[MUSIC PLAYING] Is social media actually hurting your law firm? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. For today's episode, I actually wanted to use an edgier title like, why you should close your Twitter account, or why Facebook is bad for business. But I figured with everything that's going on with a certain social media company at the moment, it's better to just stay away from that active dumpster fire. Speaking of dumpster fires though, that leads me right to our topic today, which is social media. I'm not going to dive into the what it is, the benefits, etc, etc. It's 2023. You know all of this. If your firm isn't on social media, and I mean, you don't have an account, not that you're not active, which is an entirely different thing that we're going to discuss. If your firm isn't on social media, you could go ahead and skip this episode. If you're still with me, however, let me go ahead and paint you a word picture. A hundred years ago, the word "storefront" meant exactly what it sounds like, the front of your store. Obviously, businesses of different sizes have different requirements, but for thousands upon thousands of small businesses in the US and around the world, that storefront was one of the most important, if not the most important, elements of a marketing strategy for your business. Fashion retailers created brilliant displays, butchers and bakers, and even cookware shops decorated window displays to entice passers-by to stop, look, and in some cases smell, and then hopefully come inside and buy something. Today though, that's not where sales are made. Yes, in-store sales do make up significant portions of revenue for many types of businesses, But in many, many cases, I guess close to the majority now, that revenue has moved online. At this point, lawyers are one of the only types of non-retail businesses that could even really try to pick up on foot traffic with offices that are placed near courthouses. This does lead us to some other interesting conclusions about the physical fitness of the legal community, but I digress. Today, the revenue has moved online, and the storefront has moved online too. And because of how the internet works, and how unfortunately expansive it is, that storefront takes up a lot more real estate in the virtual world than it did in the physical world. This is actually to our benefit, but it also presents some really serious challenges for marketing. I'll get to the point. Social media is a fantastic avenue for marketing. It provides tons of benefits. It adds personality to your business and can extend your reach beyond your wildest dreams. But and this is a very big caveat. If you don't commit to social media, you shouldn't do it. You shouldn't even create the account. In 1905 or 1910 or basically any time before the internet, if you walked by a storefront with no lights on with their sign covered up and no display in the window, you wouldn't go in. You might knock on the door, but frankly, you'd be surprised if anyone even answered. You probably hope no one does answer. You might have driven there on a weekend afternoon to look for something you need, but if it looks like there's nobody home, you'll turn around and go to the next door. That's what it looks like when you create social media accounts and don't post to them or update them, but it can be even worse. It's common to see things like mismatched logos between profiles because of poor management of social media accounts. And I'm sure most of you have visited a business's Facebook or Twitter account only to see a post from six years ago and wonder, "Hmm, are these guys still in business?" Now what I'm saying here, this isn't going to kill your business. It's not going to actually prevent clients from reaching you or cause something to break down somewhere. But it does hurt your reputation. It hurts your firm's online image. And today, that's important. you choose to play that game. Social media is clearly here to stay in some format, so it's wise to understand the way the game is played, and even to test the waters every now and then. But if you don't know when your firm's last Facebook post was, or if you don't even know who's responsible for that, maybe it's time to sit out a few innings. If social media is one game, marketing is the Olympics, and there's always something you've never heard of coming up next on the TV Guide. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out rosenadvertising.com for more. Thanks.[MUSIC]