As we lead up to the Legal Marketing Association‘s Annual Conference, the importance of communicating the value of attending any conference to those back in the office has been in the forefront of my mind. The LMA conference is always packed to the gills with scheduled events, because marketers have to be able to prove to the decision makers that there is value to be gotten from attending. 

Even though the ILN has more opportunities for organic networking at our conferences, there is still a burden on our attendees to show their partners that this is not a boondoggle. 

No matter which conferences or events we’re attending this year, there are some ways that we can get out ahead of the inevitable question "Is your attendance at that event really worth it?"

I’m going to break this up into three posts, looking at different ways to address this question. The keys are to Prepare, Engage and Follow Up, and today, we’ll focus on preparation. 

We all love the idea that we can just show up somewhere without preparation, and it will be successful – we’ll meet all the right people, new business will flow our way, and we’ll run out of business cards on the first day because people are lining up to meet us.

Continue Reading Communicating Conference Attendance Value: Preparation

Another Tuesday, another opportunity for us to focus on content marketing! But today, there’s a twist! We’re looking at visual content marketing today. 

Now, it may seem like this isn’t something for law firms or lawyers to think about, but I promise you that it is. I was just reading an excellent article over on Business 2 Community on The 10 New Rules of Visual Content Marketing from Paul Bingham, who says: 

It used to be OK to have a static website gallery, post text to your social channels, and use corporate photos and videos online. Now, readers depend on visuals to figure out whether your content is worth their time."

Expectations of consumers have changed too. They no longer have time to click through to an image or link to see what your content is about. They make split-second decisions based on the visual content provided."

That’s not just true for your average consumer – it’s true for clients, potential clients, influencers and amplifiers as well – we’re all busy people, quickly scrolling through our feeds looking for what grabs our attention the most strongly to determine whether we invest any time in it. Visuals can help someone to decide to make that time investment in your valuable content. 

 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Visual Content Marketing

Last week, we looked at two of six content marketing tips from Forbes for 2015, and this week, I want to focus on the two others in their article that I found to be of value for the legal industry. 

Tip One: Focus on Social

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to regular readers of Zen that I picked up on this tip, and I stand behind it as a valuable one. Social media continues to be a valuable means of engagement, and helping to disseminate content – both yours and others. 

In last week’s post, we talked about becoming a content curator – for me, content marketing is about more than sharing what you’ve written or developed; it’s about identifying what’s of value to the audiences you serve and sharing that with them, so that they don’t have to do the work of finding it. 

Social media can be used to help you find that content, as we discussed last week, but the second piece of that is about sharing it – you don’t want to put together all of this valuable information for your audiences and then leave it somewhere, hoping that they discover it, You want to make it easy for them. So you tweet it out, share it on Facebook and LinkedIn, talk about it on YouTube, etc. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Tips for 2015 Part 2

We are thrilled to announce this month’s firm of the month, KÜBLER GbR, our insolvency specialists from Germany! 

 

March/April 2015

ILN Firm of the Month – KÜBLER GbR, Germany!

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, KÜBLER GbR, Germany! 

KÜBLER operates nationwide from 24 offices in Germany, plus a London-based location, with a staff of around 250 partners, associates and employees. Since its foundation in 1974, it has developed into one of the most reputable law firms specializing in commercial law, focusing on company restructuring and insolvency administration. KÜBLER is held in high esteem internationally for both its expertise and extensive experience in legal and operational business affairs. We are managing numerous large-scale insolvency proceedings in Germany, and are also involved in European and US cross-border insolvencies.

KÜBLER is characterized by its widespread presence in its many regional offices and the strong professional knowledge of a major modern law firm operating on a national level. Due to this advantageous organizational structure, it is possible to set up professional teams as is individually required, and if need be, even at short notice – including specialist lawyers, chartered accountants, business economists, interim managers and M&A consultants. For that reason, KÜBLER´s partners are in a position to manage insolvency proceedings, and advise clients on restructuring issues, from any of its office locations, whatever the scope of appropriate measures each case might include.
Main Contacts at KÜBLER and More…

 
Learn More…
Full descriptions of KÜBLER’s services, expertise, and lawyer profiles are available on their ILN profile.
Sebastian Laboga
Sebastian Laboga

