TLA Committee Corner and DEI Committee Report
TLA Committee Corner Technology Committee Report William M. Davis,* Committee Chair This year, the Technology Committee is working hard to magnify TLA’s presence on social media and create a new TLA website. We’re going to accomplish these goals with the assistance of Kellen and our many members who are savvy users of LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and similar social platforms. Here’s how we’re going to do it:
Valuable Content Social media communications have the biggest impact when they invite interaction and commentary from a number of users. We are working with our management company to develop a system for collecting and vetting quality news stories involving law and all modes of transportation. These stories will be periodically shared through our website and LinkedIn page. The rationale behind quality news content is best explained by borrowing a line from Bonnie Raitt: “Let’s give ‘em something to talk about….” News stories are often a catalyst for discussion between our members and other professionals, so they are an excellent choice for social media posts since they invite commentary and interaction. While the selected news stories will be presented in an unbiased, fact-based fashion—as is befitting for content posted by an organization as inclusive as TLA—we welcome our members sharing and re-posting the content through their own social media and offering their unique opinions on the content with the hope of sparking professional conversations on LinkedIn and other platforms. The Committee has singled out LinkedIn as a platform of choice for several reasons. When looking at our member’s participation on social media platforms, it appears that LinkedIn is already a favorite. Many TLA members are active on LinkedIn. TLA already has a good presence on LinkedIn, with regular postings submitted through our management company and promoted by our members via “likes” and shares. This established presence can be grown and improved at a rate faster than if we attempted to establish a new presence on a new platform. Finally, the inner workings of social media sites suggest that our focus should be on achieving high levels of engagement on a single platform as opposed to mediocre engagement across several platforms. Many of you are familiar with the usual suspects when it comes to business marketing on social media: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube are the frontrunners, with other contenders such as Clubhouse and Twitter not far behind. These * Bovis, Kyle, Burch & Medlin, LLC (Atlanta, GA)
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various platforms work quite differently in terms of how they prioritize and distribute content. Success on any one platform is achieved by consistent posting/interaction in a way that is consistent with the rules of the particular platform’s algorithm. The different platforms use different algorithms and focus on different types of content. For example, TikTok focuses on short videos (less than 10 minutes) while Twitter is a text-based platform. LinkedIn is a hybrid platform that allows text, photos and video—although most users stick to text. Because of the inherent differences between the platforms, it is difficult to achieve success across multiple platforms simply by cutting-and-pasting the same content from one platform to the next. A posting that does well on Twitter might not be as wellreceived on LinkedIn. The Committee believes it is prudent to achieve excellence on a single platform as opposed to achieving average results across multiple platforms. One of the most exciting aspects of TLA’s existing LinkedIn presence is that we have so many members who are very active in the LinkedIn community. We will be working to grow member participation on LinkedIn, which will foster online discussions between members and—most importantly—between members and non-members. Additionally, the committee will continue its work to mindfully and purposefully disseminate TLA content on LinkedIn as outlined below.
Spreading the Virtual Word
Social media algorithms play tricks on you. If you’re fortunate to have a significant number of connections on LinkedIn or friends on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed that you continue to see only the same small subset of connections in your news feed. Simply having a large number of connections does not guarantee that a particular posting will be circulated to all of those connections. Similarly, a user with a large number of connections is unlikely to see content posted by the majority of those connections. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but there is one common truth to increasing the visibility of online content: it must be cross-posted in areas where it would not otherwise organically appear. For example, LinkedIn Groups is a feature of LinkedIn which
Transportation Lawyers Association • Canadian Transport Lawyers Association • July 2022, Vol. 24, No. 1
