photo-1433170897235-615700336230Of all the social media platforms out there, I’d venture to say that LinkedIn is the one that lawyers are most comfortable using. It has a reputation for being the most professional, and as a result, it’s had the widest adoption within the industry. In recent years, LinkedIn has really expanded their offerings, and provided a robust, deep platform that allows us to engage in new ways, all which make it an even more valuable platform than it was at the beginning.

Like any social platform (or any tool, really), LinkedIn is what you make of it – you can treat it as a place to broadcast from, and as long as you have something valuable to say, you may find that many people are listening to you. But if you want to use it as a business development tool, then you need to get serious about the steps that you take to leverage its features. I read a great article today over on Inc which talked about three ways to use LinkedIn to attract your ideal customer. Since “sales” is a dirty word for lawyers, we’re instead going to talk about using LinkedIn for business/relationship development (which, by the way, is really the same thing, but said in a more palatable way).

Since it’s our Two for Tuesday day, we’ll just presume that you already have a robust LinkedIn profile. I promise that at some point this year, I will update my LinkedIn for Lawyers book, which is a step-by-step process for setting up a profile, but for the moment, let’s set aside that tip and focus on the other two that Inc author, Bill Carmody, suggests. 
Continue Reading Two Ways to Use LinkedIn to Attract Your Ideal Client

photo-1451653500993-04a9a6368221Although it’s officially tomorrow, I thought I’d use today to mark Zen & the Art of Legal Networking’s SEVENTH “blogiversary.” It’s hard to believe that it’s been seven years since I started blogging, and even more, that I’m still enjoying it. Here’s a roundup of the anniversary posts that I’ve done:

The 7th anniversary gift is typically copper or wool, and a fun fact for those of you who may not know me well is that I am a very fast crocheter. It’s a skill I learned from my grandmother at a young age, and one I’ve kept up through the years, often making gifts for family and friends. A GREAT way to take advantage of a love of crocheting is by donating your time (and wool!) to some excellent causes, which is something I do on a yearly basis. Two things I do are crocheting scarves for our troops (although it’s often warm during the day where they’re deployed to, the dramatic temperature drops at night, and in the winter, mean it can get a bit cold, so they do actually need scarves) and crocheting hats for cancer patients undergoing chemo who have lost their hair.  Here are the links for those who’d like to use their own knitting or crochet skills to do the same, or who’d like to make a monetary gift to support these awesome causes!

Continue Reading Happy 7th Blogiversary to Zen & the Art of Legal Networking!

photo-1429051883746-afd9d56fbdafBefore we jump into our regularly scheduled post, I wanted to mention that the Legal Marketing Association has put together several of the sessions from the Bay Area Chapter’s Legal Tech Conference, which are available as a webinar series – members can download them for free, and non-members get them at a rate which is really a bargain, considering the depth of content offered. One of the sessions is the panel I participated on with Adrian Lurssen of JD Supra and Laura Toledo of Nilan Johnson & Lewis, but as an independent attendee for the other sessions, I can say that the content was really smart and thoughtful, and would be well worth the time and cost invested! So I share the link with you in the event that you’d like to take a look at it – descriptions of the sessions offered with this bundle are included.

I watched our panel from the conference again, and one of the questions that we were asked during the session is one that I think Zen readers would benefit from discussing as well – that is “How do you motivate lawyers to produce content?”

It’s easy to become convinced that content development is a time-consuming process that you have to devote significant resources to. But if you invest some time in setting up good processes, and marketing professionals act as the support team for the lawyers that are producing the work, it can run much more efficiently than you’d expect. 
Continue Reading Three Ways to Motivate Lawyers to Content Marketing Success

200HWhile you don’t need to break the news to be a successful content marketer in the legal industry (and in many cases, it’s really better if you don’t), it doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from writing about or producing content for the latest trends. You may think that because someone else has already weighed in on something, that you shouldn’t add to the commentary out there – but you may have something valuable to say, or a different perspective to add.

What we refer to as “evergreen content,” or “SEO content that is continually relevant and stays ‘fresh’ for readers.” (thanks, WordStream) is extremely valuable for lawyers and law firms. It’s content that is always relevant to your audience, and will live on well after you’ve produced it, thus doing the work of marketing for you without you having to actively do anything at all. But it’s only part of the story – the other part is covering the latest trends (both those in law, and those outside of the law, from a legal perspective) to give those in the industry a reason to keep coming back to your content. As Ann Smarty says in this piece for the Content Marketing Institute:

Covering relevant timely and newsworthy content is a great way to grow your site audience and take advantage of trends that get people more interested and thus more engaged.”

