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.

Assuming that I haven't missed something completely, which, naturally, I have . . .

Humans communicate for fivesix reasons:

• To educate;
• To entertain;
• To persuade;
• To inspire;
  
• To attract; and
• To deceive.

Any discrete communication might serve one or more of these purposes. For example, with this sentence I aim to educate and to persuade.

Examples of communications intended to attract arethe setup for a joke, or the first sentence of a good book or the location of the post splitter in this sentence, intended to draw the listener or reader in.

A lawyer's online communications that may be associated with that lawyer by potential clients should educate, entertain, persuade, inspire, and attract.

(A Tangent, Which Will Be Very Important to Future Theory Discussions: a lawyer's stock in trade is not, as Abraham Lincoln would have had it, her time, but rather her knowledge and her intellectual abilities. A lawyer's online communications that clients might see are effectively free samples of the lawyer's product. So even while lawyers' communications entertain, persuade, and attract, they educate: "This," they say, "is what this lawyer knows, how she thinks and how she communicates; it is, in short, who she is as a lawyer.")

Search engine optimization does not directly advance any of those goals of communication. It may expedite them (because you can't communicate with people who aren't there), but it is the tail, not the dog.

I wrote about Sparta Townson at Defending People as well, in the context of the marketing services she is trying to sell, as did Ken at Popehat.

Aside from the reputational questions for the lawyers who are Townson's target market, The story has interesting angles in the realm of pure social media, which belong here at SMT rather than Defending People.
The dispute, as presented by Jamie, was this: Sparta Townson was posting (or more likely paying someone else to post) spam comments on lawyers' behalfs on Jamie's blog. Jamie objected, and had the decency to call Townson on the phone. Townson took the position that, because comments on Jamie's blog were open, she was allowed to spam the comments and there was nothing he could do about it. Then she hung up on Jamie (another topic, for another day: how little social-media savvy some social-media experts display.)

Is Townson right? If a blog has "open" (not moderated) comments, is it fair game for the spammers?

That question can be broken down into two parts.

First, who makes the rules for Jamie's blog comments? Like his home, Jamie's blog is his castle; Jamie is sovereign there. If Jamie elects to leave his door open, that's not permission for Townson to come in and shit on his Persian rugs.

Jamie has a rule: no comment spam. It's not even an arbitrary rule. Anyone who's been around the internet for any length of time since Canter & Siegel knows that spam is unwelcome. Townson can't possibly be surprised that her feces are unwelcome on the Bakhtiari.

Townson knows they're unwelcome, but still she leaves them. She thinks she can get away with it, because there's nothing Jamie can do about it. Is she right? A rule without a sanction is a courtesy; if Jamie is sovereign on his blog but can't enforce his rules, they might as well not exist, and Townson can make her own rules.

But Jamie's blog (powered by Kevin O'Keefe's LexBlog, by the way, in case you insist on spending money on a social media expert) has Google PageRank 5. What that means, in practical terms, is that if someone doesn't have a strong web presence already (another topic for another day: social media "experts" with weak web presence), when Jamie writes a post about her it's going to come up high in Google search results for her name (another topic for another day: how a real—as opposed to self-styled—social media expert would deal with that post.)

Is that a sanction? Sure it is—potential clients Google "Sparta Townson" or "Internet Guru Girl," and instead of finding the reputation she's cultivating for herself they find the unsavory truth.

So Townson can't make her own rules. She can choose not to to engage in offensive conduct, or to do so and risk the sanction.

Jamie is not limited to naming Townson, though. He could also—if he chose to—name the lawyers who are paying Sparta to defecate on his carpet. Those paying Townson to spam for her are responsible for the spam as well; there is a theory (yet another topic for another day) holding that the best way to stop the comment spam is not to make an example of the Sparta Townsons of the world, but to make an example of those who are paying the Sparta Townsons of the world. If they stop paying her, she stops spamming.

Nobody gets to tell Jamie what to do on his blog. The so-called experts who want to spam with impunity can call it "bullying" when Jamie lays down the sanction of his choice for breaking his rules, but even if they had a web presence worth a damn, I doubt that Jamie would care.

