In the legal industry, we’re in the business of relationships. It’s the nature of being service providers. So this week’s tips are brought to you in the spirit of encouraging additional connections and reaffirming the relationships that you have with those connections, whether they be clients or potential clients, referral sources, or other influencers and amplifiers. 

Tip One: Reach out to two people

However you’re most comfortable connecting with people, it’s time to review that list of your contacts.

  • Keep your contacts in a rolodex on your desk? Flip through it today.
  • Link to everyone on LinkedIn? Browse your list of connections.
  • Have your assistant use a CRM system? Go through it.
  • Have a pile of business cards in your desk? Pick two.

In whatever way you’re keeping record of your contacts, take a few minutes to go through that list and choose two people who you haven’t talked to in the last six months to a year. Then, reach out to them today – send them a quick email to see what they’re up to. Drop them a handwritten note to say hello, and enclose an article that they might find helpful. Comment on their latest status update on LinkedIn. No matter what you do, find a way to reach out to them. 

Why do this? Well, we’re all busy people, and there’s a short list of people who will be top of your mind on a regular basis. The likelihood is that if you’re not someone that they talk to regularly, you’re going to fall off their radar. Connecting with them again in some way puts you back on – and often, timing is everything, so you may be getting in touch right when the person needs an attorney with your expertise, or knows someone who does. It may be the case that they’re working with a conference organizer, and think you’d be perfect to join them on a panel, or they know a reporter looking for an additional source with your credentials. 

It’s something that doesn’t take a lot of time, but can reap big dividends. Our networks of contacts are no good to us if we don’t nurture them. And while there will be those off-chances where someone will need you and seek you out, the majority of the time it’s more likely to happen when someone is already thinking about you. 

I know, personally, that when someone reaches out to see how I’m doing, and regularly works to connect with me, I feel much more warmly towards them. And subsequently, I’m actively looking for ways that we can work together, or I can help them out. It’s still important not to bother or bombard someone with notes or offers of assistance (that can have the opposite effect), but checking in periodically can make all the difference in your relationship, especially if you work to make their life easier or offer value in another way. 

Take someone to lunch

Along those lines, why not arrange to have lunch with one of those people that you’re reaching out to, or even a cup of coffee? While we are all busy, it can be really nice once in a while to take a breather and have a conversation over a meal with someone else in the industry. 

If it’s a potential client, or a current client, it gives you the opportunity to talk with them and find out about the things that might be bothering them at the moment. Even if they aren’t things you can directly solve for them, you may know someone who can help, or be of assistance by just lending your ear. At the minimum, you’re creating goodwill with them, and showing them that you care about the relationship, and not just the fees you can get. 

If it’s a referral source, you’re reaffirming your relationship with that person, and reminding them about what it is you do (and vice versa). Perhaps you’ve expanded your practice in recent years, or you’re interested in a new area of the law. Having a longer conversation with someone than just a telephone call or email gives you the opportunity to share that information and equip your referral source with the knowledge they need to pass along business to you that is appropriate. 

Influencers and amplifiers are also important sources – have lunch with a reporter you know, and find out what kinds of stories they’re focusing on. Perhaps you would be a good source for something that they might not have considered you for, or you can point them to someone else (which still benefits you, because you’re giving yourself the reputation of being helpful). You may chat with a conference organizer, who remembers that they’re starting to develop content for a new conference, and you’d be just the right fit. 

You may be lunching with someone else in the industry, who, because they’ve gotten to know you better, will be on the lookout for any articles or blog posts you share, and will then share them with their audiences. 

Having lunch does take more time than a quick email to your connections, but give yourself a goal of having one lunch per quarter to start with – it’s very manageable, and it can make a world of difference. 

How do you make sure to nurture your network of connections regularly? 

This morning, I have a treat for you all! I’m bringing in a guest poster (which I’ll be doing from time to time, to switch things up), and today’s is my very good friend, Nancy Myrland. Nancy is the President of Myrland Marketing & Social Media, where she is a Social Media Consultant, Speaker & Trainer, and a Professional Marketing Advisor, specializing in helping firms and companies grow their business by strengthening relationships with their clients through the strategic use of Social Media.

Today, Nancy brings us an excellent post about LinkedIn – with all the changes in the last year, it can be tough to keep up, and Nancy helps us focus and understand what’s important about LinkedIn’s newest change, opening up their publishing platform. 

***

There are 2 conditions I’ll bet hold true for just about every person reading this blog post.

  1.  You’re busy.
  2. There are clients out there who need your services.

Your job as lawyers, and our job as the marketers who advise you, is to deal with the reality of number 1 and help you to find number 2, right? 

