When not busy appearing on Saturday Night Live, Facebook’s leaders spend their time dreaming up ever-more-ingenious ways to make money off your social life. They’re pretty good at what they do, as the company’s recent $50 billion valuation suggests. And they may have found their next gold mine in the “like” button.
You know the “like” button. It’s that little thing users employ to profess their affection for Tootsie Pops, Care Bears, the latest Mark Wahlberg flick, or anything else with a Facebook fan page. There’s a lot of power behind the “like” button, and Facebook knows it. There is also a lesson in it for legal marketers.
It matters much less now where your content was published originally – or if it was published at all.
Facebook plans to let advertisers re-transmit users’ “likes” as sponsored messages. So, for example, if Mya Besfrend sees “The Fighter” and decides to “like” it, Paramount Pictures can then republish Mya’s “like” as an ad on her friends’ pages.
Privacy issues aside, we think this is a very smart move by Facebook, as it plays on the influence of endorsements from one’s friends. Such endorsements simply can’t be beat. Sure, Paramount Pictures may be thrilled to see its film get a rave review in The New York Times. But it also knows that the recommendation of your friend is even more likely to get you to the theater.
What does this have to do with legal marketing? Two very important things. First, social media environments are great places to spread your content. Every time someone in your network passes your content on to someone else, the person who shared your work is giving it an implicit seal of approval. As Facebook and Paramount know, this is a very valuable thing. The recipient, meanwhile, is going to be favorably disposed to your work because it came endorsed by someone she trusts. This is an important mindset for someone reading your content to have, and it gives you the best chance of converting that person into a new business relationship.
Second, (and this is the true power and benefit of social media as a distribution channel for content) it matters much less now where your content was published originally – or if it was published at all. The endorsement of your content from your prospect’s friend will have far more impact on her than any masthead.
As lawyers and law firms are content generating machines, this is great news for legal marketers. For as long as you have meaningful content and a healthy social network (or access to one, through, for instance, JD Supra), you can harness the power of virtual endorsements. This is a trend we “like” a lot.