photo-1418225162054-0f773a996f9eAlthough you may be expecting our final Two for Tuesdays post of the year to focus on content marketing, I’m actually going to take a surprising break from that today in favor of sharing with you a couple of networking tips instead (try not to fall over in shock).

This time of year is perfect for networking because we’re all thinking of fresh starts and how we can make new business development connections. And, of course, you’re all joining me for our January LinkedIn Challenge, right?

Since it’s easy to get bogged down in the usual ideas of “okay, so I have to go to more networking events?” and “do I really have to revisit my elevator speech again?” I’m always looking for new and unique ways to breathe some life into my networking efforts without having to get too uncomfortable. I happened to come across this article from HuffPo the other day through Klout – and a quick aside on Klout. Typically, those of us familiar with Klout have long thought of it as a place for egomaniacs, because it’s a service that provides you with a “score” for your social media activity. It’s also generally accepted that this “score” is not altogether accurate – while it does a nice job of feeding your ego, it doesn’t always accurately reflect the quality of what’s being shared, or the level of engagement happening, and a number of us in the social media space were more than alarmed when some companies were hiring based on someone’s Klout score.
Continue Reading Networking Hacks from Undergrads

For today’s Two for Tuesdays, I want to spend some time talking about Facebook. I can hear many of you rolling your eyes, either because we’re talking social media, or because we’re talking Facebook, or both. 

But, as I say regularly, social media is nothing more than a set of tools for building relationships – just as client lunches, cocktail receptions, and conferences are. If you use these tools to connect with people, and share yourself in the same way as you would in person (and, of course, combine the use of these tools with meeting in person), they can be extraordinarily valuable. 

So why Facebook? There’s a couple of reasons – the first is that likely most of you reading this are already on LinkedIn, which I consider to be the most professional of the social media tools. I think that will always remain the case (unless another, unique platform comes along), and I find LinkedIn to be incredibly valuable. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Facebook

As you’re probably aware, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, yesterday and today are important days in the US Supreme Court – yesterday, the Justices heard oral arguments in the challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage, while today, the Justices will be hearing arguments about the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 

My Facebook feed, as I’m sure is true for many others, has been full of profile photo changes to an equals sign, on a red background, in support of same-sex marriage, and status updates relating a connection’s thoughts, one way or the other. 

I, too, have very strong opinions on the subject, along with a number of other hot-button social and political issues.  But you won’t see me changing my profile photo any time soon, or adding my two cents. Why not? 

Continue Reading On Why You Won’t See Me Change My Profile Picture

I consider myself to be a fairly savvy social media user, though as I often like to tell people, "we’re all still learning." And with a medium that changes SO quickly, there’s certainly always something new to learn. That was reinforced for me yesterday when I sat in on Samantha Collier’s webinar for the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group on Facebook for Law Firms. Sam offers a post inspired by her webinar here

Sam’s webinar covered personal Facebook profiles for lawyers, Facebook pages for law firms, some case studies, and resources. As you may or may not know, Facebook is the most prominent social network out there, with 845 million monthly active users. Continue Reading Facebook for Law Firms – A Recap of Sam Collier’s LMA Webinar

So now we’ve created a very basic Facebook profile, and just as we did with LinkedIn, it’s time to expand on that. 

When Facebook welcomes you, they want you to fill in your profile information, activate your mobile phone, find people you know and control what information you share.  We’ll go through each of these steps, as well as the "why" behind them, in the coming days.  Today, we’re going to focus on step one – filling out your profile information.  Continue Reading Facebook Tutorials – Creating a Profile Part II

Now we are on to a new set of tutorials – Facebook! 

You may be wondering why I would choose Facebook as the next social media tool to delve into – isn’t that for kids?

No!

Also, during our LinkedIn tutorial, you may remember that I posed a question in LinkedIn’s Answers feature to illustrate how to do it – and people answered.  My question was whether Facebook or Twitter was more valuable for lawyers.  Of course, the answer is – it depends.  But overwhelmingly, the responses of the group were "Facebook."  So Facebook it is! 

One of the most valuable things on Facebook is pages (and groups), but since we have to have a personal profile in order to use those, we’re going to start there. Continue Reading Facebook Tutorials – Creating a Profile Part I

This afternoon, I had the good fortune to sit in on Kevin O’Keefe’s webinar on "Beyond Blogging: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn." I’m already sold on the benefits of all three for law firms, but I love hearing Kevin’s stories which I can relate to our attorneys to win them over. The five most important things I heard Kevin say in his webinar were:

  1. Starting to use these tools isn’t a strategy – it’s a tactic. Saying that the strategy is to get on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook is like saying you’re going to have the lawyers drive red cars. It doesn’t make sense. Use them as relationship-building tools and tools that frame your identity.
     
  2. Because media is more social, and a shared experience, you need to be doing those things that will cause your information to be shared by others who have people trusting them. 
     
  3. Just because another law firm is doing something doesn’t mean you have to do it. 
     
  4. It doesn’t matter if your clients or perspective clients ever see your information being shared or if they read your blog – influencers and amplifiers are seeing it and connecting you to the right people. 
     
  5. Empower the lawyers at your firm to use social media to build relationships.

Continue Reading Beyond Blogging: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – A Re-Cap of LexBlog’s Webinar