How many of you are producing content? Raise your hands. 

(Extra points if you actually raised your hand while reading this). 

That’s great – these days, I’m seeing so much valuable content out there, so many smart and talented people sharing what they know. But as the saying goes, if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? 

Similarly, if you write an article or blog post, but you forget to share it through your social networks, is anyone reading it? Continue Reading Social Sharing: Are You Missing Out?

The Legal Marketing Association‘s Social Media Special Interest Group is at it again – this afternoon, they brought members an excellent webinar focused on combating internal politics – how to sell social media to your lawyers. 

Featured on the panel were moderator and LMA SIG leader, Gail Lamarche, of Henderson Franklin, an employment law attorney and social media maven from her firm, Suzanne Boy, and legal marketing expert, Jill Rako with Ohio-based Bricker & Eckler. 

Since these webinars are an LMA member benefit, I’m not going to delve as deeply into the recap as I traditionally would, but I do want to hit the highlights! Continue Reading Combating the Internal Politics – How to Sell Social Media to Your Lawyers

In what proved to be our most popular webinar yet, the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group held a session yesterday on using video to market legal services. We were fortunate to have three stellar presenters – Adam Stock of Allen Matkins, Adam Severson of Baker Donelson, and Mark Beese of Leadership for Lawyers

Their presentation was very interactive, and answered the questions I think we’ve all had on our minds about video, starting with the most important…Continue Reading Using Video to Market Legal Services

Recently, I had the chance to sit in on a webinar with Kevin McKeown of LexBlog and Lee Frederiksen of Hinge Marketing, as they discussed the topic of blogging for clients, focusing on how online relationships can lead to real-world clients. 

Since this is a meaty topic, I’ll be breaking this up into multiple posts.

The speakers started by letting us know what the planned to cover in the webinar: 

  • The economic case for online marketing
  • How trust is developed online
  • Developing your strategy and tools
  • Implementing your plan

Continue Reading Blogging for Clients: How Online Relationships Lead to Real-World Clients (A Re-cap) Part I

Today, while everyone is posting about the SCOTUS decision to uphold the PPACA, I thought I’d talk about Adrian Dayton’s webinar to the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group

Adrian’s webinar focused on "how to get your firm blogging," and the invitation to the SIG members described the session as: 

Drawing from the bestselling book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and from over a dozen case studies within law firms, join us for 60 minutes on the 22nd of June as Adrian Dayton, author of Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition (2012, 2nd printing) and LinkedIn & Blogs for Lawyers (West 2012, co-authored by Amy Knapp) shares three keys to moving lawyers from neophites to habitual bloggers and social media users.

Included in this webcast you will learn:

  • How to persuade your lawyers to start blogging
  • Helping overcome common objections to blogging
  • Three steps to forming habits
  • Internal implementation strategies
  • Case studies from medium to large law firms

Continue Reading How to Get Your Firm Blogging – A Webinar Re-cap

Amy Adams had some social media tips to report back to us following her attendance at the LMA’s post conference social media session: 

  • Engage: It’s not just about serenading people, it’s about getting them to sing along.
     
  • Audience: Focus on your audience – what are clients interested in?
     
  • Post at roughly the same

In Monday’s post recapping Adrian Lurssen & John Hellerman’s recent webinar, we talked about their advice to see the world from your audience’s point of view. Today, we’ll look at their next point, to think like an editor.

Adrian kicked off this section with a quote from Barger & Wolen’s Heather Morse:

What are your competitors writing about? What new cases have been decided? What news articles are trending? What are the other bloggers saying? Any new legislative actions? I subscribe to numerous RSS feeds and have them all categorized so I can quickly scan to see what’s happening in our industry sectors. I can then relay story ideas to our team of bloggers.”

This is excellent, excellent advice. Heather is suggesting that you use various sources to stay on top of what’s happening in the marketplaces that your attorneys work in, and then filter through to them the story ideas that they can write about. You can then send them follow up topics.Continue Reading Think Like an Editor – A Webinar Recap

Yesterday, we covered the first part of the social media session from the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference. Today, let’s jump into part two! 

Next up, on the panel we had Melissa Croteau, the CMO of Nixon Peabody. Her role on the panel was to talk about how a large firm handles social media. Nixon Peabody started using social media in 2009, beginning with Twitter. They currently have 2,500 regular followers, with a majority of those being media.

Because I’m always trying to follow the tweet stream, as well as live tweet, when I’m at a conference, I also was keeping an eye on the tweets coming out of other sessions. From another session at the same time, Russell Lawson posted what turned out to be a timely suggestion for our group as well – he noted that journalists are using their Twitter stream to find interesting or out of the ordinary story ideas, so firms shouldn’t post the same old thing all the time. If Nixon Peabody has so many media followers, they must be adhering to this idea already!

Continue Reading Social Media is Here to Stay – An LMA 2012 Re-cap Part II

You may have guessed that I have a certain fondness for social media. I’ve touted its benefits here before, so it should come as no surprise that I headed straight for the social media session while I was at the LMA Annual Conference in Dallas a couple of weeks ago.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of the presentation from the panelists and my thoughts, I’ll share what the CMO of Nixon Peabody said during the session – “The most significant thing a marketing department can do in 2012 is to develop a social media strategy.”

These are bold words from an industry that was still wondering whether social media had staying power only last year. And I couldn’t agree more. Although, I would go a step further than that and say that rather than creating a separate strategy, social media should instead be used to enhance and drive existing strategies and projects. If the tweets coming from the other breakout sessions were any indication, all of them were mentioning social media in conjunction with their topics – the possibilities for using it for law firms are exciting and valuable.

Continue Reading Social Media is Here to Stay – An LMA 2012 Re-cap Part I