This week’s Ask Friday! takes a bit of a turn – I’m asking the questions this time! Check out my video below to see what it is I want to know…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=A8ng6gh6tro
Social Media – What Are Mid-Sized Firms Doing?
Last week’s post covered the questions of what the panelists discussing social media are doing at their firms, and the challenges they’ve faced. This week’s looks at their social media policies and the effect of the approval process in blogging.
Social Media Policies
We next covered the question of social media policies, and whether firms are looking only at what their attorneys and staff are doing professionally, or also at their personal social networking habits.Continue Reading Social Media – What Are Mid-Sized Firms Doing?
Beyond Blogging: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – A Re-Cap of LexBlog’s Webinar
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Just because another law firm is doing something doesn’t mean you have to do it.
- 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.
- 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
Social Media – What Are Mid-Sized Firms Doing? Activities & Challenges
Following my LinkedIn presentation at our Annual Meeting, we had a panel discussion about what some of our law firms are doing with social media. I was joined by Charles Wander of Fladgate LLP in London, David Ellenhorn of Ogden Murphy Wallace, PLLC in Seattle, and Bill Holder of Clark Wilson LLP in Vancouver.
Because we had a rather in-depth discussion which I think raises some interesting points and questions I’d like to get your feedback on, I’ll be breaking the post up into two – part one focuses on the social media activities that the firms represented on the panel are engaging in, and some of the challenges they’ve been faced with. Continue Reading Social Media – What Are Mid-Sized Firms Doing? Activities & Challenges
LinkedIn – Making the Most out of Groups
I’ve spent the last two days talking about how to make improvements to your LinkedIn profile, and getting the most out of your LinkedIn home page. Today, I want to cover LinkedIn Groups.
On LinkedIn, there are groups for everything, from business networking to animal lovers. Groups are an excellent way to connect with people outside of your immediate network in areas where you share an interest.
I’m going to focus on the ILN’s group, because I’m the moderator and have the most familiarity with it, but most of this advice can be applicable to any business networking group for lawyers. During my presentation, I started with the "why" – why should the lawyers in the room have any interest in joining the ILN Group on LinkedIn? Continue Reading LinkedIn – Making the Most out of Groups
“Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn” – Part II
Yesterday, I talked about what improvements you might want to make to your LinkedIn profile to get the best results from it. Today, I’ll talk about the home page screen and why it’s useful to be logging in to LinkedIn periodically – I have LinkedIn set to open as one of the tabs on my browser, so every morning, I open Outlook and Chrome, go through my emails, and check on my browser tabs. This includes taking a quick look (no more than five minutes) at my LinkedIn home page screen. Lawyers, I know you’re busy, but if you make this part of your morning routine, you’ll only have to spend a few minutes looking at LinkedIn, you’ll stay up to date on what your network is doing, and you won’t have to try to remember to visit LinkedIn.
There are four things I find of particular importance on your home page screen (which looks like this):
“Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn”
If you read my posts regularly, you’ll know that I have a passion for social media. I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of business development tools, of course, but I do have a fondness for it and an interest in sharing that fondness with my attorneys.
So I jumped at the chance to present a more in-depth look at LinkedIn to our group at the 2011 23rd ILN Annual Meeting on Saturday morning. I wanted to stick to what I thought were the most relevant points about LinkedIn, and what would give our attorneys the greatest impact – and for me, there was no greater joy than sitting with one of our attorneys during the subsequent breakout session and helping him fill out his profile, as he repeated back to me snippets of what I’d said.
Last week, I mentioned a few best practices for LinkedIn, but I’d like to add in a bit more about our session in Lisbon.
Social Media Policy – Where to Start? Here’s A Sample
One of the things that came out of the social media panel I did with a few of our lawyers in Lisbon (more on that in a later post) was that our firms are all at different stages of development with social media. I think that’s true for most firms.
A question that comes up
It’s Here! The ILN Launches its New Site – ILNToday
Today’s the big day! The International Lawyers Network is unveiling our new content-driven website at http://www.ilntoday.com. We gave our member firms a sneak peek at last week’s 23rd Annual Conference, and this week we’re revealing it to you!
The redesigned site embodies the latest technology to best serve the growing needs of ILN members and their clients, and provides a variety of benefits, including:
- Up-to-the-minute legal content and news from law firms in 66 countries around the world.
- RSS feeds to deliver content directly to your desktop.
- Direct connections to ILN members and Administration through a member Tweet stream, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Continue Reading It’s Here! The ILN Launches its New Site – ILNToday
LinkedIn Best Practices
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.