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I’m just back from our 2011 23rd Annual Meeting in Lisbon, and I’ll have lots to share with you over the next week or so.  But what’s fresh in my mind this morning is our session on LinkedIn from Saturday morning – I’d like to share some best practices for LinkedIn, which can be particularly useful when you’re just returning from any conference:

  • Review the attendee list, or the stack of business cards you returned with and make note of the people you met and chatted to at the conference. Search for, and connect to, these people on LinkedIn, making sure to send a personal note with your invitation that refers to your conversations.
     
  • Set your browser to open to the LinkedIn home page when you start it up.  I use Chrome on my desktop, and have set it to open several tabs when I start it up each morning, including LinkedIn – that way I never have to remember to visit LinkedIn and check the latest status updates.  Then, each morning, I scroll through my news feed and comment on or like updates and news, or connect to anyone I might know.  It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it keeps me plugged into what my network is doing.

Continue Reading LinkedIn Best Practices

Today’s Ask Friday! question comes from our very own Executive Director, Alan Griffiths, who asked me to share with you some tips for getting ready for a business trip.  We’ve all got our own lists and prep routines, but this has been on my mind this week while we’re getting ready to head over…

Here at Zen I’ve decided to start a weekly post called "Ask Friday!" where I’ll take a reader question and answer it.  You can leave your questions in the comments for any post, if you’d like, or message me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Today’s question comes from Larry Bodine, of Larry Bodine Marketing, who asks "What tips do you have to motivate lawyers to do business development?" 

My number one tip to motivate lawyers is to share success stories.  I’ve found that showing how other lawyers have gotten business through various types of business development activities give attorneys the comfort that someone has tried it before, and they’ve been successful.

But it’s not always enough for me to be the one sharing these stories – it’s often more helpful to get the attorney who’s been successful to do the sharing.  For example, as you know I’m a big fan of social media.  I give presentations to our attorneys at each of our Annual & Regional Conferences, and recently, my presentations have focused on social media.Continue Reading Ask Friday!

Although I did attend a morning session on Wednesday on client retention, it ended up being a bit of a vendor commercial – and not for something I felt I wanted to endorse on Zen. So instead, we’re jumping right ahead to Maximized Marketing: Budget Boundaries and Successful Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized firms.

The session was a bit introductory, but with over half the room saying that they were new to legal marketing, it made sense. Plus, it was a good refresher for the rest of us, and great to hear what a Managing Partner had to add to the session.

The session included Marguerite Downey, Director of Communications & Client Services for Adduci Mastriani & Schaumberg LLP and Patricia A. Harris, Esq., Managing Partner for Zetlin & De Chiara LLP.

Not only was most of the room new to legal marketing, but the majority of the audience also served as the sole marketer at their firm.  Although this can present difficulties, as the speakers pointed out, having a committee of one isn’t such a bad thing!  They also said that you can leverage limited resources efficiently with creative solutions at a smaller firm. 

Patricia introduced herself by saying that she has something in common with the marketers in the room – "No one wants us in their office." This got a laugh out of everyone before we jumped into their presentation.

Continue Reading Maximized Marketing: Budget Boundaries and Successful Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Firms

The last session of the day on Tuesday was "The Path to World Class – Exploring the Attributes that Distinguish Top-Tier Legal Marketing & Business Development Teams." After a long day at the conference, this session was going to have to be very interesting to hold our attention – and it was!

The panel was moderated by Joe Calve of Morrison Foerster and featured Geoffrey Goldberg of Lowenstein Sandler, Anne Malloy Tucker of Goodwin Procter, and Barbara Sessions of Winston & Strawn.

The panel was designed to be a nuts and bolts tutorial that we could put into action when we got back to the office.  The panelists suggested that rock climbing by your fingernails is an apt analogy to what marketers do, so we’d need all the help we could get.Continue Reading The Path to World Class – Exploring the Attributes that Distinguish Top-tier Legal Marketing and Business Development Teams

As I attended my sixth LMA Conference last week, it occurred to me that I couldn’t believe how fast my time in the legal profession has gone! But it also occurred to me that there may be many people out there attending their first conference, or just starting out in the legal or professional services fields, who never got any lessons in college about how to act in a business environment.

