I can still hear my Mother's voice ringing in my ear. "If Susie jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?"
That sounded ridiculous at the time, and still does; however, it's that same copycat thinking that many attorneys use when deciding on their marketing strategy.
The world is changing and the Internet has become the tool for discovery, communications and referrals. Just because you are told that "everyone is on Facebook" is not enough reason for you to join the game. As with any marketing approach, you must first determine why you want to use Facebook and what you hope it will do for you. The Internet is impersonal, and can support or wreak havoc on your image, your brand.
Social media sites such as Facebook encourage electronic social interaction. Attorneys have a different set of cautions and are controlled by bar rules when advertising, or soliciting. Use of Facebook and other similar can fall into that area.
You may have precautions in mind about confidentiality and code of ethics in your posts, however, your image is affected by other things as well.
The good and bad is that the data on a Facebook page is highly searchable. Posting photos to Facebook of your weekend party or even your bar gathering can have consequences. I advise my clients not to willingly let anyone tag them in any photos on Facebook. If a juror or opposing counsel is doing their due diligence, finding photos of judges and attorneys drinking together can be a potential image problem. Photos on a website can be less searchable and are more easily controlled.
In some states, having a judge "friend" an attorney, could give the impression that the attorney is in a special position to influence the judge, and therefore crosses the ethics line.
If you have set up a Facebook page for your firm, you have no control over who likes your page. If your setting are open that allows followers to comment on the page or on a conversation stream, there is potential for negative or other unacceptable comments. Even though you may delete these from the page, they stay on the posters timeline and potentially in search results.
The privacy settings can only help so much. You might post jokes and private comments on your personal timeline, and one of your friends likes or shares - it is then no longer private. Plus many times when Facebook updates it's latest algorithms, the settings revert back to the default, which is no longer private.
Search results don't always deliver the entire string of a conversation. I found a search result one time where my client was named in a sarcastic off-color remark on one of his friends posts. The search result picked up the client's name, the name of his firm and the sarcastic off-color comment. At a glance, it appeared that his firm had made this comment. Clicking the link in the search result ended up on a page with privacy settings, so the entire post stream was unavailable, leaving the searcher with the edited portion, and an unflattering image of the firm.
Before adding Facebook or any other social media site into your marketing mix, make sure you understand what it can and cannot do for you, how you are going to use it and how you will monitor it.
Remember that One Size Does Not Fit All. Just because your friends are doing it, doesn't mean it right for you. If your online presence is not giving you the results you were hoping, let's talk. Click to email us. We'll listen first to your goals, research your Internet presence and provide our solutions to meet your unique objectives.
