Last week, we focused on how to freshen up your content marketing through curation and focusing on being mobile-friendly. Today, I’m using that same post from Entrepreneur as inspiration to encourage you to think differently about content marketing with these two tips.

(And, as a side note, you’ll want to keep an eye on this space late tomorrow for some big Zen news!)

Tip One: Use Rich Media

It sounds like buzzwords, but don’t panic – I’m talking about things like video, and that’s no reason to be scared. Video is an amazing way to add depth to your content, and even repurpose a lot of the work you’re already doing. 

For example record, or re-record, a presentation that you did on a substantive topic and break it up into manageable pieces that you can post to your blog and share via social media. Bonus points for getting your firm to include these in your firm bio to give visitors even more insight into who you are. 

Take a piece you recently wrote on some new legislation and distill it into a 2-5 minute soundbite that you record and upload to Vimeo or YouTube and share. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Think Differently About Content Marketing

One week from today, I leave for our Annual Meeting in Sicily, which has got one major thing on my mind (aside from last minute details) and that is NETWORKING.

This is our largest conference of the year, so it presents a LOT of opportunities for our delegates to take advantage of the networking opportunities that are available to them just by showing up. But as with any marketing or business development activity, you only get out of it what you put into it. 

Yes, it would be nice if you could walk away from an event with little or no effort and have business thrown right into your lap, but it just doesn’t work that way (once in a blue moon, the stars will align and it will happen, but that’s luck, not networking).  

So today, I wanted to focus on some dos and don’ts of conference networking, in the hopes that whether you’re a consummate networking professional or a first timer, you’ll get something out of this list! 

I’m going to put these in bullet formatting for a quick list you can zip through, so let’s go! 

 

Continue Reading Dos and Don’ts of Conference Networking

We are pleased to announce that our firm of the month is EXPLegal, our host for the 2015 ILN 27th Annual Meeting in Taormina, Sicily!  

 

May/June 2015

ILN Firm of the Month – EXPLegal – Italy!

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, EXPLegal – Italy!  

Active in Rome and Milan, EXP Legal is a modern and innovative professional reality that encapsulates the concepts behind its name such as: EXPerience, EXPerts, EXPertise, all poised to meet the EXPectations of its clients. 

Uniquely, EXP Legal provides legal assistance in Italian as well as in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, upon request. Its multidisciplinary and global approach is typical of the new professional structure that leverages the professional experience of its lawyers and other experts that seamlessly work together to provide its clients with legal and strategic assistance in domestic and cross-border transactions. All the firm’s members are all well versed to operate within different jurisdictions. In many ways, the Firm acts as a convening platform whereby it uses its experience to select and coordinate the best multidisciplinary teams of experts to best serve its clients.

EXP Legal now brings the experience of a consolidated team of new professionals, advising on new areas of practice such as information and communication technology, international taxation and tax planning and media and entertainment.

Currently, EXP Legal advises on the following practice areas: corporate law, commercial law and contracts, M&A, banking and finance, restructuring & bankruptcy, media, sport and entertainment law, telecommunication, information and communication technology, international taxation as well as international and diplomatic organizations, litigation and arbitration. 
Main Contacts at EXPLegal and More…

 
Learn More…
Full descriptions of EXPLegal’s services, expertise, and lawyer profiles are available on their ILN profile.
Antonello Corrado
Antonello Corrado

Email: 
ACorrado@explegal.it

Telephone: +39 (06) 68 76 917

Practice Groups: Corporate, Finance, International Trade, Nonprofit & NGO, Litigation and Arbitration
Giorgio Cherubini

Giorgio
Cherubini

Email: 
GCherubini@explegal.it

Telephone: +39 (06) 68 76 917

Practice Groups:
Restructuring & Bankruptcy, Corporate & Commercial, Litigation and Arbitration, Trusts & Estates
 
Alan Griffiths

ILN Executive Director, Alan Griffiths says…

"The strong program that EXPLegal has put together for our Annual Meeting in Taormina, Sicily represents the two sides of the ILN coin: deep personal and professional relationships and in-depth discussions of legal topics of interest. We look forward to joining them at the end of May for an excellent Conference." 
Contact Us
The International Lawyers Network is an association of 91 high-quality, full-service law firms with over 5,000 lawyers worldwide. The Network provides clients with easily accessible legal services in 67 countries on six continents. The ILN – where lawyers become friends. 

International Lawyers Network | 179 Kinderkamack Road | Westwood, New Jersey, 07675
(201) 594-9985 | (201)  740-9765 | www.ilntoday.com
 

 

As I was doing some reading on content marketing, I came across this post from almost a year ago, which is, ironically, about staying current with your content marketing to avoid becoming a dinosaur.

And while it’s true that it’s important to stay on top of the trends and "hot" ideas in content to make sure that what you’re producing is being consumed and shared, there are some excellent tips in there that lawyers, firms and law firm professionals will find of use in their own content marketing strategies, and are actually still fairly current. 

Today, let’s look at two of them. 

Tip One: Make your Content Mobile-Friendly

It was true in June of 2014, and it’s even more true now – people are accessing content from their mobile devices. Some statistics for you: 

 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Freshen Up Your Content Marketing

I know, I know, I should probably change this regular feature to Two "Content" Tips for Tuesdays. I may get back to adding in other tips at some point, but for now, content is such a meaty and worthwhile topic that I’m happy to continue to use the Two for Tuesdays platform to opine on it. 

