As a biglaw social media manager, part of my job is to choose the new and emerging social networks that are important for my firm to build a presence on.
Pinterest Fever!
So I read with interest Gina Rubel’s recent blog post Don’t Pin Your Legal Marketing Hopes on Pinterest Just Yet . Gina weighs in – convincingly – on the ethical and legal issues involved in “pinning.” Other people have written about Pinterest for legal marketing, mostly providing ideas on what kind of content to pin.
Somehow, I don’t see lawyer headshots having a home amongst the cupcakes, manicures and crafts that seem to have the most pin power. There’s a reason why the most popular lawyer on Pinterest is a dog.
To me, it is more interesting to anticipate how the runaway success of Pinterest might change the expectations, habits and desires that people bring to our firm website and content. What can we as legal marketers learn from Pinterest, even if we never “pin” anything?
- First: Images are everything. In this new world order where interesting and stylish images are the main form of currency (see also Tumblr and Instagram), corporate stock photography looks particularly hollow, and shared links with no accompanying image look bland and are easily overlooked. The LMA job bank recently featured an opening for a full time photographer at an AmLaw 100 firm. My guess is that this firm has a lot more than headshots planned, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
LinkedIn Today uses stylish imagery effectively.
- Second: Your reverse chronological web pages look stale. The Pinterest experience is changing people’s expectations for website design and information hierarchy. As noted recently in Mashable, Pinterest challenges the conventional wisdom that reverse chronological order is the default way to arrange information on the web. Why should a law firm site be any different? Too many feature pages likes the one pictured below – a convention that is bound to change soon.
Your reverse chron web pages look stale.
- Third: Ignore at your peril. This should be your default position when it comes to any social media platform these days. When I started writing this blog post, I had a half-baked opinion on my firm’s use of Pinterest that was based on my personal use (15 boards, 822 pins and counting). But then I searched on my firm’s name. 8 pins. Could a username squatter be far behind?
In conclusion, Pinterest probably won’t become a big part of my biglaw social media marketing plan anytime soon (never say never!) – even as it will most definitely influence how we develop our digital presence moving forward.
The most popular lawyer on Pinterest.
