Buchanan Ingersoll Hires Social Media Consultant
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney has hired a consultant to train its lawyers how to use social media and created a policy governing their use of the technology.
The law firm is one of several Pennsylvania firms using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even YouTube as a marketing tool, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Buchanan Ingersoll hopes to use Facebook and Twitter to distribute news releases and advisories, the firm’s communications director Tracie Gliozz told the Post-Gazette. David Gurwin, shareholder and chair of the technology transactions group at Buchanan, said the firm’s new social media policy “is not designed to be heavy-handed but to remind people when they are posting on social networking sites, they are often viewed as representatives of law firms and to keep that in mind.”
The Post-Gazette story gives two other examples of law firms using social media:
• Rothman Gordon in Pittsburgh has created three YouTube videos, two of them about workers compensation and the third about the legal rights of property owners contacted about natural gas drilling. “We’re kind of hoping to plant a few seeds and hope it goes viral,” said the firm’s director of marketing, Anne Parys.
• Pepper Hamilton posts podcasts on its website that can be downloaded, maintains three blogs and has a Twitter account for updates on tax decisions. “To be competitive in today’s market, a firm’s marketing strategy has to include podcasts, webinars, blogs, Facebook postings and Twitter accounts,” Jennifer Kuban, director of marketing in the firm’s Pittsburgh office, told the newspaper.
