Networking & Business Development

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Gratuitous photo of me with the winningest Super Bowl QB of all time
Gratuitous photo of me with the winningest Super Bowl QB of all time

It’s that time of year again – the time when football fans mourn the end of another season with the pigskin and marketing fans rejoice because the best and brightest (usually) bring out the year’s highlights for strong ad campaigns. Also, guacamole tends to abound, and when is that ever a bad thing?

2017 was a little bit different, and definitely in a bad way. We had a little bit of a warning, because advertising was down – Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University talked about some of the reasons for it in his post “Why Super Bowl Ads Are a Tough Sell in 2017.” And it makes sense. In seven years, ad buys for the Super Bowl have at least doubled in cost (really, NFL?), and that doesn’t take into account that companies now must create an entire social campaign around their 15-60 second spots. Where they used to have to draw only on their creativity for the ad, and perhaps a fully branded campaign around it (depending on the brand), they now have to consider both the social impact and the social engagement that the spots will generate – before, during and after they air.

This year’s crop of spots also saw some big names absent too – no Doritos or Butterfingers meant that we were already lacking some traditionally funny giants right off the bat. The tense political climate of the moment had a lot of people asking whether brands would play it safe, or take risks. In some cases, it had fans misreading the intentions of brands’ ads, because of the context of the environment. Overall, it was a ho-hum crop of spots – both on the good side AND on the ugly side. While I still have a few for you in the “ugly” category for next week, I felt like I was missing both the highs and lows of previous Super Bowl ads.

But without further ado, let’s look at my top five commercials for this year, and what lawyers can learn from these spots.
Continue Reading Super Bowl Commercials: The Good of 2017

iStock_000016006182SmallEarly on in my legal career, I learned something about law firms that has stuck with me.

Law firms don’t want to be first. But they want to be first to be second.

Bearing that in mind, the importance of keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to cannot be undervalued. Whenever I speak to a lawyer or legal marketing professional, I get the sense that we’re all doing this on an informal, if not formal, basis fairly regularly. We know who our competitors are and what they’re good at, in much the same way that we know the ins and outs of our own organizations or firms.

This afternoon, I read a great post on “6 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Your Business,” which I highly recommend – there are some concrete suggestions in here for ways you can look critically at what your competitors are up to in the context of your own firm’s activities, and use those to improve your own goals and focus. It got me thinking about some additional ways that firms can be looking at their competitors for answers, and below are four key questions you want to ask yourself about your competitors to drive your own firm. 
Continue Reading Four Key Questions Your Competitors Can Answer for Your Firm

Grunge cracked zombie virus concept background with some soft smooth lines

In keeping with our theme of zombies (this is the last post on this for a while, I swear), when last we saw our intrepid band of beloved Walking Dead characters, they were coming up with a plan to fight Negan and the Survivors. Without a plan, they spent much of the previous season just reacting to a bad situation – they thought they had all the information they needed on Negan, and took out one of his outposts, only to learn it was a small segment of his followers, and **spoiler alert** people died.

While no one is going to die without a content marketing plan, a rigorous, strategic plan can turn what is haphazard actions taken with fingers crossed into an efficient formula for building your online reputation into something that works for you. A plan combats the two issues we addressed with hit-or-miss content marketing last week,

  1. You’re a busy person who needs efficient marketing that works for you.
  2. Your audience is comprised of busy people who won’t hunt through tons of content to find the gems.

Continue Reading Combatting the Zombiefication of Legal Content Marketing with a Plan

Grunge cracked zombie virus concept background with some soft smooth lines

On all The Walking Dead quizzes I’ve taken, the results always show that I’m a Carol (TWD fans, you know what I mean).

But we’re not fighting actual walkers (or Saviors) – just the zombiefication of legal content marketing that’s been happening over the last couple of years as the patina wears off on our shiny new toy of content. Who’s with me?

This week, we’re looking at the second tactic that Shane Snow of The Content Strategist outlines in his piece for combatting content zombies, and that’s data – YAY DATA! 
Continue Reading Combatting the Zombiefication of Legal Content Marketing with Data

Grunge cracked zombie virus concept background with some soft smooth lines

17 million people watched the October 23rd premiere of the 7th season of The Walking Dead.

Although the show is wildly popular because of its writing and its character development, it’s safe to say that it’s also a huge hit because, well, zombies.

Zombies may not be the biggest threat facing our friends on TWD at the moment, but it turns out that zombie-thinking IS the biggest threat facing our content marketing efforts in the legal industry.

That might sound extremely dire, but hear me out – as we look at the saturation point we’re reaching with content (both in and outside the legal industry) and we look at the lack of care a lot of us are giving to the details over the tools and the shiny new thing, we’re just blindly producing more and more and more and more, adding more noise (as Adrian Lurssen would say). 
Continue Reading Combatting the Zombiefication of Legal Content Marketing with Breakthrough Storytelling

FullSizeRender2017 is here and that means a fresh, clean slate, right?

