Networking & Business Development

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‘Tis the season! You know the one – when every other day holds the promise of a networking opportunity, as you take clients to holiday lunches, send out your holiday cards, and attend all of those lovely parties. 

The parties are what bring me here today, because I’m here to tell you about a key to networking that I’ve observed over the past nine years with the ILN. 

RELAX.

Now, I’m not talking about letting loose and forgetting that you’re in a professional setting – on a side note, don’t forget to turn off any devices that might allow you to post photos to a social site when you’re at a holiday party. 

But I am talking about letting go of business for a moment. Because, paradoxically, that is where you will find your strongest professional relationships. Continue Reading ‘Tis the Season…to Network!

I’ve had an idea for a post noodling around in my brain for a few weeks, but I’ve been having trouble getting it to crystallize. Until yesterday, when I read Sayre Happich’s "Seven Content Marketing Tips for Lawyers." 

Sayre says: 

All lawyers can benefit from content marketing. By creating targeted content — blog posts, articles, tweets — and pushing it out through the right channels, you can position yourself as a thought leader in a specific area of law. And, whether you are a solo practitioner or part of a megafirm, that can lead to more clients."

She is absolutely right.  I’ve seen time and time again that the firms that are successful today are the ones who are sharing substantive content on a regular basis (there are other contributing reasons of course, but the same mindset that leads them to create substantive content and share it, is the mindset that helps them find success). 

What I’m going to say next might be a bit controversial, but I’ll say it anyway – clients do not care about press releases announcing that an attorney was quoted in an article. They’re not going to do the work of first clicking through to the firm’s press release to see that someone was quoted, and then clicking again to get to the actual article – they’re too busy. That’s not substantive content. Even if something leads to substantive content, if you make it hard for your audience to find it, they will not take the time to do so. Continue Reading Content Marketing is King

To many people, fall may just be the prelude to winter – the days get shorter, it’s darker earlier, and the leaves are falling. But I’ve always thought of fall as a fresh start. It may be years since I’ve been in school, but something about the chill in the air makes me feel renewed and revitalized. 

With that in mind, I was recently chatting with my friend, Jaimie Field, about this very thing and how close we are to the end of the year. This starts to be the time when firms and attorneys look at their marketing and business development plans, to see how they’ve done in terms of meeting their goals for the year and what they want to accomplish in the following year. 

As we were talking, I had an idea – why not think of each quarter of the year as a fresh start? I’m not suggesting that we all write a new plan for each quarter (no one has time for that!). But take a few minutes today to set up a calendar reminder for yourself to look at your plan on the first business day in each quarter. 

Then, when that reminder comes up, take out your plan and review it: 

  • Which goals have you accomplished?
  • Which goals have you made progress on?
  • What is still left to achieve?

I do this periodically (approximately quarterly), and each time I do it, I then set up additional reminders for myself for each of the outstanding goals – I’ll break them down into manageable increments and task myself with one or two things over the next three months on days that look to have a bit more space on the schedule. 

I can always reschedule those things if need be, but by doing that, I’m making a commitment to myself and my goals for the year. It helps me to keep track of what I’m doing on a regular basis, as well as to revisit my goals throughout the year so I know what’s working, what’s not working, and what I can improve on for the following year. 

So why not treat fall (and every new quarter) like a fresh start – track down your marketing and business development plans and do a quick review and scheduling. 

And a very Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate! Continue Reading A Quarterly Refresh of your Marketing/Biz Dev Plan

I’m a big believer that every marketing tactic is not for everyone – we all have our strengths. Some people will be excellent public speakers, who enjoy sharing their expertise with large audiences. Others will be happy to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it were) and write blog posts and articles. Still others will shine when you put them in a room full of strangers to network. 

As many people as there are, there will be marketing tactics and ways of implementing them. 

But I will say that if your firm is not creating and delivering content that can be shared in some way, you are missing out. 

When I was growing up, content was created for you – if you wanted the news, you’d buy a newspaper or magazine and read a series of articles that were written by others and put together by others. The television news was the same. You had very little say over what was produced, other than using your purchasing or viewing power to reflect your likes and dislikes. Continue Reading It’s All About the Content

Today, I have the pleasure of sharing a special guest post with you from one of the ILN’s partners, Washington University School of Law’s online LLM program. We’re honored that they’ve partnered with us, and this post from Chelsea Wilson, their Community Relations Manager, has some excellent tips for positioning yourself as a subject matter expert – be sure to take notes! 