Who makes the rules? Those who, like Jamie, are writing the content that people want to read (and link to) make the rules.

Some "real lawyers oh-so-busy practicing law" seem to have way too much time on their hands: http://tinyurl.com/3xfjcqt

That's New York social-media-for-lawyers yell leader Niki Black, this morning on Twitter. (Don't bother looking for the tweet, it was quickly deleted.)

The site to which the link points is a parody site, making fun of "third wave" lawyers and "legal rebels" (TWLs and LRs). Niki sees the hand of so-called real lawyers busy practicing law behind the obvious parody. Even the name on the site—"Dick Troll" is coarsely parodic.

Except . . . it's not. John Richard Troll, as a moment's investigation would have told Niki, is an Indianapolis lawyer, in practice for 25 years. The site is a sincere attempt to tout TWLs and LRs (who think they're new because they put a label on the things others have been quietly doing for fifteen years).

When followers of a rubric are themselves unable to distinguish earnest expressions of that rubric from parody, they probably shouldn't expect others to take them seriously.

It’s sad, really. You’re like Alkon, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to understand the culture of the Internet. So you take offense at our customs and violate our most sacred taboos, and when someone comes to educate you, you blow him off as a “narcissi(s)tic idiot.”

Scott Greenfield writes:

My child commenter, the World Ruler, is wrong, yet right.  There is a culture of which I am not a part.  While I may know more about it then most people of a certain age, it moves so quickly and morphs in ways I would never anticipate that it’s impossible to stay on top of it while watching from the outside.  And I have no delusion that I’m not on the outside.

My own theory of this cultural divide: as we get farther and farther from the Great Depression, America’s young become more and more comfortable that their basic needs will be met without a struggle. This leaves them free to focus on entertaining themselves with anonymous comments and practical jokes.

There are no “sacred taboos” in such a world. Lying is okay in the context of a prank, so the Amazon-bombing of Amy Alkon (who may very well be a repugnant human being) seems to them a perfectly appropriate response. In this new online world, perceived transgressors are not entitled to common decency.

Add to this the failure of U.S. public schools in the last century to teach rhetoric and logic, and it becomes obvious that those who call out the new generation for lying will be seen as racist neocons like Alkon.

The culture clash is between those who have character in the real world, and expect others to behave with character online; and those who don’t; between those who view near-universal online anonymity as a detriment, and those who view it as a benefit.

Oddly, the same clash could be described as being between those who treat the internet as a serious extension of meatspace, and those who don’t. Everything anonymously written on the internet suddenly makes sense if it’s labeled “for entertainment purposes only.”

That’s why we need have no fear that Scott’s World Ruler and his ilk will ever actually rule the world. No matter how carefully they craft their pseudonymous online personas, those personas will not (except in rare pathological instances) help the people in the real world get elected, hired, or even laid. Should the actual people accidentally reproduce, those personas will not help them feed or protect their offspring or themselves.

Despite cyberpunk dreams, human beings still exist in the real world, and in the real world, people can tell you’re a dog.

This #avvo used car salesman conference is deeply disturbing.

and

Remember something you avvocating maniacs, if you’re not a good lawyer, people will find out, despite your blogs and online garbage #avvo

Avvo was displaying the #avvo twitter timeline on the podium.

One of the attendees, Sonny Cohen, wrote a blog post, When Flames Erupt in the Twitter-enabled Conference Backchannel (no, seriously, that’s the title). Conceding that Scott and Brian “had some great points about abuse of social media, thoughtless blogging and even the alleged ‘social media gurus’ (SMG) who industrialize the process of building real human networks,” he nonetheless called them “harassers,” “flamers,” and “jackass” (half a jackass each, apparently).

Cohen’s post, and his Twitter response to Scott, were overwrought and self-important to the point of narcissism. It’s Twitter; if someone says something you don’t want to hear, you can block it. Brian and Scott didn’t even know that Avvo was displaying the timeline on the podium. (Had they known, they would have had a lot more fun with it.)

