Five ways to avoid running afoul with your social networking program.

• Author: Felts, Todd

Legal marketing professionals can learn a lot about social media from something that happens every day in small towns across Italy. On the side of a building, usually near the center of town, important information is posted. Lost pets, the recently deceased and announcements about new products or services in town, are prominently displayed. As the day develops, people begin to assemble in front of the postings, and conversations begin. These postings are created with a long tradition of rules and ethics (even a few laws). The information is effective because it is simple and always manages the expectations of the audience. The information addresses the things people care most about. It gets people talking. Social media programs serve the same pupose as that wall on the side of the building. But they run afoul when the individual or business posting the information forgets about the audience and fails to live up to their needs and expectations. Most issues arise when we forget about the audience, and fail to monitor our messages after posting information.

Here are five things every legal marketing professional should know about his or her social media postings and how they can keep the right conversation going to avoid running afoul.

1 Don't Navigate with the "Publish then Filter Model"

Many articles and publications discuss how social media has changed the way we approach communications. Perhaps, Clay Shirky in his book, Here Comes Everybody, makes the best case for what we must know about what he calls an emerging Publish then Filter model. He points out that we no longer rely on professionals (or editors in the case of newspapers) to determine what is important. We are all publishers and we can all create original information and share it with anyone we want because of new tools like Wikipedia, Twitter and Blogs. As communication professionals, we must be aware that the best way to reach our audiences is to understand them and to understand that they no longer need permission to share their own information or comment on ours. By understanding this, we become experts at knowing how to focus on specific issues, instead of the old model where geography limited us and we could reach the people only in our market, mailing list or within ears-reach of our message. With this new model, however, comes a new responsibility.

Because our best communication revolves around issues, social media takes dropping a press release or writing legal articles...