August 2011

Yesterday’s tutorial covered how to export your contacts from Outlook and upload them into LinkedIn.  But this is limiting – although it cuts down on the investment of time you need to make in order to connect with people, it doesn’t give you the flexibility of personalizing the invitations to make engaging more likely – and that’s the goal with social media: engagement!

So today, we’re going to go into more depth about adding contacts manually.  I’m the first to admit that manually adding contacts is a pain, and can be time consuming.  But if you take the time to send a personal note to those you add, they’ll be more willing to accept your invitation and subsequently engage with you.  You don’t have to take a whole afternoon to work on this – I know everyone is busy!  Instead, when you first come in to the office in the morning and are having your cup of coffee, log into LinkedIn and add five people.  It won’t take you very long at all, and soon you’ll have a nice list of connections built up.  Even if you do this once a week, it will make a difference.Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – Let’s Get Connected! Part II

Now that you’ve created a complete profile, it’s time to start connecting and engaging with people you might know on LinkedIn.  Let’s start with the basics – connecting with people in your Outlook contacts.  

Start by logging in to your home page.  Since you’re a new member and still building your LinkedIn base, you will likely see this box:

 Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – Let’s Get Connected! Part I

Yesterday, we went through the basics of setting up an account and profile on LinkedIn.  Today, we’re going to look much more in-depth at the LinkedIn profile and get ourselves to 100% profile completeness (or just about)!

You may be wondering why you need to bother with completing your profile – isn’t the bare minimum enough?

Well, according to LinkedIn, "Users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn."  Your profile becomes complete when you have:

  • Your current position
  • Two past positions
  • Your education
  • Your profile summary
  • A profile photo
  • Your specialties
  • At least three recommendations

Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – How to Set up a Profile Part II

Here on Zen, I talk a lot about why I love social media, and how I think it can be useful to lawyers and law firms.  Now that I’ve got you all convinced, I realize that not everyone knows how or where to start.  I’ve talked about some of the basic principles of using these tools – engage, don’t broadcast; give yourself a small window of time to use them each day, etc – but not the how-to of using them.  So I’m going to be doing a series of social media tutorials over the next several weeks to get you started, and I’m beginning with LinkedIn.

To me, LinkedIn is the most useful social media platform for lawyers, if for no other reason than it’s considered the most professional.  Because of that, most of your clients will be there, so you should be too.  

Here’s a quick note – there is a LOT of information in this post, but don’t be alarmed. It will take you less time to complete your profile than it will to read through this post!

Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – How to Set up a Profile Part I

Following introductory comments from Alishan Naqvee, comments on the FCPA from Stuart Gerson and the UK Bribery Act from Charles Wander, the group discussed their thoughts on anti-corruption legislation in their own countries. The discussion was quite lengthy, so I’ve broken it up into multiple posts.

Sueli Avellar Fonseca began with comments about Brazil, which she noted is rated highly on the corruption scale. She said that all the public departments and politicians engage in corruption. The government had created a commission to investigate the existence of corruption and their conclusion was that there is no evidence. Despite this, over the last eight years of the current government, they have made approximately 20 commissions and these commissions are all paid duties to vote in favor of the government. 

Stuart commented that this is why a country like Brazil presents huge problems for outside companies doing business there.  Sueli agreed and said that the UK and US authorities don’t care that it’s customary in Brazil to take bribes.  She said that it’s not the government receivers of the bribes who will turn you in, but your competitors. So there is risk.Continue Reading Corporate Breakout Session – Anti-Corruption Laws – Around the World Part I