Saving for another day modern Homo Internetus’s tendency to throw around heavy words like “harassment” in response to the slightest criticism: are narcissism and hysteria prerequisites for a job as an internet marketer?

I posted a comment to the blog post, to the effect of “‘Harassers’? Really, Sonny? Credibility fail.” Or rather, I tried to post a comment, but Cohen did not publish it.

Add intellectual cowardice to the list of character traits that Cohen is displaying in this episode.

I’ve found I don’t like to “follow” without being “followed” back.  Seems a one way conversation – not fun for me.

Jamison Koehler writes:

Policing the blawgosphere and calling out specific lawyers on what are still debatable ethical issues seems to me, as I wrote on Greenfield’s site, paternalistic and futile.

And Carolyn Elefant (who is clear that ghost blogging is unethical) writes:

I don’t criticize Mark or Scott  for outing the ghostblogging lawyers, since Buchanan’s clients willingly provided testimonials and in doing so, put themselves out there.  Nor do I take issue with Brian Tannebaum’s decision to disclose lawyer marketers with tainted ethics records (in fact I interviewed him about it here) because frankly, that information is public record (even Avvo lists ethics violations).Nevertheless, I’m far less comfortable with criticisms like this one about the lawyers embroiled in the Total Attorneys ethics mess [Never mind that their names are also public record. MB.] or “naming names” of lawyers who advertise [Link missing from original] on what Eric Turkewitz has termed dreck blogs.

Carolyn’s reasoning is that

the lawyers who subscribed to services offered by Findlaw and Total Attorneys, both of which are ABA sponsors,  most likely believed that the ABA had vetted these companies’ practices before accepting their sponsorship dollars.

Any lawyer who holds that particular belief should be barred from the internet until she develops some sense. The ABA is a self-important voluntary tea-and-argument society. That it has any authority is a myth apparently popular among non-lawyers; its endorsement of a particular product (even if accepting advertising dollars constituted an endorsement), though, bears no weight. The ABA knows no more about social media than the average lawyer. It doesn’t vet its advertisers in a meaningful way—as we’ve seen—and shouldn’t be expected to.

Jamison calls the ethics of using ghostblawgers “debatable.” It may well be debatable (on the “people will argue about anything” principle) but, as I’ve commented elsewhere, I’ve yet to see the argument in favor that takes into account lawyers’ unique product and position in society. Ghostblogger Jenni Buchanan makes an effort at Blog for Profit but conveniently glosses over her own prime selling point, which happens also to be the prime argument for the unethicalness of ghostblogging: that lawyers blog to “give themselves credibility.”

There are those who are more comfortable trusting governing bodies to decide what is ethical, and are perhaps not comfortable enough with their own judgment or authority to tell others when they are wrong. Those people should certainly not be calling out others. Let’s take it as a given that those lawyers who are calling out people on ethical and aesthetic issues (beauty is truth, truth beauty) are themselves certain that those issues are not debatable. Either that, or they are willing to be publicly called out for being wrong. Or both.

Also, let’s take it as a given that those lawyers doing so care (not everyone cares about these issues, and that’s okay, Norm Pattis).

Jamison thinks that “policing the blawgosphere and calling out specific lawyers” is paternalistic and futile. I’ll take the adjectives in order.

As to paternalism, nobody is trying to act like the daddy of the blawgosphere. The cheaters are not chastised for their own good, but for the good of the community. So “Sheriff” is probably a more apt metaphor. The internet is largely lawless, a virtual wild west, and there’s nothing wrong with exercising your authority to try to impose a little order on your little corner of it to make it more agreeable to you. If that involves hurting a few feelings, well, you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs.

Maybe Jamison’s “paternalism” objection is that nobody elected Scott or Brian or me Sheriff (or “Top Cop“) of the blawgosphere. That’s true enough. But lots of people read Simple Justice (PR6), and it’s not because Scott Greenfield’s afraid of hurting people’s feelings. Fewer people read Defending People (PR5) and Criminal Defense (PR4), but the numbers are not inconsiderable. Bloggers have authority in proportion to how many people read them (and link to them) and people read and link to those three blogs, none of which is shy about publicly calling a fraud a fraud.

