When Law Firm Social Media Goes Bad.

I was reading through my LinkedIn updates a few moments ago and read the following;

Craig Holt Unexpected events such as the shootings in Cumbria can leave loved ones in unexpected legal and financial… http://fb.me/By6ukJw9 via Twitter

My poor taste alarm bells were ringing in a flash.

The link did go through to a Facebook page which looked like this;

Now, I do not know what is going on here.  I have tweeted what appears to be the Quality Solicitors twitter account to ask whether they are being attacked by mischievous sorts and will let you know if I receive a response.

But given that there appears to be a concerted effort to spread this rather surprising selling message across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, I would be surprised if that were the case.  It’s on their website as well, so I have to presume this is sanctioned.

At the moment it looks as though Quality Solicitors are genuinely putting out this message.  I hope they prove me wrong.

What lessons are there to be learnt from this?

Think very carefully about putting edgy stuff “Out there”.

Is it going to offend anyone?  If it is, that in itself is not automatically a reason not to do it, but how is that potential offence going to impact your law firm?

Secondly, think about who you are teaming up with.

The Quality Solicitors brand is a national service that has high street firms sign up to benefit from the collective name, brand and profile that Quality Solicitors can offer.  Bearing that in mind, how many of those firms will approve of this message and how does it reflect back on the component firms?

I suspect this story has some way to go, but let me have your thoughts below, especially if you are one of the subscribing firms.

As Johnny Ball from “Think of a Number” might have said, social media can be a lawyer’s best friend.  It could also be their worst enemy.

UPDATE

Having just revisited the Quality Solicitors website I see that the comments seem to have been deleted from the Twitter feed.  Hopefully this might indicate that this was not a sincere attempt to sell but was a malicious event.

I am aware that I had previously blogged favourably on Quality Solicitors’ initiative.  I want to see them succeed for the sake of the profession and all their subscriber firms. Here’s hoping they haven’t dropped the baton.

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This Blogpost Has Nothing To Do With The World Cup… At All

The World Cup has sent PR, marketing agents and bloggers into a frenzy.

BBC’s Radio 5 has become unlistenable.  It was already saturated with football coverage and this latest deluge has resulted in a horrific flood.

The tabloids are obsessed and the broad(er) sheets are becoming increasingly indulgent.

Every news story, article and (already) too many blog posts, are geared to some World Cup angle.

The World Cup increases TV sales, barbecue equipment, Pringles sales, cold beers, fridges to put your cold beers into and cold beer holders to take your cold beer out of your World Cup Sponsor liveried “Personal” cold beer fridge.

We will be led to believe that the World Cup increases divorce enquiries but decreases new house sales, drives business but threatens productivity and challenges employment law, incurs copyright and IP infringments and so on and so on and, incessantly, so on.

The reality is very different.  People who were doing jobs and selling products and services are still doing so.  The World Cup has little to do with divorce enquiries, enquiries of estate agents, therapists or professional dog walkers, other than self serving press copy by one company, body, pressure group or other.

Keep your eyes open, therefore, for attention seeking, irrelevant blog articles ostensibly about the World Cup but which in reality have nothing to do with it.

I’ll kick off our search with this one.

Rant over.