Working From Home Or Living At Work? || Why No One Likes Your Law Firm

Episode Notes

Transcript

Conrad Saam: Hello, dear listener. You are catching Gyi and I right after Veteran’s Day. And boy, oh boy, did Gyi and I have a lot to talk about how law firms handled or mishandled Veteran’s Day on the socials. Gyi, intro to a rant. What do you think? What was going on? What happened with Veteran’s Day?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, you know, we’ve talked about this before. So, Veteran’s Day comes and there are some very heartfelt posts. I saw some really good posts, lawyers sharing their own experience as veterans or a family member.  There’s a veteran thanking the veterans, wonderful. And then I saw the canned American flag with the same caption and a couple firms, every single lawyer, same picture, same caption, which led me to opine that perhaps to some social media person, convince the lawyers that in order to stay top of mind and build your awareness, we need to blast these canned veterans’ posts across all of your profiles.

Here’s a thing. We’re going to talk about growing your like today. It’s a little foreshadowing. Some of these firms I actually know and it made me like them less.

Conrad Saam: It made you like them less. Why Gyi? I agree but —

Gyi Tsakalakis: I mean on the one hand, it’s like — look. I get, you know, you want to stay top of mind and some of you, some of these lawyers, they probably genuinely do feel grateful for the service of the veterans. Some of them might be veterans themselves, but gosh it just feels so inauthentic when it’s the same message, the same stock photo across all these profiles and all these platforms. It’s like they didn’t all get together and agree that they’re going to write the same thing. So, it just makes it feel so tacky.

Conrad Saam: Let me take this a little step further. We talked about this before and the canned expected. Thank you, Veterans on Veteran’s Day, does nothing to distinguish the firm. There’s no creativity in that. There’s no genuine engagement. There’s nothing there. You’re not doing anything. If all you’re doing is putting up, “Thank You Veterans” on your Facebook page like every single other law firm, it means nothing.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s firing up the servers.

Conrad Saam: You’re doing nothing. Frankly, honestly, if you have a social media consultant who’s the best that they can do is put up an American flag for you on your behalf, like do more, please. Do more.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah.

Conrad Saam: And with veteran, like this is one of those things. It’s so easy. It is so easy to do something. So, I’m deliberately wearing this t-shirt. If any of you guys watch this on video later on, this is a Til Valhalla Project. This is an organization that works with reducing veteran suicide. There are organizations that work with reducing veterans’ homelessness. Like there’s do something beyond a social media post, otherwise it’s a vapid useless — it’s probably me too much to say it’s useless. It is in no way —

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, it’s not. It’s making me like you less. It’s making other people like you less. The thing is, it’s not — you know, awareness, yeah, sure. But what awareness are you driving? Is it actually making people be like, “Gosh! this just seems like a very canned dismissive way to thank a veteran”?

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Sure, did to me. It just makes it — and then guess what else I did. I was like, “Well, that makes it really easy. I don’t need to be connected with any of these people because I know that the people actually aren’t even running their social media.” It’s some social marketing person is publishing on their behalf and so, therefore, I don’t even need to be connected. There you go, unfollow, unconnect.

Conrad Saam: So, for those of you who lack the creativity and have an agency that lacks the creativity to do something, which is frankly very easy to come up with a way that’s more than Happy Veteran’s Day. This is a great opportunity and we’re going to talk about this. Gyi talked about it just a little bit. We are going to be talking about building brand affinity. What can you do with a thing like veteran? And we got Thanksgiving coming up. We’ve got the December holidays coming up. This isn’t going away. What can you do more than the expected to actually build affinity for your brand, for your law firm. We’re going to get into that in a while.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m taking screenshots, folks. So, if you’re listening to this, you better be careful what you post over the next two months.

Conrad Saam: Aside from Gyi’s rant on Veteran’s Day and by the way, just do something. Please do something more than nothing, okay. We’ve got a great show today, a solid, a solid B-plus. As always, we’re going to hit the news. We’re going to talk about and we’re going to riff off of the Clio Legal Trends Report – Working from Home Versus Living at Work, some specific things out of Clio Legal Trends talking about happiness of lawyers and the boundaries that they put around their work life.