Continue Reading Lawyers: LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform Just Hit Home For You

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, our "Two for Tuesdays" focused on tips for blogging. Today’s post focuses on a couple of additional tips for blogging, but can also be applied to other writing you’re doing. These days, it’s becoming more and more difficult to distinguish one from the other, since both are sharable online, and many of the same principles of how people consume information apply to each. 

The first tip is again, one you can implement easily, while the second may take a bit more time and thought (and the first is one that’s a HUGE pet peeve of mine, which I’ll explain): 

Tip One – Use Shorter Titles

The title is, by far, the most important piece of your article or post.

"What about the content?" I can hear you saying.

And while, yes, the content is critical, the title is the reader gateway – it’s what self-selects those who will not have an interest in what you have to say, from those who will find it valuable. 

Secondarily, it gives the latter group a reason to read further – if the title is bland or boring, they may not read any more. If it’s catchy, but non-descriptive, you may lose people who think the content doesn’t apply to them. So it’s a key piece of any writing that you’re doing. 

The reason my tip today is to make your titles shorter is this – shorter titles are easy to share. Pretty much every article or blog post is going to have buttons that allow the reader to easily share the post through all kinds of social networks. The longer the title is, the more likely they’ll run into a character limit somewhere (Twitter, or LinkedIn Groups, for example) and rather than doing the work of figuring out how to shorten the title, they’ll just decide NOT to share the piece after all. 

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to forego sharing a valuable piece of content on Twitter, simply because the title was too long. It drives me crazy.

You may argue that if someone finds your work very valuable, then they will go to the extra effort of sharing it, even if the title is too long. And perhaps, on a small number of occasions, they will. But think about your audience for a moment – they’re busy (we’re all busy, right?) and unless you make things as convenient and easy for them as possible, they’re going to be on to the next thing. 

Ask yourself – what’s more important? Getting every potential keyword and content note into your title (and losing readers and a potentially viral circulation), or creating short, pointed titles that make your purpose clear and are easy to share. It’s a no-brainer. Take two minutes to see how difficult it would be to share your title and the link before hitting "publish," and before long, it will be second nature. 

Tip Two: Break up Your Posts Visually

When I first started blogging, I would write long dissertations, broken up only by some paragraphs, and maybe a few titles here and there. When I joined LexBlog after a few months of blogging, one of their first suggestions to me was to work on creating more space – the reason for this is the nature of the way we consume information today.

No one is really sitting down at their computer or mobile device and reading every word that someone writes. It would be nice to say otherwise, but we’re just all too busy and inundated with content to do anything else. So instead, we’re scanning posts to get at the salient information and decide if we need to really concentrate on a subject, if we want to share it, or if we want to move on. 

The way your post looks visually can assist with this – and the way to do that is to break it up: 

  • use MUCH shorter paragraphs than you’re used to (a sentence or two)
  • employ lists (bulleted or numbered – people love lists!)
  • break up your post in sections with headers that employ larger, bold fonts, etc. 

If you’re unsure as to how this might work best, take a look at some of the articles and blogs that you’ve enjoyed the most – look at how they handle spacing, and what’s visually pleasing to you, and translate that into what would work best for your own writing. It makes a huge difference!

Got any additional tips for blogging (or writing for that matter)? Feel free to share them in the comments below! 

Congratulations to our latest firm of the month, Jalsovszky Law Firm in Hungary! 

   

 

 

Member of the International Lawyers Network

The ILN is proud to announce our latest "Firm of the Month" – Jalsovszky Law Firm, Hungary!

Jalsovszky Law Firm is a young, but rapidly growing, law firm consisting of passionate, devoted and highly capable lawyers,led by Pál Jalsovszky. In recent years, despite the all-European economic and financial crisis, the law firm has produced steady growth and acquired a dominant position in the Hungarian legal market, most specifically in the tax area and in M&A advisory.

In recent years, Jalsovszky Law Firm has continuously been involved in high-level tax deals and managed to maintain the largest tax team among law firms in Budapest. Its tax practice is ranked in the top tier by all reputable independent directories in 2013, including Legal 500, Chambers and Tax Directors Handbook and the practice is very highly regarded both by its clients and peers.

The Firm’s M&A and commercial law practice provides its services to leading companies, investors and financial advisors present in the Hungarian market. In 2013, the firm advised on 3 out of the 15 most significant M&A transactions in Hungary. Its M&A practice is recommended both by the Legal 500 Europe EMEA’s and the Chambers’ 2013 editions.

Full descriptions of Jalsovszky Law Firm’s  services, expertise, and lawyer profiles are available on their ILN profile.

