Content Marketing and Holidays Blog Image

Using the holidays in your social media strategy is a clever way to outshine your peers. You can demonstrate that you are a good corporate citizen and show that your firm and your lawyers have a bit of personality. Every holiday is an opportunity to do something creative and differentiating on social media (like the Fourth of July!). You can easily create and post a custom image to your social media channels using my favorite online graphic design tool for non-designers, Canva. This terrific site, which has an accompanying app, enables you to create perfectly sized graphics for social. Here’s how to incorporate “soft content” like the holidays in your social strategy from my latest JD Supra article.

Read the full article.

There are countless articles on best practices and tips for what to do on LinkedIn, but, I wanted to focus on what NOT to do on the platform because I see so many LinkedIn users make the same mistakes over and over again. I’ve also included a visual (made on Canva – one of my favorite social tools to drive engagement through visuals) with some of the top tips. http://bit.ly/2HUnnug.

Also, for more on LinkedIn, here’s an article I wrote on: “LinkedIn 101: How to Master Profile Basics & Build Your Professional Brand: http://bit.ly/2swxkTW.

I love helping people maximize social media for their branding and business development goals, and I often speak to legal marketers about social media and content at various conferences. I recently received this note from a CMO who saw me present at #LMA19, and it really touched me. It’s exactly why I do what I do. Here’s a link to my articles on JD Supra, which explore many of the issues that I discuss when I speak.

I want to thank the CMO who sent me this note, and let her know how much it meant to me that she took time out of her day to tell that my presentation helped her team.

We are all the sum of each of our professional experiences, which greatly help to shape who we are today.

In 2007 I joined named a young, entrepreneurial firm, McKee Nelson. In two short years I learned more than I ever could have imagined. The market was booming when I joined and as a result the firm was thriving. The marketing team was small so I had the opportunity to take on a lot of responsibility.

Then the market crashed and everything changed.

The firm had to make some tough but necessary decisions, but it did so in the most compassionate way. We were all in it together. They did the right thing over and over for their people. McKee Nelson wound up merging with Bingham McCutchen and later became part of Morgan Lewis during another merger. I left before the first merger because I was craving stability, and what better place to find stability than the kind of firm like “we’re never going anywhere” Sullivan & Cromwell?

My experience at McKee was very rewarding because I made lifelong relationships with some of the smartest, kindest and honorable people in the industry, and it helped me to grow and learn what kind of professional I wanted to be.

I learned a few key lessons though this experience:

  • It’s imperative to keep in touch with former colleagues. These relationships can’t be understated to help you down the line in your career in immeasurable ways – referrals, references, mentoring, friendship and so much more. Don’t sit behind your desk churning out documents day after day and then run home to your family – cultivate your network. Make in-person plans with key individuals with whom you’ve been meaning to reconnect.
  • You don’t need to wait for an organized alumni event to meet up with former colleagues. Organize it yourself and then you get to pick and choose who you invite. Also, smaller-scale events can often be better due to their intimate nature. They enable you to really get to know someone on a personal level rather than when you go to a 200-person cocktail party. When we recently met up for drinks, it was a last-minute thing. And by the way, say yes and follow through. It’s so easy to blow off plans because you’re too busy or too tired, but you simply have to make the effort to stay connected.
  • You really see who people (and organizations) really are when you go through a tough time like layoffs and a merger. Eventually everyone does wind up okay – and the shared experience bonds you forever. Be as kind, calm and helpful as you can be if you should ever find yourself in this situation.

I am so thankful to have had this experience and to have taken this job 10+ years ago, and I’m glad they took a chance on me. I hope this article inspires you to reconnect with a former colleague!

In this article, I explore how to use the holidays in your social media strategy to fill in gaps in your content calendar throughout the year.

Every holiday is an opportunity to do something creative and differentiating on social. Featuring major holidays is a no brainer, such as the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, but lesser known ones can also make for great posts. Using the holidays in your social strategy is a clever way to demonstrate that your firm and lawyers have personality. It can get very monotonous to constantly post about your victories, events and firm news. You can easily create and post a custom image to all of your social channels to bring each post to life using my favorite online graphic design tool for non-graphic designers, Canva.com. Learn more.

The quieter days of summer are a great time to make enhancements to your marketing and business development efforts – especially when it comes to your LinkedIn profile. A robust and complete profile enables you to put your best professional self forward, which will strengthen your brand and help you achieve your personal LinkedIn goals. LinkedIn is the most important social media channel for professionals in any field, so your time is well spent investing in fine-tuning your profile. Also, LinkedIn enables you to nurture relationships and build your brand more easily and efficiently than ever before, giving you another reason why you should take the time to build a strong LinkedIn profile that reflects who you are and what you do.

So, let’s get back to basics and get the most important fundamentals of LinkedIn under our belts with tips from an article I wrote for JD Supra on how to build a stronger LinkedIn profile.

I recently had a conversation with a lawyer who was struggling to finish a client alert. It had been sitting on his desk for about a week for his final review.

This lawyer is not known to be a procrastinator, so I asked him what was going on, and he candidly told me that he just couldn’t stop finetuning it. He said he kept moving around paragraphs, editing sentences and adding and deleting sections.

I (gently) told him that time was of the essence here since the alert was about a recent development in his area of the law and his clients expected him to write about it and they wanted to know his thoughts on the issue.

I also told him that three of our peer firms had published alerts on a similar topic in the past week and it was suddenly like a light went off in his head (nothing like a little competition to motivate someone!). A few hours later, he sent me his final version of the article, and we were able to finally distribute it, albeit several days late.

While it was better late than never, this situation wasn’t ideal for the article to get maximum exposure and the strongest effect, and I know I’m not alone in having this experience, which is why I decided to write this piece, which is geared toward lawyers but can be adapted for anyone in any industry.  Continue Reading How to Overcome Content Paralysis and Get the Attention You Deserve

LMA19 Recap MidAtlantic

Thank you to 2019 LMA Annual Conference attendees Sarah Blanchard and Catalina Castro for writing a terrific recap of my LMA19 Annual Conference Session on “Beyond Branding: Aligning Social Media Strategy with Business Development Goals.” I am so glad that the session seemed to resonate with attendees. Also, I’d like to thank the LMA Mid-Atlantic Region for featuring this article on their blog.  

In their recap, Sarah and Catalina highlight key points from our workshop, including how social media is used, what firms should be doing to connect with their target audiences and how to implement best practices immediately. Take a look!

Good is good enough

So many lawyers are perfectionists, which psychologists define as striving for flawlessness and setting overly high-performance standards. This can really derail them when it comes to content creation because they will tinker with writing/editing a client alert so much that they miss the boat on distributing it at the right time to their clients and it then majorly loses its impact. I call it content paralysis.

Most client alerts are about developments in the law and every minute counts when it comes to distribution, especially when your competitors are writing about similar topics. Don’t let them beat you to it! Always be brief and efficient when writing an alert – quickly get to the point in the first paragraph and make the headline concise and compelling to draw in the reader. It’s okay if your articles aren’t masterpieces! Keep on publishing because practice makes you a better writer.

The most important piece of advice I have for those lawyers who pay acute attention to detail and have impeccably high standards is to not sit on an article and over edit it – create and distribute content while the topic is hot – embrace the idea of good enough. There’s no such thing as perfect (besides, your good enough is likely prretty amazing). Don’t sacrifice quality but also don’t let your competitors win.