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And then, finally, and this is what we were talking about earlier. This is a really, really big deal, growing your like. This is a difference between brand awareness and brand affinity, and that’s why we’re imploring you to do something more than say, “Happy Veteran’s Day,” but to actually do something for veterans to build your brand affinity

Gyi Tsakalakis: Mr. Lockwood, I’ve only got one question for you. What makes the world go round?

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Male:  Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, teaching you how to promote market and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

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Conrad Saam: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. We’re back. You’re back. Let’s do some news.

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Conrad Saam: All right. Read all about it. Battle of the state of industry reports. It seems like every single directory is putting out their state of legal. So, Clio Legal Trends Report, we covered that quite heavily. Thomson Reuters, this has come out with something. Martindale-Avvo has come out with something. CallRail is coming out with something in December. By the way, we’re kind of making fun of this because it seems like there’s a race to define what the legal industry is thinking about. The upside for you, dear lawyer, is there’s so much you can learn about other people’s research that they’re doing in order to try and make themselves look smart. Take advantage of that. Read some of the stuff, right? I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but get thyself informed, right? There’s a lot coming out there. Hey, Gyi, you are a big Lawmatics person. Can you share both your disclosure as well as law Lawmatics taking someone to the dance.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes. I’m a very proud investor and advisor in Lawmatics. Lawmatics just released their integration with my case which is kind of a full circle moment for Lawmatics and original MyCase founder, Matt Spiegel, very cool, good to see that that collaboration happening and —

Conrad Saam: That incestuous collaboration?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, that’s not involved with my case anymore. So, I guess it depends on how you define that, but yeah, good things going on at Lawmatics and like to see these systems from a user standpoint. I love to see these systems working better together more seamlessly. I think it’s great for lawyers.

Conrad Saam: It’s terrible for us because we do a lot of work tying these systems together, right, for me as an agency.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But you get paid for that.

Conrad Saam: Bad for us, good for you.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Unless you don’t like getting paid.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, money makes the world go round.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re doing it for free?

Conrad Saam: All right, and finally whisperings that there might be a decline in the prevalence of local search results. This was a study done by Joy Hawkins. What I will say is, if you’ve seen a small downtick in your inbounds from local, Joy suggests this might be because local search pack is showing up less frequently. Gyi, your hot take on this.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I’m like the most curmudgeon update person there is, but we see this happen from time to time and a lot of times it’s either something broke over at — people don’t realize that Google can break or it’s just a test that they’re running, right? So, we’ve seen local packs displayed lower in a page. We’ve seen it disappear for certain words. My hunch is — I mean, again, go read what’s going on, the Google war with the social platforms. Let me tell you, folks. You can LHLM me. You can re-email me. I’ll buy you a lunch if Google dumps local because the local user, the person looking for places to go eat or to go shop locally, let me tell you, Google cares about those users. You don’t want to show him 10 blue links.

Conrad Saam: If you want to be fully cynical, you could say that occasionally, one of the four listings in the local pack is an advertisement. You’re now diluting the number of free clicks by taking local out of it, if you want to be a complete Google cynic.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s actually how you know that it’s not going away though because there’s just going to be more ads. Local pack ads are still local packs, so that’s actually a very compelling reason to argue that the local packs aren’t going anywhere.

Conrad Saam: I’m just suggesting that the concentration at the top of the page of non-advertisement decreases. Sorry. The paid concentration increases by taking a local pack out because you’re taking away three free listings.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t even know what we’re talking about because there’s nothing below the LSAs anyway.

(00:10:01)

Conrad Saam: Have you seen some of the SEOs were like, “The newest new thing in SEO.”? Yeah. Anyway, moving on.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

Conrad Saam: I think it’s time for us to take a break.

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Gyi Tsakalakis: And now, for the legal Trends Report minute brought to you by Clio.

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Gyi Tsakalakis: Did you know that lawyers who use Cloud-based software are 29% happier with their professional life? It’s no surprise that lawyers working in the Cloud are more productive, but that are also a lot happier. And why is that? Cloud solutions offer the flexibility to work from anywhere as well as the tools to keep clients up-to-date with their cases at all times so you don’t have to feel tied down to your office. Conrad, does technology make you happier?

Conrad Saam: Sometimes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Sometimes?

Conrad Saam: Sometimes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I mean, 29% happier?