I like fresh starts, and I like that I feel like I get two of them during the year – one in January with the advent of a new year, and one in September when the school year begins again (even though I’m not in school anymore). But with 2017, I’m struggling to feel rejuvenated. It could be the two solid days of rain we’ve had to kick off this week, or the tough slog that was 2016, but whatever the reason, I’m just not feeling it this week.

I suspect that I might not be alone in this, so in today’s post, we’re going to be looking at some ways we can generate a little inspiration this week if you’re struggling (or even if you’re not!). And if it takes us a few weeks to get our fresh start, then that’s okay too. I’m all about a kinder, gentler 2017, so if we don’t get a perfect jump start right out of the gate, that’s what second chances are for.

As we dive into our three inspirations, huge thanks goes out to my friend, Lance Godard, who helped me formulate a germ of an idea into a palatable post today! 
Continue Reading Three Ways to Inspire Your Marketing in 2017

wjqedasn_ni-jeffrey-wegrzynHas everyone got their “fa la la” on yet?

While the holidays are often a mad rush for all of us, it seems that this year especially, everyone is behind with wrapping up their end of the year duties (and wrapping up their gifts), while we try to figure out shortcuts for how to manage to get everything done before family and friends descend on us (or you head out the door yourself). In among all of the holiday madness are your professional pressures, which, of course, take priority.

So rather than a thought-provoking, meaty post today, let’s look at some (mostly) quick ways that you can engage with your clients and other relationships – these can be done over the holidays, if you find you have some down time and you want to get a jump on 2017, or they can be things that you pencil into your schedule for next year. While the options for engagement are endless, and many of them are really in-depth, today, we’re going to focus on some of the simple ideas that can add a little boost to your relationships.
Continue Reading 7 Ways Lawyers Can Build More Engagement Over the Holidays

iStock_000011353685_LargeThe “law firm of the future.”

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this in recent months, not because I find it to be interesting (which I do), but because other than my “Instagram for Lawyers” post, this has been the hottest topic on Zen this year. I had a conversation with a senior partner at a law firm last week, who asked me “How do we communicate to people that the future is NOW?” His firm has been embracing these “futuristic” policies for a number of years, and recognizes that change in the industry is not happening fast enough.

In May, Altman Weil published the 8th edition of their “Law Firms in Transition” survey, which polls the managing partners and chairs at 800 US law firms with 50 or more lawyers (this year’s survey received 356 respondents from 49% of the 350 largest US law firms). If you haven’t already read at least the executive summary for this survey, I highly encourage you to take a look through it. In the midst of the second quarter of this year, Altman Weil said:

Are law firms still in transition in 2016? We think so, although the pace of change can seem modest. Despite pockets of true innovation, most firms are choosing to proceed with lawyerly caution in the midst of a market that is being reinvented around them.”

Yikes.

A bunch of a hoopla about nothing? We’ll get to that in a minute. 
Continue Reading Law Firms: The Future is NOW

cqatth9oyuw-liz-bridgesThe end of this week marks the beginning of December, and we all know what that means…

Holiday party invitations are coming. 

For introverts like me, holiday parties are probably not high on your list of exciting December “to dos” – it’s not that we don’t love them; it’s just that they’re rather exhausting. Extroverts may see them as a chance to enjoy a bit of relaxation with friends and meet new people. But no matter how you view holiday parties, they are definitely a key opportunity to network.

Whether you’re a networking pro or feel like there’s room for improvement, every networking experience is a chance to hone your skills. Recently, we held our Regional Conference of the Americas, and invited David Ackert, President of The Ackert Advisory, to facilitate a type of speed-dating session that we refer to as our “referral rendezvous.” We matched our lawyers in groups of 3-4 people, and they had 25 minutes to talk and connect with each other – some of them have known each other for many years, while others were meeting each other for the first time.

David’s networking tools offered a road map to maximize the time invested in each conversation. These tips are valuable not just for speed dating purposes, but across all networking opportunities, so I am sharing them with you today as we head into a whirlwind season of relationship-building possibilities. 
Continue Reading Holiday Networking is Coming.

A photo by Ben White. unsplash.com/photos/4K2lIP0zc_kLet’s try this one more time – I originally wrote this post last month – and let me tell you, it was great. Then, the internet gobbled it up, and as I hit “publish,” almost the entire post disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again. Since I was already limited on time that week while we were in the throes of last minute conference prep, you can imagine the angst that caused me – and that also meant that I haven’t been able to bring myself to attempt to resurrect the post until now. But let’s see if we can do some justice to the original and get you excited about using IG stories.

In August, Instagram rolled out their new “stories” feature, affectionately referred to as “Snapchat for grown-ups.” We’ve already talked about why you may want to care about this, and how you can use them, so today, I want to look at a couple of accounts who are using IG stories really well now that we’ve had a couple of months to figure them out and talk about what advice you can appropriate from their examples.
Continue Reading How Lawyers Can Win at Instagram Stories