Two for Tuesdays

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Before I get underway with this week’s Two for Tuesdays, I have to say how saddened I am over the loss of Robin Williams. My thoughts are with his friends and family at this impossibly difficult time.  He brought us such joy, showed us how to be kind and giving, and will be so deeply missed by so many.

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On a much lighter note, last night, I had the good fortune to be able to attend the New York premiere of The Giver, the movie adaptation of the book by the same name from author Lois Lowry.  I’ve never been to a movie premiere before (I was able to get tickets by fundraising for arts charities through the Weinstein Group), so I was keen to see how it all would go.

It was a lovely event, and I was tickled to see the stars up close – Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift, Brenton Thwaites, Odeya Rush, and Cameron Monaghan were all there (missing, unfortunately, was my main reason for being there, the handsome and charismatic Alexander Skarsgard, who is currently filming in England. So if you know him, please feel free to give him my number. I am not joking.). Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Business Lessons from The Giver Movie Premiere

Well, August is finally here – this gal loves the cooler temps of the fall, pumpkin spiced lattes, sweaters, and falling leaves, so August is not my favorite month.  But it’s a good one to take advantage of.  A LOT of people take their vacations in August – and for those of us with a lot of European clients, August can be a pretty quiet month if you’re stuck sitting at your desk. 

So now is the time to tackle anything that may fall to the wayside once September hits and things pick up again.  And that’s where this week’s Two for Tuesdays comes in.

Tip One: Make a Change

August is a good time to look around you and see what may not be working so well, and this can take a number of different tacks…Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Make the Most out of Your August

The weather is finally beautiful here on this Two for Tuesdays – low humidity and low heat, just the way I like it! 

Another thing I like, as you may know, is LinkedIn. Our first Two for Tuesdays post offered two tips for LinkedIn, and there’s so much to gain from it that I’m back to bring you two more! The first post focused mostly on what changes you could make to your profile, while today, we’ll look at what you should be doing in terms of your usage of LinkedIn.

Tip One: Make it Effortless

The first few years I was using LinkedIn, I had to try to remember to check it periodically. I was mostly reminded any time I would get an invitation from someone to connect (or if someone accepted my invitation), but otherwise, it certainly wasn’t at the top of my mind. I’d wager that that’s the case for busy lawyers and marketing professionals as well. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: More LinkedIn

After two weeks off, I’m thinking about how to boost your creativity on this two for Tuesday. The lawyers among you may be wondering how that applies to you, if at all, but there’s room for creativity in all professions.  When we take the time to refresh, let different ideas in, and open our minds, sometimes the answers to critical problems can make themselves clear much more easily. 

So with that, I bring you this week’s Two for Tuesdays! 

Tip One: Read Something Different

We all do a lot of reading for work. Briefs, arguments, new legislation, blog posts, articles, news items, you name it. So it can seem daunting to try to add yet one more thing into the mix.  But how about, for today, taking a break from all of that and reading something absolutely unrelated to your work? 

Perhaps you’re a mystery buff, or you enjoy trashy beach reads (don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone). Maybe you’ve wanted to dive into that bestseller that everyone has been talking about, or reread a favorite classic novel. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Boosting Your Creativity

I may be on vacation this week, but it doesn’t mean that you’re without content here at Zen! We’re back with another Two for Tuesdays, and our second installment of "thought leaders to follow!"

Thought Leader One: Eric Fletcher

Eric’s blog bio tells us: 

With more than twenty-five years of experience, spanning broadcasting, advertising, marketing and professional services business development, Eric Fletcher is a seasoned connector — of ideas, people and strategic growth-oriented solutions. For the past dozen years he has managed and directed teams focused on targeted business development and client service in the legal industry."

I first met Eric virtually when he was brought on as the CMO of a former member firm of the ILN. But I really got to know him better when he started blogging over at Marketing Brain Fodder. Eric always writes brilliant, well-thought out and timely posts, which get me thinking and challenge me to be a better marketer and communicator. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Thought Leaders to Follow

It’s another Two for Tuesdays here, and apparently, I’m feeling the need for lots of alliteration today, as we’re looking at two tips for Twitter. 