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A wonderful long-term strategy for marketing yourself and your law practice online is to gain a reputation as a “subject matter expert.” The blogs, websites, and social media profiles of subject matter experts are hubs of information and analysis, and can become go-to outlets for peers, the public, and the press whenever news breaks on a given topic. For that reason, it can be a valuable strategy for raising your profile, and can be an excellent tool for earning new business.

Continue Reading 7 Ways to Position Yourself as a Subject Matter Expert Online

It’s a little known fact that I happen to have dual citizenship with the US and the UK. So it was with great excitement that I awaited the birth of the royal prince a couple of weeks ago – not enough excitement that I would have camped outside the Lindo Wing, but enough to stick on the BBC online once news of his Royal Highness’s birth was confirmed. 

I’ve spoken before about "fame-jacking" – seeing what’s out there that is culturally popular, and leveraging the excitement and interest that surrounds it. There are good ways and bad ways to do this, and following the royal birth, there was a flurry of them. While I’m generally in favor of identifying a way to link your business with the hot topics of conversation, I felt a bit icky about some of those brands that used the arrival of Prince George to push their wares (and yes, I am aware of the irony of my blogging about it).

We at the ILN posted a simple "Congratulations" message on our Facebook page and Twitter feed for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which I’m well aware that they will never see. Those brands that did something similar, or came up with the clever way to congratulate them without linking to their website or pushing a new product, I thought did a clever thing. Continue Reading Coat-tail Branding – Clever or Icky?

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking with a Canadian reporter who is doing a series of stories about the importance of networking for lawyers. She wanted to get my thoughts based on my eight and a half years of networking experience with the lawyers in the ILN, and I thought I’d share some of those tips here on Zen too. These are all tips I use myself, as well as recommending them to our attorneys!

  • Have a plan: It’s important to have an overall plan for your business development activities, but also one for each activity that you do. The overall plan should be a written one, that you check in on quarterly – this allows you to review what you’ve done over the past three months, as well as set up in your calendar the activities you’d like to commit to over the next three months.  For individual networking activities, you should set up goals for yourself for the event, so you know in advance what you’d like to achieve.

Continue Reading Networking Tips for Lawyers

This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with my fellow co-leaders in the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group (LMA Social Media SIG for short). Our main purpose was to debrief on our group’s activities at the conference, to see what worked well and what didn’t, but by virtue of the conversation, we ended up talking about the conference in general and some of the anecdotal feedback that we’d heard. 

One of the interesting points that was raised was it had been suggested that the Zappos session, bringing in an outside-of-the-industry speaker, was either loved or hated. Loved, because, as I’ve mentioned before, it was excellent, or hated because people didn’t understand how a customer-driven organization like Zappos could have any relevance to legal marketing. 

Sigh. Continue Reading Legal Marketers – Let’s Raise the Bar

It’s been a week since I returned home from the LMA’s Annual Conference, and I’m still digesting everything that went on there – it was a non-stop whirlwind of networking, meetups with social media friends and ILN marketers, face-time with new attendees, and conference sessions (as well as a LOT of food). LMA served its purpose once again though, and I’ve returned to the office with new vigor, feeling more inspired than when I left! Even better for this Social Media Special Interest Group Co-Leader? Not only did I get to see my friends and make new connections face to face, but #LMA13 was trending on Twitter! (Pictured are fellow co-leaders Gail Lamarche of Henderson Franklin and Nancy Myrland, Myrland Marketing with me. Not pictured are Lance Godard of JD Supra, who was unable to join us, and Laura Toledo, Tenrec, who was ill). 

There will be several recap posts to come, but while I’m still ruminating on those, I thought I’d share with you my three favorite sessions, as well as what’s on my reading list now that I’ve returned home. Keep an eye out for the recaps on these sessions! 

Continue Reading LMA Annual Conference – A Quick Debrief

Arguably worse than those commercials that are bad and ugly are those that are forgettable. If a commercial airs during the Superbowl and no one remembers it, does it make a sound? (A la, if a tree falls in the forest…)

There were definitely a few forgettable commercials during the Superbowl this year – so forgettable that I either don’t remember seeing them at all, or have only a vague recollection of them after seeing them included on the list of aired spots. Let’s look at a few, and in particular, how they could have been more memorable, and why law firms don’t want to fall into the same quagmire of forgettableness. 

Continue Reading Superbowl Commercials – The Forgettable 2013