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Theory: Reputation and Exposure
So there are two things a lawyer marketing herself online can seek: reputation and exposure. The two are not tethered: one can have any reputation, from terrible to terrific, in any sphere. Is it better for a lawyer to have a good reputation in a narrow sphere, or a poor reputation in a wide sphere?
Exposure is what the marketers, SEO gamers, and other self-styled experts, ninjas, and gurus are selling, with their empty promises of high search-engine placement. There are precious few who will assist you in building your reputation.
Why? Because online reputation-building requires that the customer do something more than write a fat check. It requires that he have a good reputation offline, that he be a competent communicator, and that he work hard. And if the customer has, is, and does these things he has little reason to write a fat check to some expert.
So you get these experts who want to make an easy buck off lawyers who want to develop their online presence. They can't do it by selling reputation (nobody can sell you a reputation) so they sell exposure.
The problem is, you see, that often exposure is inimical to reputation. Take the marketer—Sparta Townson, for example (previous SMT post)—who spams blog comments in the name of her clients. In theory (debunked theory, but theory nonetheless) she is increasing their exposure by "link-building," but the reputational harm she could cause in the process, when the bloggers take umbrage and name the customers, is tremendous.
Broadly speaking, online reputation is what people find when they google your name; online exposure is how likely you are to be found otherwise. If your reputation is bad, you don't want people finding you online. Tend to your reputation first.
1 responses to “Theory: Reputation and Exposure”
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Broadly speaking, and as my intent is to further to displace the Google results promogulated by acned mastubatory first and second tier 1l’s, please allow the following:
Reputation is something other people give a person, deserved or not. Nobody has control over their reputation – all a person can do is to continually do their best.
Broadly speaking, based on a mere Google, I have greater exposure than do you, and by far. Most of what you would read about me that is posted by others is less than complimentary. However, there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. I will not recant the tale that I had to tell.
What you would not find on Google is what has disappeared about me, among which items would be an online legal periodical that had been available for a couple of years prior to me relating what had actually happened. The online periodical, I recall as being associated with a Washinton DC university, had a section titled ‘Student Cases in the News.’ [I actually have the periodical downloaded in a file somewhere.] This periodical had referenced my civil action in the same section following a report of a civil action by a student against a law school. The article reported that this other student had threatened to blow up the career counselor’s office or something along those lines. They may as well have labeled the section ‘Nuts in the News.’ Thankfully, the online legal periodical was taken down within a few months of my beginning to post my chronicle.
A coincidence about another ‘legal’ oriented site – JDJive I think it was. Somebody posted on JDJive, in reference to my story during the ‘discussion’ of it, ‘no wonder Hillary Clinton is so hot for this swamp rat.’ Soon after this somebody bought the site for I believe $25,000 and took it down. Another coincidence: a local judges’ son who was in the same law school as I at the same time had worked for the Clinton’s. This same young man now works for President Obama. If there weren’t houses in the way I could see their house from mine.
The point is, you can do something about an apparently negative online reputation – sometimes it may take a while to determine how to do it.
Ernie Menard July 31st, 2010 at 08:27