If you are the chief marketing officer or managing partner of a law firm, you need to be proactive about how your firm deals with and responds to client issues, disagreements and negative client interactions. How can you take a strong stand and yet make sure that those disagreements don’t see the light of day? How does your firm’s reputation stand up under the light of Google?
In order to proactively step out ahead of any blips in your firm’s reputation, you need to monitor what’s being said and what’s being written. And, for all intents and purposes, you need to publish your firm’s story and how you want it to be told well in advance of anything negative. A smarter person than me once said, the worst time to ask for credit is when you need it. Don’t wait to launch a blog or social media site just to push down negative content in the search results. Be ready in case it ever does happen.
A good legal marketer knows that their firm must become publishers – publishers of content that shows their expertise and their successful track record of cases and accolades. This stream of content can help quell any negative issues that might arise, that you may or may not wish to engage with directly online.
As publishers, we assume a certain risk. The risk that someone whom we write about might not like what we write, even if what we publish is re-purposed content from the public record. We need to make sure it is true and accurate and that any strong opinions can and will be supported by the firm.
The key to a proactive content strategy is to make sure that your content is original, optimized for your firm and that it is done on a consistent basis. Adopting a strong defense is a lot easier if you can produce content well in advance of anything negative.