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.

I asked Orange County-based Gia Altreche to be part of the Women Who Wow series because she is a leader in the legal marketing industry and an advocate for the profession and diversity & inclusion. Gia is the Director of Business Development and Marketing at Newmeyer & Dillion LLP and serves as co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee and Shared Interest Group. Learn more about her below.

Why did you choose your profession?

Technically it chose me. It was during a post-college adventure to find a marriage between the legal field (initially intending to go to law school), and human communication (a love I found in my last year in college, which slightly derailed the initial focus) that ended with my resume miraculously in the hands of my now mentor, who was the Head of Business Development & Marketing at a major law firm in Phoenix, AZ. Talk about the power of networking!

At the time, I didn’t know legal marketing existed, but quickly learned it offered access to both play a role in advocating for my community, while continuing to study and nurture the role of human connection in business. Plus, being surrounded by the crème of the crop legal minds across a variety of industries, seeking out continuous education on the ever evolving role and how I could support their efforts was greatly satisfying. Learn more about her and her career path below.

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.