Conrad Saam: Think about what it would take for us to record this podcast without the power of Zoom, right? I’d be on a plane over to Chicago all the time. But the interesting thing that came out of this Clio Legal Trends Report was the real correlation between technology in office, happiness like there was a real focus on kind of mental well-being, and the results were actually pretty surprising to me. I think a lot of times there’s a lot of correlation although perhaps not causation between the things that are showing up in Clio. We’ve called that up before. People who invest in technology have a firm that’s growing faster. Was it because of technology or because you’re interested investing in the firm, right? But the interesting thing that came out with this Legal Trends Report was those correlations, maybe not causal, but correlations between use of technology, working from home, putting boundaries around your work. I think that was — and surprising to me. I think the results were surprising to me.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That sounds like something maybe that’s worth talking about, to learn more about how Cloud technology is helping the legal professionals manage their firm. Download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio, spelled C-L-I-O dot com/trends. Which brings us to an interesting question. Cloud solutions, they do offer flexibility to work from anywhere. Think about working from home versus living at work.

Conrad Saam: Well, I think —

Gyi Tsakalakis: You work from home?

Conrad Saam: I work from home and I live at work. I think the closer you get to business owner, the more you realize that your home office is really you’re living at work. I think that’s a struggle. The Clio Legal Trends Report really points out that there’s a correlation between having boundaries, be it physical boundaries, be it time boundaries between happiness and having those boundaries. I think that the interesting thing on this, Gyi, you and I, we talk about the responsiveness thing all the time which is almost antithetical to the concept of boundaries and I think it’s an interesting balance to think through, if I put these boundaries in my happier, but my clients are unhappy because they can’t get a hold of me at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Aha!

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: See, this is when we were talking about this. This is when I got all fired up and fussy, because responsiveness is not antithetical to having boundaries.  I know some of the old-school types that are listening. Well, first of all, the old-school types, don’t listen to this.

(00:14:58)

But if they were, they’d be like, “Ah, I serve my clients wherever, whenever they need me.” Great, that’s great. That’s why also lawyers, they have a lot of struggles in their personalized because you can still — this is what I propose. You can deliver great client service. You can set realistic expectations about responsiveness and keeping clients informed. You can automate some of the things that would require your on-demandness and still have boundaries, still not live at work. And again, what’s the rule? There is no rule, right?

We know people have high demands. They have short attention spans. They want you to stop their search and you should respond and I still stand by all those things. That’s the best way you’re going to improve that experience for someone that might be — whether they’re a potential client or become a client. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be awake for 24 hours to answer the phone. Come on, do we need to say that?

Conrad Saam: But then, I mean, we’ve also had part of this show where we talked about — remember those autoresponders that are like, “I will get back to this between 12:30 and 12:45 on Tuesdays” right? There can be the overdoing of this boundary setting and to a point where it could —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Of course, that’s just crappy boundaries. Yeah, everybody’s got their own — there are different phase of their — two things they have different visions for their practice and there are different phases. I will tell you this. Most of the firm’s that are more than one lawyer that are serving a big share of their local market, they are not waiting by the phone at three o’clock in the morning for it to ring. They either have a virtual receptionist or they have some other way that they’re dealing with these issues. Anyway, I think in the Legal Trends Report spells this out. It’s about flexibility, right? The flexibility, it’s not — no one’s sitting here being like, “I want to be on-call,” but hey guess what, maybe you like to do some other stuff during the day. Maybe you prefer to do some work at night or maybe you like to get up early and do it when other people aren’t around. Having ways to be able to use technology to work when you want to work on the terms you want to work, that I do think is probably a big part of the story of what’s actually beneficial.

Guess what, it’s true for the clients too. Clients want to be able to get information out there case asynchronously as well. You know what you see, tried to get ahold of my lawyer again. Well, guess what? Make it so that they can get the answer to their question or get the update or whatever it is that they’re looking for or if there’s documents. That technology can’t help that.

Conrad Saam: So, I’m going to read. It’s our reading time. We are not going to do a book report today, but I’m still going to do a small book report from the Legal Trends Report. This is really interesting. This is on page 41. Most significantly, barely half, 51% of lawyers working non-traditional work schedules reported having good health or very good mental health, compared to 74% of those who adhere to a regular work schedule.

