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This is one in a series of marketing articles that will explain
e-marketing in layman’s terms. This
information is provided to help you modify your online presence to get
your practice noticed.
Marketing Tip:
E-Marketing v. Your Physical Safety
Recently I had a conversation with a
mediator who was stalked by a party and that individual made it all the
way to her driveway at home. The police were called and the threat was
removed, but it left her scared because her chosen profession had
inadvertently compromised her family’s security. Her feeling was that this
had happened because she had a presence on Facebook. Have you exposed your
family in the same way ?
We all put mountains of information
out on the web daily… often without a single thought for our own security.
In the case of mediators, as we often walk away from a settlement with one
party who is very angry with us, this stray data can lead them right to
our front door. There are databases available for free or a small charge
that can reverse almost anything – landline number to address, cell phone
to address, email to address, and more. While you can’t stop marketing
your practice you can be smart about how you do it.
Physical Addresses
This is the one piece of information that
you don’t want anyone but your friends and family to have access to.
Therefore you can’t put it out there on your social media profile or on
your website. But the real problem is more complex than that.
Mediators who rent office space are
normally fairly safe in publishing their office address, assuming that
there is a modicum of security in their building. However, those of you
who work at home can’t afford to publish your “office” address because it
is also your home address. There are a number of solutions, including
limiting the address information that you list to city and state, renting
a PO Box, and using that as your address, or joining a group that offers
mediation space and using that as your physical address. Consider the
mediators who mediate out of their homes (yes, some of those exist !) and
include maps on their websites to their offices – they’ve just given an
angry party all the information needed to find them.
In many instances mediators have
their addresses on their websites without even realizing it – do you
include a PDF version of your CV or perhaps you publish a series of
articles with your address in the author bio ? What about public
directories like the Georgia Bar, GODR, ACR, or even the Secretary of
State’s corporation registry ? How much address information are you
publishing there and how much can you reduce it in order to safeguard
yourself ?
Phone Numbers
Did you know that there are services on the web that will allow anyone
to take a phone number (landline or cell) and reverse it to get the
physical address associated with it ? It might cost them up to $30 to get
the information but if they really want to find you they can. Clearly you
have to publish a phone number so people can contact you to make an
appointment to use your services, so how are you going to safeguard your
address ? There are some options for you:
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Use an answering service as your primary published
number (including on your business cards)
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Have your office address (assuming you don’t use a
home office) listed as your billing and physical address in the phone
directory. While this happens automatically with a landline you, need
to make a conscious decision to do this with your cell phone as that
is often in your personal name.
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Use a “re-director” service. This is basically a
number that is owned by a third-party service that will automatically
redirect calls to whatever number you want. I use a company called
Accessline, and for less than $20 per month any call to my re-director
number will automatically dial up to 5 numbers that I have predefined.
In my case it calls my desk phone, primary cell phone, secondary cell
phone, and finally home phone. The fact that the call is being
re-routed is hidden from the caller. If you choose this option it is
important to remember to hide your outgoing number when you call the
caller back ! |
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Do you list your phone number on Facebook or
LinkedIn ? If you’ve published an alternate number for security purposes,
it is important that you do not list your direct cell phone number or
(worse) your home phone number but instead use the re-director number or
answering service number. If your friends don’t know your phone number
they probably aren’t your friends, and they can cope with using the
alternative number and waiting an extra minute or two to get through to
you.
Social Media
While LinkedIn is a fairly safe environment
because it is business oriented and most users don’t put personal
information out there, the same cannot be said of Facebook. Today we share
everything in this space – pictures of our grandchildren, notes about our
travels, our political opinions and more. This is not information that
should be available to the general public. There are a few tips that will
safeguard you:
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Maintain a business page for your practice on
Facebook. To do this you must first be a personal member (you can
create a “dummy” personal account for this) because you have to be the
administrator of your business page. Your personal page should be
restricted so only friends and family can see it. This is a standard
Facebook setting. When you set it the public will know that you have a
personal page on Facebook, but if you set security at the max only
people you have approved for your friend list will be able to see the
information that you publish.
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If you publish photos on your business page in real
time (such as those from a conference or training event) it is
critical that you turn off geotagging on your cell phone. Geotagging
is a feature that allows a viewer to see exactly where and when these
photos were taken. You do not need to publish a photo that effectively
notifies the viewer that you are at the ACR conference in New Orleans
and will be there for the next 3 days ! Here is a series of
instructions to disable geotagging on your iPhone, Android or
Blackberry:
http://tinyurl.com/3v4xznm
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Geo-Locators
You may have also joined one of the
geo-locators such as Foursquare. Using these tools, you add locations to
your profile (e.g. airport, courthouse, office, McDonalds, a conference
hotel) and “check in” when your phone is in that location. Many people
take that information further and set the software to automatically post
their check-ins to their Facebook profiles. Do I really need to say how
bad an idea this is ? You may want to know which of your friends has
already arrived at a conference that you’re going to or who is at the same
airport you are when you’ve got a long layover, but do you really want the
entire world to know where you are ?
While Foursquare requires you to create an authorized viewer list (similar
to Facebook friends), if you haven’t set the necessary privacy settings
for your personal Facebook page and you have Foursquare automatically post
your check-ins to that page, then you’ve potentially put yourself in real
danger.
Domain Registry
One other way people can find you through the
internet is by researching your website registration. When you buy your
domain name you are required to furnish your name, phone number and other
identifying information (basically everything that you’d need to use your
credit card online). All of that information is then stored in a
publically accessible database. If someone executes a WHOIS search (e.g.
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois
), they’ll get all your identifying information merely by looking up your
website information. Typically domain registrars charge less than $15 for
this service, and if someone really wants to find you, $15 is well worth
the expense. Most domain registrars now offer domain security that will
put your information into the national database as required but will hide
the information from the general public.
The internet is a wonderful tool for
marketing your practice. People need to be able to find you, and you can’t
count on trusted referrals as the sole source for growing your business.
Therefore you need to be smart about the information that you publish and
how you publish it. Think about how the information you are posting could
lead an angry party to find you and your family. If you have any doubt,
don’t publish it. Make sure your security settings are at their max, and
update them regularly. When you set up a room for mediation, you always
put yourself closest to the door for safety and ensure that you know where
the security people are located – doesn’t your online marketing deserve
the same attention ?
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Michele Gibson is a Georgia-registered neutral and a certified
emerging media consultant. She is the president of Digital Smart
Tool, LLC – an e-marketing firm offering website design, SEO,
electronic newsletters, social media coaching, and marketing training
seminars.
Phone: 404-592-3367 E-mail:
mgibson@digitalsmarttools.com |
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