Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

Last week I met Kevin O'Keefe.  Kevin is the genius behind LexBlog which designs and creates law blogs and supports legal bloggers like myself.  If you like the design and functionality of this blog, thank Kevin.  His team designed it.  

Kevin's company also runs LexMonitor, the best round-up of legal blogs around, as well as LexTweet which tracks lawyers who use Twitter.  Kevin also has an award winning blog "Real Lawyers Have Blogs" which is something every ahead-of-the-curve-lawyer should read.

Kevin was in Miami speaking at a convention and announced an-after-hours "beer for bloggers" get together at Tobacco Road via his blog and Twitter page.  For those of you not familiar with Miami, Tobacco Road is the oldest bar in Miami, with liquor license no. 001, and a relaxing place to hang out.

It was a nice time. Some of the lawyers drove for a couple of hours to Miami to make it. 

Legal marketing expert Paula Black, virtual law firm DirectLaw entrepreneur Richard Granat, international business lawyer Santiago Cuerto, estate planning lawyer David Shulman, business lawyer and Gulf War hero Juan Antúnez, and criminal defense lawyer and super-blogger Brian Tannenbaum all showed up. 

Kevin is an inspiring story. He was a real life lawyer and trial attorney in rural Wisconsin and then created Prairie Law (which he sold to Lexis).  He hit his stride by moving to Seattle to create his LexBlog success.  His company supports something like 3,000 law firms, from blogging law students to solo lawyers to the Am Law 200 big law firms.  LexBlog is an impressive network and helps small law firms like mine be the proverbial big fish in the small pond.  

I remember last year when I was searching for a company to host my blog.  I emailed and then spoke to the people at LexBlog.  I thought that I was interviewing them to see if they were going to meet my blog requirements.  Half-way through the 30 minute conversation, I realized that they were interviewing me to see if I met their criteria. 

There are a lot of top notch blogs and lawyers on the LexBlog platform - like Bill Marler's Blog which has expanded to include the NoroBlog and the Food Poison Journal which have touched upon cruise ship norovirus outbreaks. 

My first blog on Lexblog was on September 10th last year. Things started slowly.  Maybe only 20 or 30 people a day stumbled on to my blog, probably by accident.  But I'm now 171 days and 173 blogs down the road (who's counting?)  Last week alone, over 14,000 different people viewed over 25,000 pages on this little blog.  Not bad.  

More importantly, the blog has been cited in national law journals, local newspapers in Florida, and news sources in Europe and the Caribbean.  

Thanks LexBlog.   And next time I'll buy the beer at Tobacco Road.    

To see what other lawyers are saying about Kevin and LexBlog, consider reading "God Bless Mrs. O'Keefe" (pretty funny) by a South Carolina trial lawyer, David Swanner.

Credits:

Tobacco Road   Kevin O'Keefe

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In a prior article, I discussed how cruise lines can report on breaking news by using social media applications like Twitter and Twitpic and manage their reputations in the process.

Twitter was the first to report the collision between Carnival and Royal Caribbean's cruise ships at port in Cozumel. Neither Carnival nor Royal Caribbean used their Twitter pages.

Instead, Carnival employee @Dan85Poindexter was the first person to tweet that Carnival's Legend collided with Royal Caribbean's Enchantment of the Seas in Cozumel after the Legend's mooring lines were released.

Apparently, strong winds pushed Carnival's Legend into the Enchantment, causing relatively minor damage.  Some have characterized the incident as the two cruise ships "trading paint."

Another person on Twitter @enchantedtravel reported on Twitter: "RCCL damage not severe, no tears in hull, and have left for Belize City. Unsure re Legend." She then posted three photos of the collision: http://twitpic.com/jsnyw  http://twitpic.com/jso07 http://twitpic.com/jso18

In addition to the tweeting passengers, a resourceful passenger uploaded his video of the Carnival - Royal Caribbean collision to YouTube.  One of the passengers on the video is heard criticizing the Captain of the Carnival cruise ship: "you have the whole f - - - ing ocean to park on!"

It should be obvious to anyone with a computer that breaking news will no longer be covered first by newspapers or the conventional media, but by citizen journalists, iPhone photographers and YouTube videographers.

Its nice to see the Twitpics and YouTube videos for yourself rather than having to rely on cruise line press statements and the usual spin.

Photo credit: @enchantedtravel

Video credit: hedojake (via YouTube)
 

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Cruise lines which are in touch with their market understand the need to be versed with all aspects of Social Media 2.0.  Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube all present an inexpensive and highly effective way to get a company's message out to the public.  This is particularly important in times of crisis management, such when a fire breaks out or a bout of swine flu is running its course on a cruise ship.

Most cruise lines remain clueless.  Royal Caribbean, for example, has a Twitter page @royalcaribbean, but it has not been updated since June 19th.  The only tweet says: "Look for updates here soon!" - that was over three months ago. It resembles an abandoned store front.  

Other cruise lines which are using Twitter or FaceBook are not maximizing the potential offered by social media applications.  Companies like NCL  @NCLFreestyle have pleasant enough websites and utilize Twitter but are mostly just trying to push ticket sales.  Recent tweets by NCL: "hottest new cruise," cruises for "$249," etc.  You get the idea.

