Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media
Bad news travels way too quickly, it always has and in the information age it travels even faster. A single slip up by a solicitor and the whole of your company’s reputation starts to wobble – but online (this is probably why law firms have been so shy of using social media) that effect can be magnified quite frighteningly.
The problem is, everyone uses the web and everyone uses social media. Your clients, your professional associates, the companies and organisations that refer business to you. So you can’t turn your back on it and pretend it doesn’t exist. A modern law firm needs the internet and it needs social media, for developing new business and promoting itself as authoritative, successful and respected.
Law firms have always traded on respect. The social media sphere is a perfect place to develop and display that respect. The more followers your company has on LinkedIn; the more positive trends about you in Twitter; the more “good” links that pop up in Google when your company name is typed in – all of these things combine to make up your online reputation.
One of the biggest factors in an online reputation is your perceived ability to deal with current issues – whether they are real or not. What I mean by this is, even if you get comments or negative conversations trailing away from your name on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you shouldn’t necessarily be trying to have those comments deleted.
The online public isn’t daft – it knows when you are being smeared and when you are being justly criticised. So what it’s looking at is not what is said about you, but how strongly you dealt with the comments in question. A weak response, in the social sphere, is having a comment removed – that effectively translates as giving in to the bullies.
Instead, a reputation management protocol should be kicked into effect, where your company is seen to respond sensibly and quietly to any negative comments. Where those comments are clearly unjust a single response pointing out why the comment is unjust is enough. If you keep going back for more, you will be seen as sulky.
Where the comment is just (this is of course a more unfortunate situation), your course of action is clear. You apologise, you tell the absolute truth and you show exactly what steps you are taking to redress whatever the negative comment is speaking about.
The public, which of course is composed entirely of people who may one day need your services, and will have to choose what law firm they end up using or associating with, wants to see transparency, honesty and good sense in the social sphere. Which isn’t actually that hard to come by. All you have to do is show how clearly and cleanly you address the needs of your consumers: and your online reputation will right itself by default.
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