First off, my personal thoughts and prayers to all impacted by today’s terrorist attacks in Boston. It is beyond words.

Unfortunately, while I posted the following message privately in a Facebook legal marketing group, I believe it needs to be posted publicly as well:

For those of you have auto messages set to post via Hootsuite, blogs, etc. you might want to recall them. For instance, I have a dinner invite set to go. I will not be sending it out for a couple days.

Who would guess that the first offender to not pull their auto tweets would be a Boston firm? Oy.

In an increasingly connected world, it is hard to hear of a tragedy and not think immediately to our friends, family and colleagues who might be personally impacted. Yes, the odds are slim, but someone knows these people. Their families.

When your posts are going over a social network, they might not be well received.

In these moments of tragedy, auto posts on Twitter and Facebook come off as crass, out of place, ill-timed, and thoughtless.

So just have a simple policy. Pull them. All of them. Give everyone a minimum of 24-hours to compose themselves. To not be spammed by your firm’s latest blog post, or dinner invitation.

Quickly and personally reach out to those who might be impacted and offer your thoughts and well-wishes.

Take off your lawyer/marketer hat and put on your compassionate, human one. No one will miss your blog post (although I bet it was really special). No one will miss out on our dinner invite if it goes out tomorrow or Wednesday.