Now, what’s implicit in that and what Gyi is talking about here is there’s a regular work schedule that does not need to be the traditional hours, and that’s where you’re getting flexibility with boundaries. I think that’s a really, really key point. There’s probably a high correlation with the, I’m phonetically responsive to everything that leads to an unhappy work-life balance.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s exactly right.  Again, for me, it’s like we’re waxing philosophically about flexibility and working from home and everybody’s got to navigate that for what works best for them. But from a marketing standpoint and from a client service standpoint, you cannot deliver the best experience to people when you’re purely reactive and you’re on demand, you just can’t. You’re not equipped. You’re not prepared. You’re exhausted. You’re scatterbrained. You’re not organized. It just isn’t going to work and so that’s the tie end.

And to Conrad’s point, again, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying send everybody to your voicemail, but that’s the thing. There’s a lot of ways that you can actually implement technology to both create a great experience for both potential clients and clients, and not be on demand yourself. The end. Let’s take a break.

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Conrad Saam: We would like to call out Jeremy Baker for his feedback. Conrad thanks for what you do. I listen to every word of LHLM. This actually went along with the post three years ago, Hard to Believe: I Resigned from His Firm and Started His Own. So, congrats in starting your own firm, Jeremy, and thank you for the feedback. As always, we would love to hear from you. Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts from.

All right, we’re now going to move into what I believe might be the best segment we have ever done, when I’ve been involved in LHLM. This is a transition from building brand awareness to building brand affinity. We started talking about this with Veteran’s Day. To overly simplify this, brand awareness is throwing up the flag that everyone else throws up and saying Happy Veteran’s Day to put that brand in front of people, what it fails to do. And in fact, what Gyi suggested, there may actually be a negative correlation is with brand affinity, the know, like and trust, right? Brand awareness is know. There’s a lot of know going on and a lot of focus on know. For example, billboard ads are a classic know. I am aware of this brand. There is very little emphasis on like and yet some law firms are really killing it by building that like and trust and I think that’s what we want to talk about today, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. And again, this isn’t a band in direct response conversation.

Conrad Saam: Oh, not at all. It’s additive.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It is additive, but I think it’s also — and you mentioned this in the opening there, but it’s about the resource deployment. The resources deployed against direct response are enormous, $500 cost per clicks, whatever they’re paying the social media manager to put up the American flags.

Conrad Saam: Jesus!

Gyi Tsakalakis: I can’t get over that one.

Conrad Saam: By the way, if you’re doing that, go start look somewhere else. I’ll be that direct, come on.  All right, moving on.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But, how about all the people and lawyers, the lawyers that’d been doing this forever, they know this, right? They know about this know, like, trust stuff, right?

Conrad Saam: There are a small handful of lawyers who get this and most of you don’t, frankly. There’s a couple of reasons for this. It’s hard and it takes time and it takes genuine engagement. It’s not something that you can outsource to the social media marketing intern, right, because we’re not going to build know, like and trust for Jeff, the social media marketing intern. It’s got to be for the firm as a whole and it’s a hard thing to do. It’s also less direct, right? We in pay-per-click, we can tell you that you got this revenue if you have a good reporting system, this revenue came from that click, that campaign and so let’s turn that campaign up or turn it down. It’s a firehose.

Brand affinity has nothing to do with that, right? Brand affinity is all about, I know who you are. I like who you are and for whatever reason we have something in common and when I have a need, I’m going to turn to you, right? That is amazing and it’s just miss. Think about like the very negative perspective of the legal industry of lawyers. You guys live with this your entire lives. What we’re talking about is turning this around. Generically, people don’t like lawyers. Specifically, they like their own lawyer. How do we get to a point where they like you, a law firm or a lawyer, before they actually need you? That’s all we’re talking about and it is a mindset. Gyi, I mean we’ve been talking very philosophically at this point, but what are some of the tactical things that we have seen law firms do to build affinity?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Make potato pie at the Elks Club.

Conrad Saam: I knew this was going to come up.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I can’t believe you didn’t plug it. I thought you were going to miss it.

Conrad Saam: I was waiting for the right — okay. Back to the show notes, but I want to talk through here is, there is a return, a full circle to what Gyi and I dealt with, with lawyers when we got into this SEO digital marketing game where lawyers said, “Well, I just do good work and I have this good reputation and that’s where my business is going to come from, by gum.”

