Vatican : You’re fishing in the aquarium if not using social media

As reported by David Gibson (@gibsonwrites), the Vatican’s chief media strategist, Archbishop Claudio Celli, says the Catholic Church cannot ignore the opportunities presented by social media.

In our church we are always fishing inside the aquarium, and we forget that most fish are outside the aquarium.

Unless the church engages social media, we will wind up talking to ourselves.

He might as well have been talking about law firms.

I spent the better part of yesterday reviewing the Internet presence of decent sized law firms in a major U.S. city. I felt a little sorry for the lawyers working in most of the firms. Admittedly they were not Am Law 200 firms with larger marketing budgets, but most of the firms had the better part of a hundred lawyers or more.

Less than 10% were blogging, and it would be generous to call most of those “blogs.” Few had much of a social media presence. Those who did mostly focused on sharing news about the firm and their lawyers.

No question they were good firms who had built their client base over the years through relationships and word of mouth. All offline – heck, what other way was there.

Today though there are prospective clients to be reached via social media who may be forgoing legal services altogether, not because they don’t have the money, but because they were not aware they had a need. This includes businesses.

In addition, there are prospective clients already using law firms who spend their time online using social media. A lot of their time. Just look at the business people walking down the sidewalk glued to their smartphones.

Without your firm’s lawyers having a strong and effective social presence via blogging, LinkedIn, and Facebook, your firm’s lawyers are fishing in the same aquarium as every other law firm. That aquarium isn’t getting any bigger and the older fish are dying.

Celli acknowledges there are challenges with social.

We are not naive about the perils of social media, but when you enter into this arena you have to look mainly at the positive aspects.

Learn from the Vatican, folks. Focus on the positive. Fish outside the aquarium. There is much to be gained through social.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Sarah Price.