This week, I heard someone say during a session that if you’re going to be "Debbie Gossip" as a marketing professional, it will be difficult to gain the trust of your lawyers and as such, difficult to get the respect needed to get a seat at the table. I think the younger generation in the workforce (and at 31, I include myself in that) has a lot of enthusiasm, talent and incredible ideas. But sometimes we lack the professional polish that can get those ideas implemented. So I wanted to offer up some advice on what I’ve learned in my six and a half years in legal marketing – some of these things might seem silly or overly conservative, but they will help you stand out for your work instead of for a less professional reason:
Continue Reading Some Advice to New Marketers on Attending Conferences

You may not be surprised to learn that during the 2011 Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference, I attended the session on Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool. And it was definitely a valuable session.  

The panel was moderated by Josh Fruchter, Principal at eLawMarketing, and featured Melanie Green, Director of Business Development & Marketing at Baker Daniels, Andrea Stimmel, Business Development Director, Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, and Russell Thomas, Director of Media & Public Relations at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

The panel began by asking who in the room worked at a firm that was tweeting, had a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, or blogs – the majority of the room was in this category.  Law firms lean more towards LinkedIn than Facebook based on the show of hands in the room, though a few of those on Twitter said they felt Facebook had value as well.  

The panel had crowdsourced questions from the attendees in advance of the session through the LMA Conference’s LinkedIn group, and the panel was built around this.  
Continue Reading Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool – An LMA Recap

The second half of Alex Larkin’s presentation addressed the opportunities for foreign and domestic investors in the electricity generation sector. He began by saying that the government needs to make some good decisions to facilitate this, specifically when it comes to electrical pricing. Electricity is just too cheap at this point to attract foreign investors to come in and build power plants. They won’t make any money if they’re forced to sell at 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

For 2010, the anticipated demand for power was about 20,000 megawatts – by the time we get to 2025, this is estimated to quadruple to 80,000 megawatts. Alex said this information was provided by the MoIT, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, who might be a bit overly optimistic. These projections are based on the idea that electricity will remain very inexpensive, but if it does, they won’t be able to meet demand because power plants won’t be built.

So there’s no doubt that the demand for electricity in Vietnam will increase dramatically over the coming years. The demand has doubled in the last five or six years – it was 10,000 megawatts in 2005.Continue Reading Potential Investment Opportunities in Vietnam – Electricity

During our recent 2011 Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Hanoi, I gave a presentation on five hot tips for client and business development.  These are all things that are familiar to the lawyers in our group, and probably all of you as well, but because they’re important, I felt they bear repeating.

Five Hot Tips

  1. Treat Your Clients as King: Your clients deserve to be treated like royalty. Deliver WOW to your clients by meeting their needs, not yours. Clients want to know what you can do for them, and the steps they need to follow to take action. Give them these things in a clear, easily understandable way, and you will undoubtedly find "favor with the king."
     
  2. Spread Ideas and Move People…Through Social Media: It can sound like a lot of what is out there is just noise.  But you can be out there, sharing your message.  Think like your clients and provide them with the message that is most useful to them.  You’re not using social media to talk at people – you’re there to talk with them. 

    When using social media, listen first and never stop listening. Be authentic and vulnerable, share stories with your audience, ask questions, provide value for free (yes, for free!), and engage with them. 

Continue Reading Five Hot Tips for Client and Business Development

Being a part of the LexBlog network means I’m fortunate enough to participate in the webinars that they host.  Today’s webinar was with the fabulous Cordell Parvin, a nationally recognized career and client development coach.  According to LexBlog’s invitation, Cordell "is a lawyer himself [and] his 37 years of practice set him apart from other client development experts. He has actually done what he teaches and coaches; he knows the challenges lawyers face and helps provide solutions." 

No greater testimony to Cordell’s expertise can be found than from one of his attorney clients, who said "Nothing my firm has ever done for my development matches the investment that Cordell’s program has made in my maturation as a lawyer, leader and person."

With those kinds of accolades, I knew we were in for some valuable information! Continue Reading Client Development 101 for 2011 & Beyond with Cordell Parvin – a LexBlog Webinar Re-Cap