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I’ve spent the last two days talking about how to make improvements to your LinkedIn profile, and getting the most out of your LinkedIn home page.  Today, I want to cover LinkedIn Groups.

On LinkedIn, there are groups for everything, from business networking to animal lovers.  Groups are an excellent way to connect with people outside of your immediate network in areas where you share an interest.

I’m going to focus on the ILN’s group, because I’m the moderator and have the most familiarity with it, but most of this advice can be applicable to any business networking group for lawyers. During my presentation, I started with the "why" – why should the lawyers in the room have any interest in joining the ILN Group on LinkedIn? Continue Reading LinkedIn – Making the Most out of Groups

Yesterday, I talked about what improvements you  might want to make to your LinkedIn profile to get the best results from it.  Today, I’ll talk about the home page screen and why it’s useful to be logging in to LinkedIn periodically – I have LinkedIn set to open as one of the tabs on my browser, so every morning, I open Outlook and Chrome, go through my emails, and check on my browser tabs.  This includes taking a quick look (no more than five minutes) at my LinkedIn home page screen.  Lawyers, I know you’re busy, but if you make this part of your morning routine, you’ll only have to spend a few minutes looking at LinkedIn, you’ll stay up to date on what your network is doing, and you won’t have to try to remember to visit LinkedIn.

There are four things I find of particular importance on your home page screen (which looks like this):

Continue Reading “Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn” – Part II

If you read my posts regularly, you’ll know that I have a passion for social media.  I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of business development tools, of course, but I do have a fondness for it and an interest in sharing that fondness with my attorneys.

So I jumped at the chance to present a more in-depth look at LinkedIn to our group at the 2011 23rd ILN Annual Meeting on Saturday morning.  I wanted to stick to what I thought were the most relevant points about LinkedIn, and what would give our attorneys the greatest impact – and for me, there was no greater joy than sitting with one of our attorneys during the subsequent breakout session and helping him fill out his profile, as he repeated back to me snippets of what I’d said. 

Last week, I mentioned a few best practices for LinkedIn, but I’d like to add in a bit more about our session in Lisbon.

Continue Reading “Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn”

Today’s the big day! The International Lawyers Network is unveiling our new content-driven website at http://www.ilntoday.com. We gave our member firms a sneak peek at last week’s 23rd Annual Conference, and this week we’re revealing it to you! 

The redesigned site embodies the latest technology to best serve the growing needs of ILN members and their clients, and provides a variety of benefits, including:

  • Up-to-the-minute legal content and news from law firms in 66 countries around the world.
  • RSS feeds to deliver content directly to your desktop.
  • Direct connections to ILN members and Administration through a member Tweet stream, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Continue Reading It’s Here! The ILN Launches its New Site – ILNToday

I’m just back from our 2011 23rd Annual Meeting in Lisbon, and I’ll have lots to share with you over the next week or so.  But what’s fresh in my mind this morning is our session on LinkedIn from Saturday morning – I’d like to share some best practices for LinkedIn, which can be particularly useful when you’re just returning from any conference:

  • Review the attendee list, or the stack of business cards you returned with and make note of the people you met and chatted to at the conference. Search for, and connect to, these people on LinkedIn, making sure to send a personal note with your invitation that refers to your conversations.
     
  • Set your browser to open to the LinkedIn home page when you start it up.  I use Chrome on my desktop, and have set it to open several tabs when I start it up each morning, including LinkedIn – that way I never have to remember to visit LinkedIn and check the latest status updates.  Then, each morning, I scroll through my news feed and comment on or like updates and news, or connect to anyone I might know.  It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it keeps me plugged into what my network is doing.

Continue Reading LinkedIn Best Practices

The ILN’s new website will be launched on June 14, 2011 and I can’t wait! It’s no longer going to be your typical law firm website, and both the ILN and our web designer/host, LexBlog are so excited for you to see the results.

