In today’s saturated and competitive legal market, it’s just not enough to be the very best at what you do, sitting behind your desk churning out work day in day out, to keep bringing in new business and to stay top of mind with clients, prospects and referrals.
Your competitors are likely doing more, and
Content marketers now have a new way of reaching their target audiences on LinkedIn using live video.
Recently, LinkedIn, the most powerful social network for professionals, added a livestreaming option in beta to a select group of users.
Called “LinkedIn Live,” the platform will provide its 600 million plus members and businesses the option to share and stream live video content such as Q&As, events, conferences, earnings calls, award ceremonies, company announcements and more.
According to Social Media Today, it makes perfect sense for LinkedIn to put increased emphasis on video content because its users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post (wow!). To further support video on its platform, LinkedIn also launched video sponsored content and video for company pages early last year. The addition of LinkedIn Live will also enable LinkedIn to build on the ‘record levels’ of engagement that it says it is currently seeing on the platform.
LinkedIn has lagged behind its competitors when it came to providing users with video content options. This is interesting because because the platform says that video is the fastest-growing format on its platform alongside original written work, shared news and other content, so it seems like it’s in LinkedIn’s best interests to embrace in the technology that will support what its users want.
Launching first in the United States, LinkedIn Live is invite-only for now. In coming weeks, LinkedIn will also post a contact form for others who want to join. It’s not clear when and if LinkedIn will make it possible for everyone to create LinkedIn Live videos, but it is expected that is what will occur given how they rolled out LinkedIn Publisher.
So what can law firms do with LinkedIn Live? Here are some ideas (just keep in mind that your content must have a topical/timely aspect to it in order for it to be worth going live).
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In this article, I provide 16 easy ideas to incorporate into your social media, business development and branding efforts for professionals at all levels because it’s never too late or early to shake up your marketing efforts, and the new year is a great opportunity to start fresh and add new activities to our business development and marketing mix.
A word to the wise for young professionals – you should build your network before you think you’ll ever need it. Your peers will be tomorrow’s business leaders. And a word to the wise for seasoned lawyers who don’t think they need to spend the time on business development – today it’s not enough to just be a great lawyer.
You need to market yourself as well as churn out exceptional legal work. One day your steady stream of work could dry up or something unexpected could happen where you need to rebuild your practice.
Also, you never know who can turn out to be a client, referral or future employer. I always tell the lawyers with whom I work to never underestimate the importance of every person and connection. Be friendly and kind to everyone. Because you never know. Read the full article for the 16 tips.
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It’s never been more important to stand out from your peers in this crowded, saturated market. Becoming totally immersed in your clients and prospects by learning as much as you can about them is one way to separate the good lawyers from the great lawyers.
This requires time and effort by asking smart questions and conducting thorough research (for example, by setting up free Google alerts on your top clients/prospects so that you are informed about important news about them, and using social media tools such as LinkedIn to learn about job moves and updates of your important connections). Today, most people just don’t send emails announcing their new positions anymore – it’s now up to you to do research.
Being aware of major developments and news affecting your clients’ organizations enables you to better anticipate their needs and it shows that you care. In this case, knowledge is power.
So how do you put this into practice?
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Who doesn’t wish there was more time in the day? Do you ever feel like you aren’t giving 100% to anything because you just run out of time? Personally I just want some more quiet time to think and less time being chained responding to my email, which I could spend days doing.
It seems like we are being pulled in so many different directions that it’s difficult to keep track of, let alone stay on track of the multiple projects and to do’s we are constantly juggling in our professional and personal lives. (I admit that I sometimes lose the post-it notes that are supposed to help me manage my projects.) So when I saw an invite for an LMA event that would help me become a better project and time manager featuring leading recruiter and trainer Eva Wisnik, I immediately signed up for it (and made the time to attend it).
