Is your law firm blogging its way to irrelevance?
Jim Romenesko (@romenesko) asks this morning if Boston sports media is stumbling towards irrelevance.
Romenesko was prompted by Boston Magazine’s Alan Siegel (@alansiegeldc) who called the city’s sports journalists stale, crotchety and shameless blowhards.
It’s not just the city’s core sports personalities that haven’t changed much. The way the local media covers games is stuck in the past, too. Beat writers may blog, chat, and utilize social media now, but after games, they’re still churning out the same kinds of vanilla recaps that have long been a newspaper staple.
The same kind of vanilla recaps — boy does that remind me of how a lot of law firms approach social media. They’re using blogs and social media, but in name only.
Rather than truly engaging the firm’s audience in an authentic and spontaneous way, many firms kick out the same articles, newsletters, alerts, and promotional materials they’ve had for decades. They’ll just use blogs and social media as a pipe to extend the on-way broadcasting.
Blogging and social media is not only a new media in that it’s been around only a few years, but it’s a new type of media where engagement, authenticity, and relationships matter. The connections earned lead to the firm and its lawyers becoming more and more relevant.
Those law firms who learn to use social media will build connections and grow their business. Those who don’t will blog and use social media their way to irrelevance.