaking tools.

Here’s a recent post from Law.com on how lawyers can benefit from social media.