Today, I want to talk about digestibility. 

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle of what makes content successful, and one of those things is how easy you make it for your audience to read it. We’ve talked about things like writing in their language and not using legalese, but in this case, I’m referring directly towards how the content appears on the page (for our purposes here, we’re focused on written content, though it can be blogs, articles, or what have you).

This morning, I was reading (okay, skimming) the Content Marketing Institute’s "Who Killed the Content?" piece, and zeroed in on their section about making content clean and skimmable. 

You may think "this doesn’t apply to me – I’m a lawyer, writing on important subjects that my clients really care about, and they will both want and need to read every word."

 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Make Your Content Easy to Digest

"Be more human." 

That was the closing advice from the LMA’s keynote speaker, Dan Pink, at this year’s conference.

While it was easy to compare Pink to the previous two years’ keynotes (Kat Cole and James Kane) and find him a bit lacking, especially when it came to audience engagement on Twitter, he still offered some great tidbits of information for us to takeaway (and many of the live tweeters following along offered a lot of strong praise for the speech).

Anecdotally, when speaking with several regular LMA attendees, they told me that they felt as though the keynote should be more of a "rah rah" type of presentation to pump up legal marketers, but instead, this was more for and about our lawyers.  I agree with that assessment, so the lawyers among my readers may find more value in the content from Dan Pink. 

For a much more concise recap of the session than I’m about to offer, check out Heather Morse’s post right from Pink’s presentation. 

Continue Reading Leadership and the New Principles of Influence – An LMA Recap

I’ve still got content marketing on the brain (not surprisingly), and I’m seeing more and more discussion about it in legal circles lately. Remember when Lance Godard of Fisher & Phillips told us that 2015 would be the year of content marketing? 

But just because we’re excited and focused on it doesn’t mean that it’s without it challenges. Last week, we looked at two from this WordStream post, and today, we’re going to tackle a couple more. 

Before we get started, you may want to read a couple of excellent articles – both shared by Adrian Lurssen, and one that he authored: 

Challenge One: Signal vs. Noise

This is something that Adrian talks about in his piece, which is why I suggest that you read it before diving into my comments. When WordStream talks about this challenge, they look at it as the challenge of maintaining an ambitious publishing schedule. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: More Challenges to Content Marketing

Attendees at the Legal Marketing Association conference will normally shy away from any session that is entirely presented by service providers – but if that session is done by One North, they’re making a big mistake. 

Not only are they always entertaining, but they assume the audience comes in with a high level understanding of the content to begin with (not always the case with all presenters, admittedly) and they deliver some solid food for thought. 

At #LMA15, their session was on "Creating Natively Digital Brand Experiences," which sounds like a lot of terrifying marketing speak. We are going to talk about branding and logos, but the marketing nerd in me loves all of this, so please bear with me. For the lawyers in my audience, you may want to read along anyway – it will give you some insight into the broader challenges that your firm and your firm’s marketing professionals face when it comes to branding (which is an important issue!). 

LMA members, if you missed this, Kalev Peekna and Nate Denton from One North, the conference presenters, will be sharing highlights from their presentation in the next Social Media SIG webinar on May 12th – members can register here. 

Continue Reading Creating Natively Digital Brand Experiences – A Recap

On the second day of the LMA conference, I kept the client-related momentum going by heading straight into "Client Expectations in Today’s Marketplace" after the GC Panel. Presenting in the session were Laura Meherg and Nat Slavin of Wicker Park Group, and thanks to LMA, I can tell you: 

Wicker Park Group consultants interview hundreds of clients each year on behalf of law firms located around the world. The interviewees include business owners, company executives and in-house counsel representing a wide range of industries. Taken together, the interviews offer unique insights into the essential expectations that build strong client relationships regardless of location, industry or client history."

The session itself promised that: 

This program will highlight the most common themes in client expectations, including the complaints and praise – both big and small – that clients identify as greatly impacting the well-being of their outside counsel relationships. In addition, Wicker Park Group partners will explain what clients think about client feedback, why it’s critical to consistently seek their input, the global trends in client feedback and best practices from successful client feedback and client service programs in law firms."

 

Continue Reading Client Expectations in Today’s Marketplace – A Recap

It feels good to be getting back into the routine after being away at LMA15! You’ll still be seeing a couple more recap posts from me (two, perhaps three), but today, we’re back to our regularly scheduled Two for Tuesdays, and yes, we’re still looking at content marketing. 

As expected, content marketing was the buzz of the LMA too, and it’s not going away any time soon. Lest you start to panic, law firms have been producing content long before it was "cool" to do so – we’ve just now got a name for it. 

But there are still challenges to doing so, and I see the results of them all the time. Let’s look at two of these challenges today, and how to overcome them, in our latest Two for Tuesdays. Thanks to The Wordstream Blog and their "11 Big Content Marketing Challenges (and How to Overcome Them)" for the inspiration! 

Challenge One: Competition

What’s the old adage? There’s nothing new to say, just new ways to say it. As The Wordstream Blog’s post points out: 

Whether you’re blogging about your small needlecraft business or enterprise-level IT hardware, someone else has already been blogging about it for a long time. To make matters worse, there has never been such intense competition for your audience’s attention."

 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Challenges to Content Marketing