Why bother with Twitter? 

Let’s look at a couple of stats first, and then why those might be important: 

  • 255 million monthly active users (that’s ACTIVE users)
  • 500 million tweets sent per day
  • 77% of accounts are outside of the US

And lawyers may be a bigger deal on Twitter than they think. According to Kevin O’Keefe, the "median active Twitter user (tweets at least once a month) has only 61 followers." So it follows that…

If you’re a lawyer seeing yourself as a Twitter laggard because you have only a few hundred followers, fear not. You’re in the 80th to 90th percentile. Reach 1,000 followers and you’re at the 97th percentile of active Twitter users."

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Tips for Twitter

A post came through my reader last night, with 7 Tips for Starting a Content Marketing Strategy. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that the idea of crafting a "strategy" around delivering valuable information to your audiences is a bit icky.  But I promise that it’s not – this is about identifying what is of most use to your clients and potential clients (and influencers and amplifiers), and making sure that you’re not committing what we call RAM (Random Acts of Marketing). 

I’m also sensitive to the use of "marketing" here – I am a marketer myself, and have a great deal of respect for legal marketers, in no small measure because we’ve had to adapt and develop into much more robust and significant roles in recent years. But I know there are some who think of marketing as a necessary evil, or just "those guys down the hall who put together our brochures." (That’s not true, by the way). 

True legal marketing, in my book, is identifying how you translate the skills and experience of attorneys to clients, potential clients, and others who will trumpet this information, in a way that those people care about (as well as working with attorneys on how to do this themselves, how to engage and build relationships with all of these individuals, and how to keep their current relationships vibrant and healthy, etc and so on. But I digress). Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Successful Content Marketing Strategies

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the LMA’s P3 conference, which brings together "pricing, project management and practice innovation experts to discuss the use of various tactics to explore solutions to real issues face by law firms today." 

I’ll be publishing some recaps for the conference in the coming days, since there was a LOT of high-level meaty topics and conversation happening in and around the event. But today, I wanted to bring you my two takeaways from the conference. As always, there are more than just two to discuss, but we’re focusing on these today! Feel free to add any other takeaways in the comments below, or just add your comments to the discussion! 

Takeaway One: Pricing & Process Improvement Can’t Happen in Silos

Just before the conference, ALM Legal Intelligence released a special report on Pricing Professionals: Essential to Law Firms, an Ally to Clients (report available for purchase). I’ll be talking a bit more about this in the coming days as well, but I read through it in preparation for the conference, and the main thing that struck me is that we’re only now seeing an increase in integrating process management with pricing. 

Tim Corcoran (@tcorcoran) (who was on a unique panel at P3 with Catherine MacDonagh, John Byrne and Amy Hrehovcik) put it perfectly in a post-conference interview he conducted with LexBlog: 

We spend all this time coming up with the right budget, and then we go deliver the work the same old way and we don’t adhere to the budget. And either the client says ‘I don’t want to pay anymore’ or we end up taking a hit to our profits because we can’t bill more but we spent more time working than we needed to."

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Takeaways from P3

It’s time for another Two for Tuesdays here in muggy New Jersey, and what better topic to discuss than conference follow up? We just wrapped up the ILN’s 26th Annual Meeting in Chicago, which was a whirlwind of business sessions and social activities designed to facilitate relationships. And we managed to squeeze a little fun in there too! 

As with any conference, it can be easy to return to your office and in the chaos of catching up with work and getting back into your regular schedule, forget everything you learned at the conference. So especially for my ILN attorneys this week, I bring you two tips for conference follow up.

Tip One: Connect on LinkedIn

When you attend a conference, you either receive a pile of business cards, or an attendee list to draw from. As you get back to your office, take a look at the list or the cards – hopefully you made note of who you met, and a distinguishing characteristic of that person, but if you didn’t, take a couple of minutes to jot it down.

Then, head over to LinkedIn. Search for the people you talked to on LinkedIn, and send them an invitation to connect. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Conference Follow Up