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Well, it was Murry (ph) back at the Elks club like, “Oh boy, that guy. I’m a member of the Elks Club and Murry, he’s a lawyer but boy does he make a great potato pie and so I’m going to hire him for my divorce.” Now, Murry’s engagement with the Elks Club and his mean potato pie has nothing to do with him being a good divorce lawyer. In fact, he may not actually do divorce, but there’s the affinity there. What we’re seeing now is a small number, a very select number of law firms building out that affinity that it happened in person at the Elks Club over there, you know, potato pie. I’m going to send that question back to you, Gyi. It’s not the potato pie. What is it? What are law firms doing to build that like and trust digitally?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, this is the thing about it. It starts with “Who are you?” Like, “What are you into?” Like, there’s not, like people that are listening to this and are going to go, “Gyi, they’re taking notes and Gyi’s going to tell me the promoted boosted social campaign that I can use to get my — oh, we got to do potato pies.” Like, “Oh, lawyers that do potato pies. That’s the thing that’s causing people to hire.” No. What do you care about? Because it’s going to come through, it’s going to go back. I’ll tell you what, it goes back to this. I’m bringing it back to the American flags again.

The firms that are posting American flags on all the lawyer profiles, they’re the ones where I’m like, “You know what, they don’t really seem to be that interested in Veteran’s Day,” because they’ve got a canned scheduled post versus the ones that are actually like they were a veteran themselves. They’re sharing experiences. They’re talking about someone in their family. Again, I think that really to me, that drives one of the examples. But tactically, it starts with who you are and what you actually care about. And if you don’t really care about much, guess what it starts with, there’s got to be something in your life that you’re interested in doing, right, please.

Conrad Saam: You sound like a psychiatrist to a teenager right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Please tell me you have a casual hobby that other people might be interested in, at least one other person could be potentially. Start there.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. You know, the key here, everyone is into something and it is not — the know, like and trust is not about I am a lawyer. Because if you ask about know, like and trust as it comes to lawyers, the generic response is not very flattering. We need to go further than that. I love the veterans example. Do something. Go beyond it. Go the slightly extra mile. It’s not that hard. Thanksgiving is coming up. Do something more. Instead of Happy Thanksgiving, donate something. Spend some time at a food kitchen. Do something with the firm or don’t do anything, but putting up a turkey, everyone else is putting up turkeys. It’s doing nothing for you.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. I can think of a handful of lawyers all the time I had that. When we started having this conversation, I started thinking about who comes to mind for you.

Conrad Saam: My favorite example is Morris Lilienthal and it’s a great example of someone who has taken what I will call very generic things and made them a part of who he is. For starters, he’s a very nice avuncular outgoing man, but he’s also a very interested father. Okay. That’s a low bar. Lots of you fall into that category. He’s also very interested in his local market of Huntsville, Alabama and promoting Huntsville, Alabama. I haven’t talked to him without him talking about Huntsville, Alabama being one of the fastest growing places in the US.

Here’s another very easy one with Morris. I’m not hesitant to share this, but he’s gone through a massive weight loss program. The dude was big. Morris and I have probably crossed weight scales recently. He’s looking awesome like you got to be kind of brave on this, but he’s shared his weight loss experience. I think he post like two or three times a week. Morris is really sweaty getting off the Peloton. That’s something that people can relate to. It’s know, like and trust. You’re a really good dad, like you’re doing your best to be a great dad and you’re proud of your kids. That’s something that lots of people can relate to.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I always think of Ken Levinson and Jay Stefani. I know we’ve talked about them before.

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: In fact, it’s kind of the opposite because we had the canned goods comments. He’s also a basketball guy, but their people are like, “Oh my god! How are you not 500 pounds because all I see are pictures of you eating out on whether it’s networking or taking the team out.” They love to eat together. They do the Chicago. I think it’s great too if your affinity also connects to a geography. I think that’s great. You mentioned that with Morris and Huntsville. Because again, it’s when you’re thinking about you’re back at the Elks Club and Murry, who’s potato pie you love, he doesn’t actually do divorce.

(00:30:00)

But you know what? He’s thinking of Mo in Huntsville, or is thinking of Ken up in Chicago because of that brand affinity, because they like you.