As to futility, consider the numbers. There are over a million lawyers in the U.S. 80% of them (according to a possibly-reliable source, the ABA) are solos or in small firms. Most of them are looking for a way to make more money. Most of them aren’t highly social-media-savvy. Call it at least 200,000 (most of most of 800,000) lawyers who are looking (some desperately) for a way to make more money and are not highly social-media-savvy.

There is a growing industry of people, not all of them disbarred lawyers, pouring poison in the ears of those 200,000 lawyers, trying to sell them on the next great way to find “leads” on the internet: comment spam, ghostblogging, splogging, dreckblogging to name just four.

If I run into a lawyer—one of the 200,000—who is funding comment spam, and I send him a gentle email, one of two things will happen: he will stop funding comment spam, or he will not. The latter outcome is more likely: since he doesn’t know that he will be named, he has little incentive to stop (the Bradley Johnson Rule)—comment spamming is probably not a violation of the DRs, and even if it were the State Bar wouldn’t do anything about it.

If he stops, that’s great: one down, 199,999 to go. (Woo hoo!) If he doesn’t, and if calling out the cheaters is wrong on principle, then I’ve done all I can. Talk about futility!

On the other hand, if I am willing to put the cheater’s name up in lights, he will eventually get the message:

[L]aw bloggers can do something about the law field spammers. Because unlike the other sites, these folks generally have very little Google juice and should actually care about their reputations. So if a few blogs decide to out the spammers, this could have a pretty big effect on the firms. When their names are Googled by potential clients, the potential clients will see that they are spammers. And it will no doubt cause them to stop.

Eric Turkewitz, New Spam Comment Policy for Law Firms (You Will Be Exposed)

That’s specific deterrence at work.

Not only will the specific cheater get the message, but some other lawyers in his position will get the message as well. That’s general deterrence.

People market themselves online to manipulate their reputations. One way or another—whether they pay FindLaw or Total Attorneys, hire a disgraced-former-lawyer “social media expert,” or do it themselves, they are putting themselves (as Carolyn might say) out there. The guys financing FindLaw to post dreckbloggen (Goldberg Sager & Associates; Arye Lustig & Sassower; Kahn, Gordon, Timko & Rodriquez to name but three) are reaping whatever (probably slight) benefit the dreck accumulates. They pay (lots of money) for their names to be publicly associated with the dreck; it’s appropriate for their names to be publicly associated with the opprobrium that dreck generates. As Scott writes:

There’s no right to enjoy the benefits of public self-promotion, assuming there are any, with impunity.  When you put yourself out there, you invite scrutiny.  If you can’t take it, then you’ve come to the wrong place.  Your peers may adore you or think you’re dumb as dirt, not to mention unethical, deceptive and scummy.  That’s the risk of going public.

Finally: I, for one, would just as soon not see more attempts by the state bars to regulate the internet: they will screw it up.

Our only hope of having rational rules for lawyer marketing online is to make and enforce them ourselves. And the only tool we have in any effort to enforce rational rules for lawyer marketing online is the credible threat of reputational harm resulting from misconduct. So even if you would never ever call out a lawyer who is (directly or indirectly) lying, cheating, or polluting, you should be glad that there are those of us who will.

Dear Mr. Bennett,

Thank you for including my company in your blog post yesterday about the ethics of legal ghostblogging.  As a (relatively) new form of communication, blogging is still in many ways going through its growing pains, and as more and more professionals and businesses begin to see the value of blogging I know that there will be many more debates about various aspects of it, including continuing ethical debates.  Like you, I think these debates are important, and I look forward to seeing (and perhaps being a part of) how the field evolves.

The ethics of having a ghostwriter in a field that is still in many ways expected to be transparent is something that I discuss with each and every one of my clients; that is why some of my clients choose to have my tagline at the bottom of each post that I write for them, and every client of mine knows that I expect them to read and approve every post that appears on their blog. Personal and professional responsibility is not something I neglect or take lightly.  As you might expect, I have many of my own opinions about this subject and would be happy to engage in conversation with you if you are interested in discussion.

