Times are tough. Whatever you do, nobody innovate!

When I was writing a recent post about legal innovation I noticed that the target firm there had previously won Legal Technology Awards.  I was impressed with theor commitment, although as you can see form the earlier post I was not altogether impressed with the way they were communicating with the market.

When I followed through to the awards website I was startled to read that the award was not going ahead this year because of the downturn in the market.  Why would the downturn not drive firms to innovate?

On Twitter this evening I was startled to learn of a reasonably sized 4 office firm in the South of England apparently having gone into liquidation this evening.  Times are tough indeed and perils of the Assigned Risk Pool may yet drown many more small to medium sized firms.

Innovation does not need massive investment but it might just be the thing that distinguishes you from your competitors and brings that new client. What are you doing?  Whatever you do, don’t do nothing.

 

 

 

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Will Twitter Spam Ruin Your Reputation?

Yesterday I noticed a near 10% spike in my followers.  You notice something like that.  I thought maybe it was an unexpected response to having my book on conflict resolution published.

It was not.  Instead it was a small army of spam porn accounts complete with embarrassing profile pics and porn links.  That Britney one with the peculiar punctuation and what I think is a hot dog is particularly dangerous.

Spam accounts cause a real problem for a professional using Twitter to communicate. 

A potential client could look at who follows me – why wouldn’t they?  If they see that I am followed by a bunch of porn spammers, what impact does that have on my reputation?

Sure, I can delete, or block, accounts, although the Twitter tools for doing so are slow and fallible.  They keep on coming back.

Now, you and I know that just because someone follows me, does not mean that I am associated with them, but then again you and I are fairly savvy about that sort of stuff.

To a potential client, or referrer, or colleague, I will be judged by the company that I appear to be keeping.

The answer is that I have to manage the followers and ensure that embarrassing contacts are not in there.  This is an unwelcome administrative chore especially when 50 of the scum turn up at once.

I could just leave the stuff up there, but then someone looking at my followers will draw the conclusion that I approve, don’t manage my online reputation, or am simply apathetic. Not quite the image I want to portray.

It becomes impossible for me to demonstrate Twitter, how it works and the like to colleagues or clients because I cannot click through to my followers confident in knowing that there will not be a new porn profile glaring out. 

I cannot even use Twitter, or the followers page at home if my children are around, or my wife for that matter – that is something I would rather not have to explain.

I now need to spend 15 minutes clearing my followers out.  Next time, who knows, I might just clear out altogether.

Twitter, do us a favour, and sort this out. 

Fellow Twitter users, is your followers page ruining your reputation?