I also had the opportunity to interview Eva after the event to ask her for her top project and time management tips (thank you to my trusty producing partner Rob Kates for filming it). During the interview, we also talked about how to enhance our ability to manage the ever-increasing demands on our time and what trends Eva is seeing in the recruiting market today.
The start of the new year is a great time to make enhancements to your personal marketing and business development efforts – especially when it comes to your LinkedIn profile.
In today’s digital world, networking online is just as important as cultivating in-person connections, and LinkedIn is the most important social media channel for professionals in any field. LinkedIn enables you to nurture relationships or build your brand more easily and efficiently than ever before.
But here’s the thing – many LinkedIn users think their profile is strong as is or that they know everything there is to know about the platform, when neither is true.
In fact, only about half of all of users have a 100% complete profile, according to LinkedIn (that means thoughtfully filling out every single field and section that LinkedIn prompts you to fill out). The main reason to do this is quite compelling: it enables you to rank higher in LinkedIn’s search results.
I was recently asked to provide my top social media tips and priorities for the year as part of the Legal Marketing Association’s 12 Days of Social Media content series (hint: think visually, align social media efforts with business development and lead generation efforts, think about show versus tell in every post you create, promote your firm’s good works using social media to engage with clients, and utilize the power of evergreen content to bolster your editorial calendar).
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Many of you in the Legal Marketing Association community know that I’m very passionate about all things related to social media and you’ll often find me writing or speaking about LinkedIn, content marketing or something related to a new trend or feature on social.
I also personally use social media quite a bit (often posting photos of my dog) and in fact, some have even called me the Kevin Bacon of legal marketing (which always makes me chuckle), so it’s only fitting that I was asked to be the co-chair of the LMA’s Social and Digital Media SIG for 2019/2020 working alongside Jennifer Simpson Carr of Knapp Marketing.
LinkedIn has been slowly rolling out enhancements to its company pages over the past month or so to its millions of users all over the world, and one of them is something that many administrators of company LinkedIn pages have been asking for a very long time – drum roll please – the ability to manage company pages from a mobile device.
When I realized late Friday night that I can now manage the company LinkedIn pages for which I am an administrator, I almost jumped for joy on a very crowded Manhattan street.
But then I realized that you can’t really manage the page from your mobile device and to do what you really need to do editing wise, you still need to be at a desktop computer.
This was a huge bummer for me, and I’m sure many other marketers who are constantly on the go and want the ability to post from their phones just like we can for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I continue to be surprised that LinkedIn’s platform doesn’t yet enable users to have the full range of tools that you do on its desktop version when you are THE most powerful and important social media platform for business professionals.
Read on to learn what you can and cannot do from your mobile device.
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I’ll never forget the day that I was let go from what I thought was my dream job. I was in my mid-20s and I had no Plan B and no rainy day fund. I was a magazine editor, and I loved my job (or at least I thought that I did at the time). So much of my identity and self-worth was tied up with what I did for a living.
But a funny thing happened when I was let go.
I felt an enormous sense of relief. Of course I was scared about finances and my ego took a huge blow, but I had known for some time deep down that the cutthroat world of women’s magazines was not for me. I had just been too scared to do anything about it. Losing my job was the push (or rather, the shove) to evaluate what I really wanted to do.
A few months later, I landed a great job as a writer/editor at a law firm. This job was a much better fit for me because it encompassed everything that I loved about what I was doing in magazine publishing minus the mean girl culture.
Fast forward to the present day (many years later), where I now head up the marketing department of a mid-size law firm in New York City after working in law firm marketing at a number of major firms. You could say that getting let go launched me on the right career path (yes, that’s true) and everything was smooth sailing since then (not exactly). Why? Because I’m not perfect (shocker!), I make mistakes, and I’m guessing that you do too.
A lot of people don’t like to talk about their faults but the reality of life is that occasionally each of us will experience failure. Failures teach us very important life lessons such as resilience, adaptability, self-awareness and most important, empathy.
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