Lindsay Griffiths
Director of Global Relationship Management
International Lawyers Network

Lindsay Griffiths

 

Learn More

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Main Contact: 

Pál Jalsovszky

Pál Jalsovszky

Email: pjalsovszky@jalsovszky.com
Telephone: + 36 1 889 2800

Practice Groups:
Corporate, Commercial, Tax
 
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Alan Griffiths

“Jalsovszky Law Firm has been a fantastic new addition to the ILN, and have already shown themselves to be a strong member firm.”

Alan Griffiths
Executive Director
International Lawyers Network

+001.201.594.9985

www.ilntoday.com

 

 

On my calendar for today was an assignment to share with you all my thoughts on some best practices for networking. "But Lindsay," I can hear you saying, "we’ve been talking a LOT about networking lately!" 

And yes, we have, but we’ve been focused more on where you can be networking, and how you can add networking into your daily life, but not as much about the nuts and bolts of actual networking. 

So what works well? For some inspiration, I headed online and found that most networking suggestions focus around what to do if you’ve lost your job and are hunting for a new one. But it turns out that many of those suggestions can be applied to lawyers and legal marketers who want to connect at events as well (and let’s clarify, we’re not speaking strictly about "networking" events – networking can happen anywhere, from your child’s softball game to sitting at the airport). 

Out of the tips that I saw, I’m sharing with you my five favorites here, drawing on this post from HowStuffWorks on Networking Tips for People Who Hate Networking and this post on 10 Simple Tips for Networking Success from US News  & World Report. 

Continue Reading Five Tips for Networking Success

In our first "episode" of Wondering Wednesdays, we answer the question "How can you make the most of your memberships?" with three key points.  

//www.youtube.com/embed/Hp7pf2jER-4

To make the most of your membership in an organization, I have the following three suggestions: 

  • Attend events: in-person relationships are the most important part of making any membership worthwhile, so attend as many of the events as you are able to, so that you can meet both members and organization leaders. 
     
  • Use social media: Find out how to stay in touch with the organization using social media. Do they have a LinkedIn group? A Facebook page? A Twitter feed? Not only does this give you the chance to connect on a regular basis with the organization and fellow members, but it allows you to stay up-to-date on all news and activities, so you can identify how best to leverage these.
     
  • Meet members when traveling: If you’re part of a national or international group, use your personal and professional travels to meet with other members. If makes you top of mind for referrals, because you’re reinforcing those personal relationships face-to-face. You may only see each other once a year otherwise, and usually in a big group setting, so these one-on-one meetings can be hugely beneficial.

Offer your tips below in the comments, or tell us what you’re "wondering!"

I’m back with another Two for Tuesday, and today’s post focuses on how you can use social media to make the most out of attending conferences and events. We all attend events throughout the year, whether it’s a networking cocktail party or a CLE seminar or a multi-day conference. And social media can actually help to enhance your conference experience in many ways. Let’s look at two of them! 

  1. LinkedIn: There are two ways that you can use LinkedIn as part of your event experience. First, if you’re attending a conference, there will often be a group that is dedicated to the event. Here, you’ll find discussions about speakers and sessions, as well as conversation among the attendees. It’s a great place to start connecting with people before the conference, so you can make the most of meeting them at the conference. The majority of event organizers won’t give you advance access to the attendee list, so LinkedIn groups can be a way around that, so that you can be a bit more strategic about who you want to meet. People will also get to know you beforehand if you’re actively contributing valuable information to the conversations. 

    LinkedIn is also where you want to connect with people you’re meeting at the conference or event, as well as speakers. If you’ve got your laptop with you in a session, or your smartphone in your pocket at a cocktail event, you can easily look up the person you’re speaking with on LinkedIn and send them a request to connect (just after the conversation though, you don’t want to be rude!). Make sure to send a more personalized note than the standard one (I don’t believe this is yet possible with mobile, but hopefully soon), and reference your conversations. In the past, we used to collect business cards and have an assistant input all of that information into your contact database, but now, you can connect to them on LinkedIn instead. And that’s a much better way to network because you can learn more about them fairly quickly to see where you might have commonalities, and you have reasons and means of connecting with them in the future through the platform. 

    Similarly, if you see a speaker that is particularly engaging, connect with him or her on LinkedIn as well – let them know you enjoyed their presentation.  Perhaps you’re a blogger as well, and you’ll be recapping their session. Send them a note with the link to the post afterwards to add another point of connection. Even better, ask them to guest post on your blog, or interview them for a post. 

    The idea here is to take your event or conference attendance from being a flat, one-dimensional effort of simply showing up and talking to people to an multi-dimensional, rich experience. You’re meeting people, but you’re also adding them into your network, where you will engage them in the future through conversations, sharing valuable content, keeping up with their careers and projects, and if you’re in the same city or geographic area, additional in-person meetings. 