It’s likely that you already have a number of different sources set up for how you identify the latest trends in your area of practice – whether you’re an active content producer or not, you’re staying up-to-date on the latest legislation, case decisions, and industry discussions that may or may not affect your clients. But as the world expands and evolves, so do the means with which we keep up with the latest trends – and for those of us interested in translating these into content that we can use proactively, there are various tools out there that we can leverage. 
Continue Reading Two Tools to Turn Trends into Topics

Apple-Emoji-KeyboardI’m (hopefully) rounding up a rather intense fall full of travel, with a trip to Boston for the Legal Marketing Association’s Northeast Conference, where I’m speaking on Content Marketing (my favorite subject!). We had two guest posts last week, and you’re lucky to be getting a republished post this week. This article originally appeared on Sprout Social‘s blog.  They are talking about something that’s a little out of our comfort zone here in legal – emoji marketing. Molly Porter of Seyfarth Shaw spoke about this at the LMA Technology Conference recently, so it’s not altogether foreign in legal, and worth paying attention to.  See how Sprout Social talks about other companies using emoji marketing as well!

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Continue Reading Emoji Marketing: Are We Speaking the Same Language?

iStock_000007887592XSmallMany of us in legal marketing wait with bated breath for the results of the Greentarget “State of Digital and Content Marketing Survey” every year.

Building on Greentarget’s inaugural study in 2010, [it gives us] the latest insights on how corporate general counsel – your clients – are engaging in social media and law firm-generated content.”

We also learn how our “legal marketing peers are evolving their own content and digital strategies to build relationships and fuel business development.”

During LMA’s Technology Conference this year, we were treated to a preview of the survey, which is officially released on November 18th, with Greentarget’s own John Corey. You’ll want to check back on their website on the 18th for the full report (and you can register now to make sure you get a copy on the day it’s released), but we learned some interesting things.
Continue Reading Preview: 2015 State of Digital and Content Marketing Survey

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SCANDAL – ABC’s “Scandal” stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope. (ABC/Craig Sjodin)

Yesterday, I had the privilege of moderating an LMA webinar with Lance Godard, the Client Relationship Manager for Fisher & Phillips, and Mark Elliott, the Director of Business Development & Human Resources at Eastman & Smith on “Reputation Management and Social Media.”

I consider myself a fairly savvy social media user, and a regular, responsible manager of my online reputation, but I learned quite a bit of new information during yesterday’s session, which I want to pass along to Zen readers for your benefit as well!

There are two sides to reputation management that you’re probably thinking of – one of those is crisis management, and this is what to do when someone does or says something damaging to the firm or their personal reputation online. That wasn’t the subject of yesterday’s session, but is also something you want to be conscious and aware of (there’s lots of resources for you out there on how to manage that). 
Continue Reading It’s Handled: How Confident Are You in Your Social Media Reputation?

Next week, I have the pleasure of joining my fellow co-leaders for the Social Media Special Interest Group for the Legal Marketing Association in presenting a webinar on using social media to ramp up conferences and events. My part of the session will focus on blogging, so I thought I’d offer you a preview of my remarks here! LMA members can attend the webinar by registering here

You may be surprised to hear that blogging can be a valuable tool for ramping up your conferences and events, but it’s actually quite a valuable one, and one I use often (if you are a regular Zen reader, you’ll be familiar with my recaps).  There are two sides to this, the attendee side, and the organizer side, and I’ll cover both. 

Why Blogging?

Why use blogging? For attendees, it’s quite simple. Blogging before and after events helps to position you as a thought leader and can help to engage you with conference speakers as well as other attendees. 

For organizers, blogging either by someone in your organization, or an outside blogger writing about your event, can help you to grow your audience, expand the reach of your event, help you connect with those who can’t be there in person, and also leverage any high profile speakers that you have. Continue Reading Blogging for Enhancing Conferences & Events

I could not be more excited to announce that today, the Intellectual Property Specialty group of the International Lawyers Network is launching their first collaborative blog (indeed the ILN’s first collaborative blog period!) – ILN IP Insider

It’s been a labor of love with myself and our dedicated IP lawyers from around the world, to put together this resource for the latest in global intellectual property trends. 

The blog provides a variety of benefits, including: 

  • The latest legal intellectual property content and news from law firms around the world
  • RSS feeds to deliver highly targeted and specific content directly to your desktop
  • The ability to engage with ILN member authors through blog comments, email and LinkedIn

I’m thrilled to be launching ILN IP Insider today, and showcasing the strength and depth of the combined expertise of our IP lawyers.

You’ll want to get a first look at the posts already published to the site: Continue Reading ILN IP Insider Blog to Tackle Latest Global Intellectual Property Trends