While the holiday season is a time of joy, it also dredges up feelings of sadness for many of us who are coping with the loss of a loved one.
No matter how great the holidays are, for me they serve as a painful reminder of my mom’s permanent absence. Dealing with my mom’s death from multiple myeloma, a rather horrible cancer, has been a long painful journey for the past few years. There are simply no shortcuts when it comes to grief.
My bracelet says “You are not alone” and was given to me by my mom when her cancer came back. I wear it a lot especially when I feel sad without her around the holidays. For anyone who also feels a little sad come holiday time, or that the holidays just feel different without a certain someone there, I wanted to say that you’re NOT alone and know that these loved ones are always with us. And if you do feel lonely reach out to me, I have a very lovable French bulldog who would be happy to shower you with attention.
I also wrote an article on grief that may be helpful to those of you coping with a similar situation.
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As we approach Thanksgiving, it’s a time for giving thanks for all that we have and all of those in our lives who have contributed to that bounty – both professionally and personally. 

Maybe you’re thankful for your job, your boss, a mentor, a loved one (or several), your friends, your colleagues, your pet (shout out to my French bulldog Charlie), your mentor (thank you Wendy Bernero for all you do for me), someone who helped you or an experience that enabled you to grow (whether good or bad) or maybe it’s a combination of several from above.

So what are you thankful for this year? My challenge to you is to take the time to express your gratitude to them. Say thank you and what they mean to you. It’s so easy to to get caught up in the day to day of our own lives, but thanking others and letting them know what they mean to you is the right thing to do and builds stronger relationships.

Gratitude and kindness are qualities of which we can just never have enough. I for one am thankful for my community of professionals who are so open to helping me, lending an ear, learning and willing to share ideas. So join me in this gratitude challenge and Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be offering a Social Media Master Class in-person training course in December and January in New York City! I’ll offer the course in other cities based on interest.

The course will be two hours and the registration fee also includes a one-on-one session with me to answer any attendee follow-up questions. The program is designed for anyone who is looking to take their social media efforts to the next level, build their brand and bring in leads using social media. I’ll cover best practices in content marketing, social media marketing (with a focus on LinkedIn) how to use hashtags to your advantage, how to reuse and repurpose your content, how to use visuals to your advantage in social media without breaking the bank, how to build your followers fast, the most effective ways to engage with your network on social media and much more.

If you’d like to learn more and sign up, please message me. There are a limited number of spots available.

Every company and business professional should have more than 1000 LinkedIn followers/connections. If you don’t, you aren’t maximizing your network or using LinkedIn effectively. While the number of connections you have shouldn’t be focused on the quantity and instead the quality of relationships, my guess is that you aren’t thinking  strategically or broadly enough about who you know – former colleagues and classmates, those with whom you worked during the early part of your career even family friends. Remember every single person you meet will be important down the line as either a source of business, a referral source, a job prospect or a colleague. 

While there are different techniques/tools for increasing your personal LinkedIn network and your company followers, the same major rules apply – provide content of value, stay top of mind, be helpful, use visuals to bring your posts to life, use the right hashtags so your content can be found and repurpose your content assets.

A few other ideas for how to effectively use LinkedIn:

  • Complete all areas of your profile, especially the headline and summary section
  • Look through the “People You May Know” list yo find new connections.
  • Look at your colleagues and competitors connections for new people to add to your network as well as competitive intelligence.
  • Follow 5-10 of your competitors LinkedIn company pages for ideas and inspiration for your own page. Then do what they do better.
  • Reuse and repurpose your own content. Write a strong headline (important because it appears in Google searches)
  • Help others without the expectation of getting anything in return.

For more on these topics, see my JD Supra articles and reach out to me to talk about your social/content strategy. 

Today is World Kindness Day, and I wanted to repost an article I wrote over the summer when I was going through a challenging time. Please remember that it’s okay to not be okay all of the time. 

It is not often apparent that someone is facing internal struggles. Many people can hold it together during the workday and then break down as soon as they get home. Others struggle all day long. The bottom line is to treat everyone with kindness because you just don’t know what someone is dealing with on any given day. You could really make a difference in someone’s life with a simple gesture of support or kindness.

Why should we be kinder? Well, it makes us happier for one. It reduces stress and anxiety. Research suggests that kind people are often healthier and live longer. It’s calming. And it’s the right thing to do. I believe kindness is contagious. Kind acts encourage other kind acts.

Kindness is a choice. So, choose it. How can you be kinder? Here are some simple things each of us can do in and out of the office. 

Twitter

Using Twitter is a great way to enhance your personal brand as well as your firm brand. It can be hard to find time to write long-form, but tweets are short and you have control over them yourself, making it easy to create and share content on the platform. Importantly, it is also easy to engage with leaders in your practice area or industry, to raise your profile.

Continue Reading How to Use Twitter to Build Your Brand

If you know me or have seen me speak, you can tell that I am very passionate about what I do – and it makes it all worthwhile when you actually hear from people about how you actually helped and inspired them to go the extra mile in their marketing efforts or to step out of their comfort zone. I recently received this LinkedIn message and it really touched me:

“I saw you at the NYC bar panel for small businesses the other day. As a result of implementing a few of your ideas so far – including making my first LinkedIn post and updating my profile – I became more visible. I was then contacted by several former colleagues who were excited to learn that I had recently started my own firm. One of them even offered to send me work! I know I have a lot more to do, but just taking the first few steps helps a lot. Thank you.”

I sincerely thank the attendee who took the time to send me this note – it means so much to me.

Content marketing takes time and effort, but staying top of mind with your target audiences is a key goal to marketing and business development – and providing value-added content is one way in which you can do this while branding yourself as a subject-matter expert in your area of the law.

Here are 12 tips to make your content marketing efforts successful and worthwhile from my latest JD Supra article. Keep in mind that they may take time to show real ROlI, but I have seen thought leadership content lead to new business over and over, so be patient!

Here’s a link to the full JD Supra article.

As Social Media Today reported, Facebook has launched a new groups option called ‘work groups,’ which, Facebook says, will help people “connect with their coworkers more easily.” The option seeks to reduce the need to connect with every person you work with, and let them into your more personal interactions. By creating a specific group only for work colleagues, you can keep the two elements separate, with only your work-related information showing up in your work group profile.

The option also enables work group members to send messages to each other, without needing to be Facebook friends. This is great news for those who want to keep their personal and professional lives separate – which is something most business people should do. Bravo Facebook!

Read more about the new feature.