The problem with these tweets is that they flaunt the etiquette which has developed on Twitter.  Effective "twitterers" understand that hard sale tactics don't work.  In fact, they turn potential customers off.  But interacting with the public, and providing accurate and relevant information via a conversation, works.  You could imagine how ineffective and counter productive it would be if I took NCL's approach on Twitter - "hottest new lawyer," lawsuits for "$249," etc.  A bad idea.

Princess Cruises - What's Social Media?

When things go wrong at sea, the public deserves to receive accurate information, fast. And Twitter is the best way to do just that. 

When the Princess cruise ship "Royal Princess" caught fire on June 18th, the cruise line didn't release any information to the public.  But a passenger, a Pastor from South Carolina,  @gregsurratt tweeted about the fire from his iphone on the cruise ship.  He indicated that the fire was bigger than expected, that the cruise ship was dark, and that a tug had to tow the ship back to port in Egypt.  Frantic families in the U.S. had to rely on Pastor Surratt for information about their loved ones. He even tweeted photos of the fire, the passengers sprawling out on the deck in the dark, and the tug via "Twitpic" - an application which permits photos to be uploaded onto Twitter. 

When the cruise line finally awoke and posted its typical less-than-forthcoming corporate press statement, no one was paying attention to Princess Cruises.  Everyone was listening to Pastor Surratt tweeting away on the cruise ship in the Mediterranean.  Most troubling was that the press releases finally issued from Princess Cruises' corporate offices in Santa Clarita down-played the incident and provided incomplete and misleading information. 

Princess Cruises not only lost an opportunity to interact with the public via Twitter, but it lost credibility in the process.    

Twitter and YouTube - Effective PR Tools - P & O Cruises Gets An "A" 

Princess Cruises' sister brand P & O Cruises knows what it is doing in the world of social media.  P & O Cruises has had more than its fair share of bad things happen on its cruise ships.  It is best known for the tragic death of Dianne Brimble, who died due to a toxic mix of alcohol and a date rape drug several years ago.  The brand was known for heavy drinking, out of control parties and general debauchery.

But in the last two years, the cruise line has turned its image around.  The PR people at this cruise line rebulit P & O's reputation.  Social media played a big part.

For example, last May when the Pacific Dawn was sailing with passengers and crew infected with H1N1 swine flu, the news media in Australia went nuts. Front page news articles labeled the cruise ship the "swine ship."   

P & O went on the offensive. CEO Ann Sherry began giving short statements on the cruise line's blog.  The cruise line's website contains links to its Twitter and FaceBook pages as well as to "ship blogs" including the Pacific Dawn.  The cruise line knew how to upload videos of cruise activities to its ship blogs as part of its general marketing. It now had the experience to use this media to deal with this crisis. 

Ms. Sherry appeared on the scene, wearing a very smart red dress, and looked directly into the camera. She provided information about sick passengers and what the company was doing to address the issue. The cruise line used its Twitter page @POCruises to provide additional updates and links to the video.  It even uploaded a photo via "Twitpic" of Ms. Sherry, standing in the rain surrounded by reporters, while the beleaguered cruise ship with its sick passengers arrived at port. 

When the flu passed its course, the next ship blog, entitled "Clean Ship," showed photos of the Captain and crew having fun in the disco, smiling and laughing.  The message to the public was quite effective - everything is fine, come on aboard.

In the past several months, P & O Cruises continues to use social media effectively.  Ms, Sherry still appears regularly on YouTube videos, talking about the presence of surveillance cameras on the cruise ships, responsible drinking programs, and "customer care" teams.

it is nice to see a cruise line connecting with the public in this manner.     

Photo credits  

Photo no. 1 of Ann Sherry - Zimbio - "P & O Cruises Holds Swine Flu Conference" (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images AsiaPac)

Other photographs and video - P & O Cruises

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I first became intrigued with Twitter when I watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech in February of this year. The galley was filled with people twittering away on their Blackberries and iphones, sending out their own spin on the President’s speech. CNN covered the story and added their own perspective via @CNN.

A few days later I registered @CruiseLaw. I was hooked. In March, I started a Twitter forage that continues today.

Now a little over six months later, I can’t imagine not interacting with the people who follow me on Twitter. I have connected with more people on Twitter in the last 6 months than I have in real life in last 30 years. 6,700 followers. OK, I admit it. I don’t know them all. 

But the experience has led to newspaper and radio interviews, business referrals across the U.S., a modest group of fans and an even larger group of enemies who follow my tweets religiously for no other reason than to instantly and vigorously disagree with me. I like the agitators and detractors best.  It has been fun.

Lawyers USA Weekly recently ran an interesting article by Sylvia Hsieh which featured four lawyers who successfully turned their tweets into clients. Unfortunately, the article is no longer available on line without a subscription. But Bruce Carlton (@brucecarton) of Legal Blog Watch did a good job summarizing my small part in the article as follows:

"James Walker (@CruiseLaw) an attorney in South Miami, Fla., whose practice is devoted solely to suing cruise lines on behalf of injured passengers. Walker tweets about the three things he knows best: cruise ship law, cruise ship law and cruise ship law."

Its pretty funny to be pigeon-holed so accurately by a reporter in a 15 minute telephone interview.

Cruise Ship Law.  Exactly.  Welcome to my place in the Twitter Kingdom.

Don't be a stranger.  Follow me @CruiseLaw

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