Stay tuned…

<a href=”http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown.html?year=2011&month=06&date=14&hrs=0&ts=24&tz=local&min=0&sec=0&lang=en&show=dhms&mode=t&cdir=down&bgcolor=%23CCFFFF&fgcolor=%23000000&title=Countdown%20To%20the%20ILN%27s%20New%20Website%21″>Countdown To the ILN’s New Website!</a>

This week’s Ask Friday! answers the question of what blogs I read.  I’ll break this down into three categories – ILN member blogs, the blogs I read for professional reasons and growth, and the blogs I read for fun – feel free to add your favorites to the list in the comments!

Professional Blogs:

  • Above the Law – often funny, always irreverent, they’re often at the forefront of legal news.
  • Bad for the Brand – after I got back from LMA 2011, I started religiously reading Jonathan Fitzgarrald’s Bad for the Brand. Every time I see a new post, I drop whatever I’m doing just to read it – they’re that good.
  • Bill’s Blog – written by Bill Pollak of ALM, it’s a helpful look at the legal publishing industry from an in-house perspective.
  • Case in Point – a cartoon series that "illustrates the lighter side of eDiscovery."  Those of you who know me well know I’m a sucker for legal cartoons!
  • Corcoran’s Business of Law Blog – I read this not just because I know Tim, but because he’s always got thoughtful, thorough insights that push me to be a better legal marketer and not just go with the status quo.
  • Escaping Mediocrity – if you’ve ever wanted more than where you are right now, Sarah’s blog is the one to check out – she’ll push you and get you thinking.
  • Patrick Lamb’s In Search of Perfect Client Service – who can’t use tips on better client service? 
  • In-house ACCess – I admit to mostly scanning these in-depth posts, but the insights from in-house counsel who are part of the ACC can’t be beat.
  • Martindale.com Blog – always touching on topics of interest to me as a legal marketer.
  • The Matte Pad – after making a splash at LMA 2011, I wanted to see what else Tom Matte had to offer. His posts are thought provoking and always useful. 
  • Myrland Marketing – you already know I’m a huge fan of Nancy Myrland, and her blog is a great reason why – Nancy always has actionable tips not only for strategic social media, but also for legal marketing and business development.
  • Outspoken Media – not a legal blog, this was recommended to me during the Social Fresh conference I went to last year in Portland – it’s a fabulous blog on internet marketing that gives me great food for thought in all areas of my work.
  • Real Lawyers Have Blogs – I’m always interested to hear what Kevin O’Keefe is thinking about and seeing in the legal sphere, and he doesn’t hold back.  Plus, the blog showcases their tops blogs of the day, which helps me see what else is out there.
  •  Social Media for Law Firms – Sam Collier gives the Canadian perspective on social media for law firms, and often gives step by step tips and tutorials for how to make the most out of your social media efforts.
  • The Legal Watercooler – Heather Morse’s Legal Watercooler was the first legal blog I started following, and it’s never disappointed.  Heather ties in whatever she’s thinking about or going through with how we can make ourselves better legal marketers in a way that inspires me.
  • The PR Lawyer – great posts from Furia Rubel on public relations and strategic marketing in the legal world.
  • The Virtual Marketing Officer – Jayne covers a variety of topics focusing on marketing and business development strategies for law firms – definitely a must read!

Continue Reading Ask Friday! The Blogs I Read Edition

You may not be surprised to learn that during the 2011 Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference, I attended the session on Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool. And it was definitely a valuable session.  

The panel was moderated by Josh Fruchter, Principal at eLawMarketing, and featured Melanie Green, Director of Business Development & Marketing at Baker Daniels, Andrea Stimmel, Business Development Director, Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, and Russell Thomas, Director of Media & Public Relations at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

The panel began by asking who in the room worked at a firm that was tweeting, had a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, or blogs – the majority of the room was in this category.  Law firms lean more towards LinkedIn than Facebook based on the show of hands in the room, though a few of those on Twitter said they felt Facebook had value as well.  

The panel had crowdsourced questions from the attendees in advance of the session through the LMA Conference’s LinkedIn group, and the panel was built around this.  
Continue Reading Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool – An LMA Recap