Email: 
iln@kueblerlaw.com

Telephone: +49 (0) 30 264768­‐493

Practice Groups: Insolvency Law
Thorsten Petersen
Email: iln@kueblerlaw.com

Telephone: +49 (0) 30 264768­‐495

Practice Groups: Insolvency Law
Michael Bohnhoff

Email: iln@kueblerlaw.com

Telephone: +49 (0) 30 264768­‐494

Practice Groups: Insolvency Law
 
Alan Griffiths

ILN Executive Director, Alan Griffiths says…

"KÜBLER is a true example of the kind of excellence we look for in ILN member firms. They are consummate professionals, while also strongly embracing the family atmosphere that networking in the ILN provides." 
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
 

 

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’m still facing massive jet lag (for me, it’s roughly 3:30 in the morning at the moment), so today’s Two for Tuesdays will be brief and to the point (and hopefully make sense!).  We’re still focused on content marketing for our Tuesdays’ posts, and today, I’m piggybacking off an excellent post from Forbes, The Only 6 Content Marketing Tips You Need for 2015. 

From the title,  you can tell that Drew Hendricks, the author, looks at six tips – we’ll check back in on a couple more next week, but for today, there are two that I want to examine as they relate to the legal industry. 

Tip One: Learn to Curate

This is my absolute favorite tip, since I’ve seen it be the most successful for lawyers and legal professionals. 

What does Hendricks say? 

 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Tips for 2015

I’m just back after being away for our 2015 Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Shanghai, where we had one of the best examples of excellent client service that I’ve seen in a long time – which provides a superb learning opportunity for all of us in professional services. Our Asia Pacific conference is typically our smallest meeting, with around 20 attendees, and as such, we don’t make up a significant part of a hotel’s business in the same way that we do for our other conferences.

That generally means that while hotels will offer us good service, they don’t go out of their way to wow us – they just don’t consider it to be worth their time. But I was pleasantly surprised to see otherwise in Shanghai.

I’ve had quite a lot of experience working with hotel contacts all over the world in the last ten-plus years, and had been telling our Executive Director on the plane how pleased I was with the service that we’d gotten from our contact, Jecy, at the Grand Hyatt Pudong in Shanghai. She was efficient and responsive, whether on weekends or Chinese New Year – even at times I wasn’t expecting an immediate response from her.

Continue Reading Client Service Excellence: Make Everyone Feel Like a VIP

As you read this, I will either be in Shanghai, or on my way there (my brain is currently too fried from conference prep, getting ready for a blog launch, and a variety of other projects to calculate the time/travel difference!). And that’s actually a perfect segue for this week’s Two for Tuesdays, in which we look at the biggest challenge that you’re going to see to content marketing in 2015. 

The inspiration for this post comes again from Business 2 Community, with a post from Asaf Rothem, "3 Major Challenges Your Content Marketing Department Will Encounter in 2015." Admittedly, I chuckled at the title, because for the most part, none of us will have a full blown content marketing department.

Even more to the point, for the legal industry, clients and potential clients really want to hear from the experts – lawyers. They don’t want content from a "department." They want it right from the source. So even if you have help with distribution, editing, etc., the original words must be coming from you, the lawyer, to be most effective. 

With that being said, what struck me about this article is the first challenge – it’s one we hear all the time when it comes to content marketing, so it’s one that bears discussion here: Not enough time.

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Tips for The Biggest Challenge to Content Marketing

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

Today marks six years since Zen & The Art of Legal Networking made its debut in the legal blogging world. In some ways, it feels like it’s been longer than that, while in others, the time has just flown! 

I’ve only ever marked this "blogiversary" three other times – on the second, fourth and fifth anniversaries, when I shared a sort of "state of the blog," things I had learned, and tips for blogging. Blogiversaries, like anniversaries, should be a time of reflection, so today has got me thinking about what I’ve learned in the past year, specifically six things I can share with you from Zen. 

Before I jump into that, however, I’ll tell you another thing I learned today – the traditional gift for a sixth anniversary is candy! For those who know me personally, you’ll know that I have a terrible sweet tooth, so it’s a rather appropriate gift for me. Last year, for the 5th anniversary, I donated trees in honor of wood, and this year, I purchased some candy from my niece’s school fundraising efforts to help her meet her goal!

Lesson One: Blogging is NOT Dead

I’ve heard whispers in a few corners recently that blogging is dead; that no one is really doing it anymore or at least not in the same way that they used to. But I beg to differ. I still see it as a hugely valuable component of any content marketing strategy, and one of the best ways to own your content and engage with readers. 

Continue Reading Happy 6th Blogiversary to Zen & the Art of Legal Networking!