Networking

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  1. I’m continuing to run the Women Who Wow series throughout the year because Women’s History Month was shadowed by the COVID-19 outbreak and there are just too many great women to fit in the span of 30 days.

Today’s Woman Who Wows is Robyn Addis, the Chief Operating Officer at Legal Internet Solutions Incorporated, and has a long career in operations and marketing. I met Robyn like I met so many others in this series, through our volunteer work for the Legal Marketing Association.

Learn more about her.

linkedin

Law360 recently published an article of mine, “Don’t Be Social Media Distancing: LinkedIn Tips For Lawyers” that I wanted to highlight on the blog. These tips can be used by lawyers and other professionals for appropriate brand building and marketing during the coronavirus outbreak. I live in NYC, which has seen the most cases of COVID-19 in our country, and it is a very strange and sad place to be right now.

Here’s an excerpt of the article:

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I know so many of you feel out of sorts right now. Me, too. Our daily routines have been thrown a huge curveball, but this is not the time to…

Alexis Robertson is the next Woman Who Wows. I met Alexis through LinkedIn and have admired her thoughtful posts. It’s another reason why online networking is so important – she lives in Chicago and I live in NYC but I feel very connected to her.

She is currently the director of diversity & inclusion for Foley & Lardner LLP where she provides firm-wide strategic direction and oversight on all diversity and inclusion related matters.

Alexis joined Foley from Baker McKenzie, where she was North America manager of Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to joining Baker McKenzie, Alexis spent two years as a Legal Recruiting Director for The Partners Group where she focused on placing diverse attorneys with law firms and corporations.

Alexis earned her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and practiced with Kirkland & Ellis and Seyfarth Shaw following graduation. She earned her undergraduate degree from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Learn more about her.

Homework

When I speak at conferences or conduct client trainings, I usually end my presentations with “homework” for attendees. While not actually required, I always suggest that attendees take the time to do these to-do items, because I always want to leave attendees with actionable takeaways they can implement right away to enhance their business and brand.

I know so many of you feel out of sorts right now (that includes me). Our daily routines have been thrown a huge curveball and staying home is our job right now to keep ourselves and others safe against the spread of the coronavirus.

That being said, this is not the time to stop marketing yourself or your firm. In fact, you want to be top of mind, and you can easily do that through the many online channels available to us – with LinkedIn being the most powerful social platform to build professional relationships. The key is to be helpful, non-boastful and to provide value-added content and information.

I am seeing the lines between our personal and professional lives become blurrier by the day as many of us want to be more connected to people in general. This may result in you receiving friend requests on Facebook and follow requests on Instagram from colleagues and clients – it’s up to you how you want to handle these but please always exercise caution with what you post on any social media platform, and stay away from discussing politics and religion.

In case you are looking for some “homework” in the marketing and business development area, here are a few ideas to keep you busy. Reach out to me with any questions.

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Hashtags are great tools to help your content become discovered on LinkedIn, but only if you know how to correctly use hashtags and you use the most effective ones.

If you’re writing about the coronavirus on LinkedIn, you should be using hashtags so your content can be amplified and have a stronger impact. The content you post should have your target audience in mind and be designed to help them navigate this unprecedented time.

But first off – what is a hashtag? Just like on Twitter or Instagram, a LinkedIn hashtag is any combination of letters, number or emoji that follow the # symbol such as #coronavirus. Any spaces or symbols used within the tag will break the link, so that means you can’t include apostrophes, commas, exclamation points or hyphens in your hashtag.

Hashtags help users find content on a specific topic. If you add hashtags to your posts, they’ll help you get discovered by other users, including those not connected to you (2nd and 3rd degree connections). This is because individuals now search for content under hashtags and click on the hashtags in posts. In addition, you can follow hashtags on LinkedIn, meaning that posts containing the ones you have selected will appear in your news feed.

How to add hashtags to your LinkedIn posts:

Although we are dealing with a world pandemic, March is Women’s History Month – that has fallen by the wayside of course with the more important news of the coronavirus. I still wanted to continue this series beyond March and throughout the year, because I think we can all use some non-COVID-19 news.

The next person in the Women Who Wow series is Deborah Scaringi. I met Deb through my work with the Legal Marketing Association when we both served on the first northeast region board together. I have long admired Deb for her poise, thoughtfulness and ability to see a situation from 10,000 feet. I asked her to be a part of the LMA Northeast Regional Conference planning committee last year because I tremendously value her input, and she provided so many great insights. I would always want Deb on my team. Deb is based in Boston and consults for law firms on a wide range of marketing and business development issues. Learn more about her.