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5cde60f6Seeing Jabez LeBret at last week’s Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference reminded me that I needed to catch up on my Legal Coffee Break podcasts – if you’re not yet familiar with it, the Legal Coffee Break podcast is a concise, less than ten-minute, update on legal marketing, technology, and other issues in the legal industry, hosted by GNGF founders Mark Homer and Jabez, with Jabez being the primary voice to this point.

Episode 26 discusses two things that are important to lawyers, and how they have changed with the advent of technology: referrals, and first impressions. Since Jabez talks about issues that I regularly address with my own lawyers, this one particularly stuck with me. 
Continue Reading Referrals and First Impressions: How Technology Has Changed Them

photo-1452690700222-8a2a1a109f4cRemember the good old days when we just did a bunch of things and didn’t have specialized terms for them? Yep, these aren’t them.

“Social media marketing” came about when social media platforms were introduced and we learned how to use online technology to build relationships that we’d previously been building offline (that’s tremendously simplified, but you get the idea). Then “content marketing” came along to describe what many law firms had been doing for years – writing about the law and its impact on their clients, and then sharing it with them. As a term, content marketing is broader than that, but in terms of the legal industry, that’s pretty much the short version.

As we worked through the introduction of the terms, we separated people into two camps: the “broadcasters” and the “engagers.” The “broadcasters” treated social media and content marketing as a means to spread their message around, but without the end goal of developing community with anyone. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a different valuation – some of the goals that firms/lawyers who embrace this philosophy might be pursuing are reputation enhancement, being considered a thought leader on a particular subject, etc. Many firms/lawyers have been successful, and even built a large following this way, and spend little or no time engaging with their audience.
Continue Reading Two Ways to Translate Content Marketing into Relationship Marketing

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-1439556838232-994e4c0d3b7cAlthough we’re well into 2016 now, it’s not too late to make some resolutions for your content marketing. I came across this Forbes article from the end of last year with 6 Content Marketing New Year’s Resolutions to Make This Year, and there is some great food for thought in there that I’d like us to consider. As it’s a Two for Tuesdays day, we’ll focus on two of them to start with.

Why content marketing resolutions at all?

It’s easy to get too into the weeds with content marketing, and be so focused on the process of producing and distributing content that we forget to take that step back once in a while to make sure that we’re sticking to our strategy, working with a strategy that makes sense for us, our practices, and our firms, and continuing to produce and distribute content that meets with what our audiences really want to consume.
Continue Reading Two Content Marketing Resolutions for 2016

iStock_000024718576SmallToday, I’m bringing you another post from Group Dewey Consulting while I’m traveling for our Regional Meeting of the Americas. This post looks at why the idea of connecting is better than that of networking:

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I’m not a big fan of ‘networking’ -that rite of passage for every professional with aspirations of career changes, promotions or new clients. It has its place, of course. But it’s not the business development panacea many would make it out to be. In fact, I think networking can do more harm than good in some ways. To make my point, here are 7 ways ‘connecting’ is better than ‘networking’.

Networking is about finding ways to know more people.

Connecting is about finding ways to know people more.

My linkedIn profile says that I am connected to 1,560 people. That’s not right. I am ‘networked’ with 1,560 people. But I am not ‘connected’ to them. I can’t be. How could I really ‘know’ that many people? Studies, history, and common sense indicate that the human mind is capable of knowing well only about 150 people. Playing the volume game may serve your ego but it will do little for your happiness, let alone your success. I am ‘connected’ to about 50 to 75 people who I know really well and through whom almost all of my referrals come. Deep connections build communities of people. ‘Communities’ are powerful things. They are made up of groups of people who care about each others’ success, who trust and respect one another and who exchange favors and assistance. Connecting is about finding the people most qualified for you to help and for them to help you, and building connections with those people. It is about building a self supporting ecosystem in which all boats rise together.
Continue Reading 7 REASONS NETWORKING IS DEAD – OR SHOULD BE

Ahhhhhhh!!My mom hates the word “sucks,” but I’m using it in my title for effect – “what, Lindsay thinks networking sucks?”

Sure, sometimes. And I’m sure everyone else does too. Who doesn’t get fed up with all of the things we’re “supposed” to be doing every once in a while?

We go to events, and we’re supposed to be flashing a bright smile, asking about other people, handing out business cards, never missing a meeting or a meal – it’s exhausting. And you can get burned out.

Fast Company had a post on this by Lisa Evans last January, prime time for networking burnout, she says.

But I’d argue that the fall is just as easy to see burnout as any other time of the year. Everyone is back from their holidays, school is ramping up for the kids, work has gotten busy again for the rest of us with new projects, clients back in the office, and more demands on our time. Yes, we may start out the month of September feeling fresh and with the best intentions to network our hearts out, but who really wants to fit that into their busy schedule as well? 
Continue Reading Networking SUCKS. Now what?

iStock_000011931148SmallFor our latest installment of “General Counsel Corner,” I spoke with the employment counsel for a Fortune 500 company. My question to her was:

Clients apply their own set of metrics for determining quality, value, and success. What are some of the metrics you use when selecting outside counsel?”

Continue Reading General Counsel Corner: What Metrics Do You Apply to Outside Counsel?

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

"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