Cecily A. Drucker, CEO, MonetaSuite

“Social Networking”, the catch-all phrase for blogging, tweeting, and all other forms of staying connected (LinkedIn, YouTube, FaceBook, etc.), is one of the key ingredients to a successful career, so writes Stephen Baker, a senior writer for Business Week.  In the April 8, 2009 article “Putting A Price on Social Connections”, Baker writes that those who maintain strong communication ties with their managers make more money.  He notes that current research by IBM and MIT, among others, is attempting to classify and monetize the value of staying connected. (Baker is also the author of The Numerati, a very readable book about how “quants” analyze all that data, and what it means for the future, whether it is business or personal—his story about how he and his wife each went on match.com to see if they are well matched is amusing.)

For professional service workers (attorneys, accountants, consultants [IT, management, financial, etc.]), the need to stay connected is equally important.  If you are a newbie, the people you report to (partners, etc.) are your “managers”; if you have direct client responsibility, your clients are the ones with whom who you should be staying in contact.

Within the professional services industries, there are going to be major changes in the way people within and between organizations work; much of the focus at the ABA TechShow 2009 (with the keynote speech by Richard Susskind, noted consultant and author of The End of Lawyers) was on collaboration; social networking tools between lawyers and law firms will be one of the key ingredients of the future.  While we were at the TechShow, we spent time with Dave Bilinsky  of ThoughtfulLaw; he has recently posted some comments of interest on this topic as it relates to lawyers.  

As social networking tools become more widely adopted in one’s business and professional life, the information flow will increase; one authority, The  Radicati Group predicts that the daily number of business-related emails high-value workers currently process (about 120) will double to over 240 in the next 5 years. 

Add to that all of the other social networking opportunities, and one realizes that, with all that potential ‘noise’,  the challenge high-value workers face is to make those networking opportunities relevant so that each one adds value to the relationship.  

To bend an old saw, “it’s not just who you know, it’s what you talk about with them.”