Personal Branding

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Mark your calendars for March 7 for a Legal Marketing Association webinar titled, “How to Build Your Personal Brand Using Social Media Tools Before, During and After #LMA19” with me, and good industry friends Roy Sexton and Andrew Laver on how to use the upcoming #LMA19 conference in Atlanta on April 8-10 to build and enhance YOUR personal brand using social media! We’ll provide actionable takeaways and ideas for marketers of all levels, including how to build your network before, during and after the conference, how to master the art of the “humblebrag,” how to become a thought leader and published author (even if you’re not a great writer) and how to use free online tools to add eye-catching visuals to your social posts (like the one I created in this blog post, which I used to promote the program on social media as well). Join us! 

customer-centric

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? 

Relationship Building through your own social media

Recently, social media strategist Spencer X. Smith (if you’re not following him you should!) said something on LinkedIn that really resonated with me.

It was about the idea of using your social media platforms and reach to promote the successes of others vs. only posting about yourself (or “me-centric” posts), and he talked about the fact that each of us has the ability to do this  within our own networks to significantly strengthen our professional relationships.

Harnessing the power of your own social media platforms to promote others and build stronger relationships and your brand is actually very easy and incredibly worthwhile.

Stefanie LinkedIn Speaking at LMATech
That's me at LMA Tech in Chicago!

Use LinkedIn today. Not tomorrow. It is THE most important networking tool for professionals and will help you quickly build and grow relationships, strengthen your brand and stay top of mind with key individuals in your professional network.

Today, networking online is just as important as making in-person connections. And in the professional world, LinkedIn continues to be the most important social media channel for business development.

Don’t forget that your LinkedIn profile is often the first or second Google search result when someone searches for you online. LinkedIn is powerful, period. 

Speaking at a conference has many benefits – it helps you build your brand, establish yourself as a subject-matter expert, increase your professional network and open doors that can lead to new connections, jobs, referrals and so much more. Kara McKenna and I recently had the good fortune of serving as co-programming chairs of the 2018 #LMATech Midwest Conference, which was a great way for us to get to know each other better and also learn what makes a good and bad speaking submission.

We learned about innovations taking place within our industry and those legal marketers who are leading them. We also picked up some helpful skills on what makes a compelling speaking submission and the reverse of that – what does not.

After reading through more submissions than we can count at this point, we feel like we are in a position to give advice on how potential speakers can make themselves stand out from the pack. We put some tips together in an article for JD Supra “Want to Be Selected as a Conference Speaker? Here’s How to Increase Your Chances.”  

8

I learned something really important at this year’s 2018 LMA Annual Conference: Successful people are not necessarily happy. But happy people are more likely to be successful.

The takeaway? You should really care about incorporating happiness into your life. Here’s why: In addition to being more successful in their careers, happy people are more productive in their jobs, experience better health and therefore live longer lives. They are also kinder, less hostile and more productive, and the list goes on. To me this seems like the most enthusiastic PSA for happiness in the history of PSAs.

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend (and speak) at the LMA 2018 Annual Conference, which is THE largest annual meeting of legal marketing and business professionals in the industry.

If your experience was anything like mine, you learned a lot, you made many new valuable connections, you reconnected with industry friends, and you spent a lot of time in the exhibit hall talking to leading service providers about their products and technologies. You likely saw Mario Lopez and quite a few wrestlers in town for Wrestlemania in the common spaces at the Hyatt Regency, and you returned to the office with a ton of information to digest and ideas to implement, which is exciting but also quite overwhelming.