The reason I am writing you today is because–although I have no desire to censor the debate–I would like to ask you, as a professional courtesy, to remove your reference and link to my client testimonials page.  You are welcome to leave your reference to my business and my home page (your readers can find my client testimonials page from there if they are so inclined.) As I said above, professional responsibility is not something I take lightly, and I feel it is my professional responsibility to be the “front man” in this debate, and bear the brunt of this particular criticism. I realize that in the end this is your forum and your decision, and I appreciate your consideration of my clients and of my request.

If you would like to discuss this topic further I invite you to e-mail me privately at any time.

Best Regards,
Jenni Buchanan

www.LegalGhostblogger.com
My blog: http://blogprofs.typepad.com/

Dear Ms. Buchanan:

Thank you for your email.

Blogging is not so novel that there are no precedents. In the original post I drew analogies to claiming other lawyers’ results and résumés; in the non-legal world it’s like putting a picture of one thing on the outside of a can filled with another. I note that, of the five “bloggers” with testimonials on your testimonial page, only two use your tagline; Gene Osofsky, Rick Law, and Kimberly T. Lee do not. Why do you suppose that is?

It is very important for the discussion of the ethics of lawyers using ghostbloggers to be conducted publicly, in full view of those who might be affected by lawyers’ marketing choices—not only the clients whose fortunes and futures might be at stake, but also the lawyers whose reputations are at stake. You take professional responsibility seriously, but your clients are the ones with their licenses and their reputations on the line.

It is crucial that those with ultimate legal and ethical responsibility for online marketing (the lawyers) realize that they have some skin in the game. Some lawyers feeling that it is okay to have a “front man” causes many of the problems with unethical online marketing: they trust a non-lawyer to do it for them, and wind up paying for spam, splogging, or ghostblogging. I suspect that when lawyers realize that they might be called to public account for the things they delegate to others (Outsourcing Marketing = Outsourcing Ethics), they give a lot more thought to their marketing choices.

I’d be happy to hear your arguments that hiring a legal ghostblogger is ethical, but I don’t think your clients should be insulated from the effects of this particular decision.

Mark

Do you look like John Edwards? No, I thought not. Yet everyone knows that success is tied to physical attractiveness. So you might be interested in GhostMug.com. GhostMug.com works on the same principles as GhostWins.com: you pay a small monthly fee, and we provide you with pictures of a trustworthy person who fits your basic demographics—just like you but much better looking. As long as you continue your subscription, you can continue using the pictures as a substitute for your own—let’s face it—homely mug in your online marketing. We’ll even send you weekly updates of “your” face in law-related poses. $250 a month gets you a syndicated face, which other subscribers might also use (we can’t guarantee that someone in your field of law and geographical area will not use the same face as you) or $500 a month gets you a personalized face, which only you will have permission to use.

Since you’re still reading this, odds are that you didn’t graduate from a Tier-One law school. You know that it doesn’t make any difference to the results you get (or lease, through GhostWins.com), but some paying clients might be more likely to hire you if your resume were a little more impressive. GhostResume.com can fix that problem. On the same model as GhostWins.com and GhostMug.com, GhostResume.com allows you to contract out your credentials. For a nominal fee, you get to use the guaranteed-to-impress bona fides of an actual lawyer in your marketing materials. Your clients will never know the difference.

To maximize your online marketing potential, sign up for TheWholeGhostPackage.com. You’ll get weekly GhostWins, a GhostMug, and a matching GhostResume for a discounted monthly $700 (syndicated) or $1,400 (personalized).

So how is it okay for a lawyer to hire a ghostwriter to write his blog?

When a client hires a lawyer, more than the results or the face or the résumé, he’s paying for the lawyer’s knowledge, intellect and heart—attributes that good writing reveals and ghostwriting falsifies. Hiring a ghostwriter to write your blog (like some of the people here using a ghostwriter “to enhance their credibility”) is no more ethical than subscribing to TheWholeGhostPackage.com.