I have attended several sessions on at the Association for Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) about doing education, mediation and other court services online, but the comment that has provoked the most thought for me was by Colin Rule (see colinrule.com; download slides )who asked the following question:

“What do you want to say to the person whose first attempt to find information is to google “divorce?”  

He asked this to a room of professionals many of which have begun to work with divorcing clients online.  This question reminds me that many people who google “divorce” are not going to find most professional services.  Even if we are online we may or not be very savvy at making our work visible in ways that potential clients find us.  Likewise, if they do find us they may or may not find anything useful on our websites because we may not yet have thought about what those initial questions or needs are.

This is a big challenge for us.  We are competing in a worldwide marketplace that often does not favor professionals or in which professional services are not very sophisticated in their use of online technology services.

So what do you want your first conversation to be?

For a lighter take on “social media and experts, see Josh Gad’s comments… “with social media who needs experts.”