     

  2. Twitter: When I first started using Twitter, it was very conversational, because there was such a small group of people on there and we all knew each other. Today, Twitter can tend to be a little more about broadcasting content than engagement, but conferences and events are where it really shines. 

    When you know you’re attending an event, find out whether there will be a hashtag for that event – generally, smaller networking events won’t have these, but conferences and CLE seminars will, because they want to empower their attendees to share their content. For example, the Legal Marketing Association (organically) developed a hashtag that includes their name and the year of the conference – so this year’s will be #LMA14. 

    Since you’re (hopefully) using some kind of platform to manage Twitter, and not just the web interface, you can use this platform to set up a column that only shows you the tweets relevant to your hashtag. That will allow you to see all of the conversation surrounding the conference or event before you even get there – not only will the conference/event organizers be offering tips and news about speakers and events, attendees will be using the hashtag to start conversations and get to know each other. Like LinkedIn, it’s a way to connect with people before you meet them face-to-face, so you start off the conference ahead of the game. 

    Twitter is also useful during and after the event – during the event, you can use the hashtag to connect with people who are also there, and find out who might be in the same session as you, who wants to meet for lunch and where, who is standing alone during a coffee break and would be happy to chat. You can review the information coming out of the sessions you’re not attending, and see the gems coming out of the session you’re in. If you’re blogging, you can share your recap posts during and after the conference using the hashtag, so others who are interested in them will get to see them as well. 

    Follow the people you’ve met, so they appear in your regular Twitter stream, and engage with them. That will continue the conversations long after the event is over. You can also connect with the conference organizers – maybe you have ideas for future events, or maybe it’s just too hot in the conference room, and you want to ask them to turn the heat down (I’ve done that). 

Social media is so-named because it’s just that – "social." So it can help to add a huge benefit to your existing networking events. Think about this for a moment – if you’re attending a conference or event for the first time, and you may or may not know some of the other attendees, wouldn’t it be better to have chatted online with a few people already, perhaps have a coffee meeting or dinner arranged for the first evening you’re there, and spend the entire time having meaningful conversations, because you’ve gotten the small talk out of the way online?

Contrast that with arriving cold, with no connections, spending the first night having room service in your hotel room and reviewing the attendee information you received when you registered to see if you may know someone and figuring out how to connect with them the next day. Or having to introduce yourself to the people you sit next to, whom you’ve never met before, and hoping you’ll have something in common. 

There’s nothing wrong with the latter scenario, but the former gives you a leg up and helps you maximize the time that you’re dedicating both to meeting and engaging with new people, as well as educating yourself in your area of expertise. And it becomes more and more natural the more  you use it – I’ve met many amazing colleagues through social media, and my usage of Twitter and LinkedIn for the LMA conference is second-nature now – give it a try for your next event! 

 

The week before last, I was on the road in Chicago. Funnily enough, I checked in to the Amalfi Hotel in January, and because they changed names, checked out of the Kinzie Hotel in February. 

One thing that didn’t change was their high level of service though, and I want to share a story with you to illustrate how easy it is to genuinely please a client, and not only make them loyal to you, but make them an advocate for your brand at the same time. 

We were checking out of the hotel on Saturday afternoon. I’d arranged for a late checkout, and was traveling to the airport with two of my friends and colleagues. One of them was delayed a few minutes, so two of us were sitting in the lobby of the hotel with our bags, waiting for her.

The doorman came over and asked whether we needed transportation to the airport. We said that we would, but that since we were waiting for someone else, we’d grab a taxi when she arrived. 

Continue Reading Good Client Service: How Well Are You Listening?

Since I already had ten "good" Superbowl commercials for this year, I felt that adding another three would be crazy talk. So instead, I’m bringing you those spots as honorable mentions – spots that I really liked, but maybe missed the mark for one reason or another (or just weren’t *as* good as the top ten). 

The first is a spot that I just loved: 

GoldieBlox

//www.youtube.com/embed/WnqLgbKKUjw

Continue Reading Superbowl Commercials – Honorable Mention 2014

And here we are, folks, time to discuss my list of "ugly" Superbowl commercials for 2014. Once again, these commercials were not as awful as in years past – I wasn’t terribly offended by any of them, or sitting in disgust.  These were just my least favorite of the bunch, for various reasons (but generally because I was left thinking "what?!"). I’m bringing you a list of seven commercials today, because there were two extra that I disliked a little bit more than would be deserving of the "bad" list.

GoDaddy

Not surprisingly, if you’ve seen my lists before, GoDaddy’s commercial makes it onto my ugly list. Amazingly, it’s not because I was majorly offended by it (which is normally the case). 

Continue Reading Superbowl Commercials – The Ugly 2014