social media marketing

Does Giving Advice in a Facebook Group Cause a Conflict of Interest for Lawyers?

October 1, 2019 by Andrew Stickel

Can having a Facebook group cause a conflict of interest? Let’s say you have a group called “Father’s Rights” on Facebook. There are people in the group talking and interacting, asking and answering questions. Do you have to search every member of the group to make sure you are not speaking to someone who is represented by the attorney on the other side? This is a very interesting dilemma.

This is something I would have to ask about because I really don’t know. I believe the answer would vary by state. Regardless, it comes down to how you answer the question.

How you answer the question

Note

If you give personalized legal information to a specific person or client, that would probably become an issue. However, you already know, that is never a good idea anyway.

Someone in the group says: “My wife took my kids. I want them back. What do I do?”

Your response: “Well, there is obviously a lot of different things that could happen.” Then you tell a story. We had a client whose wife moved from Florida to New York and took their daughter. What we had to do for that client is file a petition and they had to come back down. Then this happened and that happened.

But, we had another client who took the kids and moved to a whole different country. To do that we had to do this, this, this, and this. You are telling stories about what you have done for other clients and you are making that clear. You are not giving specific legal advice and you end it with obviously every case is different, but these are a few examples that I have seen and the options that are available.

The other thing you could do is you could say if you want to ask specifically send me a direct message because obviously, we don’t want to talk about your care in public. Then from there, you can do a conflict check and all that type of stuff.

Do you need to do a conflict check before letting them in the group?

I don’t believe there is any reason to run a conflict check before letting someone in your Facebook group. If you create a video, you cannot control who watches the video. If you create a YouTube channel, you can’t control who watches the videos. You have no control over who reads your blog posts. Honestly, I am not even sure you could be sure of who you are allowing in the Facebook group. It is the internet and it is not that hard to fake your identification if you want to bad enough. Of course, if you are concerned, you can ask an ethics attorney.

Asking the experts

I talked to Angela Lang a great deal about this. She does a ton of stuff with social media. My interview with her is on my YouTube channel. This is a topic we talked about a lot. She said the reason lawyers don’t do social media marketing is that they are afraid of the Bar. They’re afraid of what’s going to happen. I mean there is nothing that’s going to stop you from getting on camera and talking about the law and kind of like telling stories and stuff like that.

That just about covers it. Just do not give personal information and use common sense. Be smart and listen to your instincts. If you feel like someone is trying to push you into a corner, push back. Just say, this is not the place, but we can set up an appointment to talk about your personal situation if you would like to.

Does Follower Count on Social Media Matter for Your Law Firm?

July 1, 2019 by Andrew Stickel

The question

Do you have any tips for getting more Facebook friends, Facebook followers, and Twitter followers? My attorney boss really wants those numbers to go up. I really want to be more authentic with my comments and posts, but I’m worried about being too real. I know I need to represent the law firm professionally, so I hold back and it’s all just super boring.

My answer

I’m not going to talk about Twitter cause I don’t do a lot on Twitter. Twitter overwhelms me. I’ve just managed to stay off of Twitter. I don’t do a lot with Twitter, so I’m not an expert on that.

Now about Facebook followers and friends… If we’re talking about a business page — and I had a conversation with a client about this very thing this morning — it doesn’t really matter what the number of people is because the reach is so small.

About engagement campaigns on Facebook

Facebook has become pay to play. So if it’s just a vanity game, then you can just run ads that are basically just an engagement campaign.

I don’t ever do these because I don’t care about likes, but you can run a Facebook ad that is kind of an engagement campaign. If you go into the ads manager and you go into the different goals, there are different types: there’s reach, and there’s traffic, and then there’s engagement and different things like that.

And I’m almost positive that within engagement or within reach, there’s a place in there where you can actually invite people to like the page. That means, you can run ads to get people to like the page. So that’s one way you can do it.

I mean, don’t BUY likes. Definitely do not buy likes because that’s going to screw all your stuff up.

A better way to get more likes

Here’s what I would do instead, if your boss really cares about it: I would probably create a really good post, a post that solves a problem.

So, for example, here’s one thing we did for a traumatic brain injury attorney: we created a guide that taught clients how to set up a GoFundMe campaign after an accident. A lot of times, people get into an accident and they need money because they can’t work. You know the drill.

So we said: “Here is a step-by-step guide that teaches you how to set up a GoFundMe campaign so that you can get your friends and family to help out and cover some of your living expenses and medical expenses.” This is also helpful after a wrongful death type of situation. You see these things spring up all the time.

So, we created a guide that shows exactly how to do that and we ran ads to that post and that post, because you’re paying for it, gets a ton of likes, a ton of comments and it’s actually useful.

Compare this to a page that isn’t really useful

Compare that to s a Facebook page that just isn’t really useful. For example, my Facebook page — my Andrew Stickel entrepreneur business Facebook page — I really have no idea how many likes I have. I might have 10 likes, I might have a thousand likes, I have no idea because I just haven’t looked at it.

I just don’t care because I know it doesn’t help me because the reach is just so small. Sure, you can spend this money on building up likes. And if you have just 5 likes, then maybe you should try to invest a little bit to get a couple of hundred likes on there, but it’s a point of diminishing returns.

What you should do

If you do a good job and you provide value, then people will start liking you. If you put that guide out there, then people will like you. It’s just how it works. So, that’s what I would do. I mean, you can run the Facebook ads, you can ask people — but providing value is probably the best way to do it.