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Thankful-Printable
I am thankful for each of you!

In our busy day-to-day lives, it’s easy to forget to take the time to be thankful for all that we have and all of those who helped us get there, but that is what the Thanksgiving holiday is all about, right? Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I wanted to reflect on some of the things for which I am most grateful over the past year. I encourage you to do the same – make a list of everything and everyone for which you are most thankful (you can do this for both your personal and professional lives). It can be really inspiring to take a step back and realize all of the wonderful bounty that you have in your life. Here are nine reasons why I’m thankful this year. Happy Thanksgiving!

Blogger

There are a lot of law firm blogs competing for market share, they are a huge commitment and not all blogs wind up being successful.

So are they worth it? The short answer, yes, IF you can find a niche and a strong team committed to its success.

Blogs are great branding and lead generation tools – they can often lead to speaking engagements as well as new clients (the holy grail of content efforts). As Susan Kostal writes in her latest article for Attorney at Work, “blogging is also a significant equalizer for those in small and midsize firms. With consistency, many authors from less well-known firms compete more than ably against those in national brand-name firms.” 

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. 

LMANE Pet Contest - Stefanie Marrone and Charlie the dog
Here's me and my dog Charlie - notice how he's sitting on the chair and I'm on the floor? He's the clearly the boss.

In case you want to know a little more about me,  how I got started in legal marketing, what I enjoy most about what I do and why volunteering for the Legal Marketing Association has been so rewarding for me, here’s an interview that I did with the LMA Northeast Region last year when I served as the secretary on the board of directors in 2017 and 2018.

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.”  

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“I don’t like a bargain” said no one ever. You’ll often find me scouring the aisles at T.J. Maxx or Nordstrom Rack for a good deal like a hungry raccoon hunting down its next meal, so it’s no surprise that I’m writing an article on how to keep costs down on social media (my favorite topic).

It doesn’t matter if you are at a small firm, a mid-sized, or large firm, today everyone is looking to keep costs down and to maximize the latest technologies that will enhance marketing efforts and streamline processes while effectively engaging with clients.

Lately I’ve been exploring concepts related to how to effectively engage with clients, prospects and other key influencers using social media to both strengthen your brand but more importantly, to generate new business.

At the end of the day, every single social media marketing effort should be designed to support your firm’s business development efforts. That being said, not every post can focus on the business of the firm. Sometimes the highest-rated posts are actually the ones where a firm showcases its “softer” side. For example, pro bono and community service activities, as well as the people of the firm engaging together.

It’s time to get excited: For those of you who manage your company’s LinkedIn pages, I have some really great news (in case you didn’t already discover this yourself): You can now edit posts on company pages!

This limitation on company pages was a huge pet peeve of mine (and overall grievance on LinkedIn), because previously, if you saw a typo, or wanted to make any kind of change to a post, you needed to delete the entire post and then post it again, leading to lost page views and analytics, not to mention a loss of your precious time.

While users have been able to easily edit their personal posts, the same option did not exist for company posts. That is, until now. Now to edit a post on your LinkedIn company page, just go to the top right of the post to where the three little dots are and you’ll now see “Edit Update” as the very first option (see screenshot above). Voilà! 

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.