Conrad Saam: This is the point that I wanted to come back to and I am definitely seeing this in some of the tertiary and occasionally, secondary markets. Building brand Affinity is not — we’ve talked ad nauseam about the importance of niching and specialization. Brand affinity has nothing to do with the area of law in which you practice, okay? It is very difficult to have brand, probably, very difficult brand affinity for a very specific practice of law because it’s rarely about the practice of law that people have an affinity with you for.

What this means is that you will get lots of invalid entries. If you are a curmudgeonly, grumbly client, you know, I got all these questions about divorce. I get all these inquiries about things that we don’t do. Great. Celebrate that. You’re doing the hardest part of this, getting business. Now, that may not be for your firm, but what we’re seeing in the tertiary and some of the secondary markets, Morris is a great example of this, but there’s lots of other ones where if you’re like the traditional old-school firm that does divorce, you got a PI person, you’ve got a criminal defense person, you do maybe some small business stuff, you are the big law firm that’s been around for a long time, you do a lot of different practice areas, the value of brand affinity there is so much stronger because you can actually turn more of those leads into business for the firm.

I don’t know if you’re seeing that Gyi, but I have a handful of clients for whom this is really, really working well, who are adding practice areas because everyone know, like and trust them, they come to them for everything. It’s like, “All right, we got all this criminal work. Maybe we should be bringing on a criminal attorney.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, exactly right. Another one that I think we talked about him before, but Brooks Derrick, the Derrick Law Office on YouTube, he highlights local small business owners in his area on YouTube.  I mean, what a great way to raise visibility for these local businesses to have them tell their story. People want to see that stuff, it’s local. And then guess what, all the people that also know those folks, they’re also like, “Oh, this is super cool.” It’s just an interview style like this is not $40,000 production quality stuff. It’s a very authentic conversation and you gravitate towards it.

Conrad Saam: It’s so easy to paint yourself in a good light when you are supporting local businesses. I will tell you that. This isn’t in the show notes, but if you’re one of my clients starting in July of next year, we are going to be working on a campaign for you called The 12 Days of Christmas. What we would like to do is profile one local business in your location for 12 days starting on December 1. You just profile local business. Please, please, instead of buying stuff through Amazon or Walmart, or Fred Meyer, whatever it might be, go support your local businesses. It has nothing to do with the practice of law. It has nothing to do with anything other than you supporting your local businesses, which is the most noble thing that you can do. This is why Gyi and I are in this business. We love supporting small, local, growing businesses that happened to be law firms in this case.

Take the same thing. Support your local businesses and there’s so much you can do with this. And those of you, again, I bring this back to like, you can do that or you can say happy holidays, or Happy Veteran’s Day or Happy Thanksgiving. Start expecting more, something more creative, something more tied to your location, yourself, who you are to build brand affinity instead of just brand awareness.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Again, Conrad and I are likely going to mention this person’s name over and over again, but Chris Walker at Refine Labs, and this goes into the conversation about dark social because I’m getting into lie, sure put a qualitative form on your website that asks how they find you. Ask it as part of your intake, but one of the points that he made and we’ve talked about this before too from the Google perspective. But a lot of people, when they’re going to look for a variety of services and especially young people that are coming into the marketplace now, they’re not just going to Google. They’re going to check hashtags that they know on Instagram and TikTok. They want to see who they’re connected with on these platforms. Who do they like? Where do they like to eat? What lawyers do they work with? What professional service providers do they work with? That is the thing that really beyond like if you’re just philosophically like you get it but you’re like, “How does this translate to digital?” That’s how. It’s those connections. It’s them finding you on these other platforms, in addition to them renting space in their mind when they’re not thinking about you because you have the brand affinity, but it’s also connected to this idea of like that’s where the consumer is going.

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They want to go to their network to get referrals and that’s where you want to be.

Conrad Saam: All right. With that inspirational tale thinking about moving into the holiday season, be more. Don’t just hang up the Happy Veteran’s Day on your Facebooks and the socials. Do more. It’s a very easy opportunity this coming season to be a lot more than happy holidays. Grow your like. Grow your like, not just your brand. I like it. Here you go.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right. Well, thanks so much for dropping into this episode of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you just landed here out of nowhere, please do subscribe. If you’re a regular, tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you. You can leave reviews for us on all of the podcast-y things, or hashtag us on Twitter or Mastodon if you’ve moved over there.  Until then. Gyi and Conrad out.

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