If your law firm maintains a blog, or if you blog personally, there’s a reasonably good chance that you’ve received one of these emails:

Hi Steve!

My name is Joe Schmo and I am a writer at somewebsite.com, a relatively new social media agency.

I was just wondering if you would be interested in us contributing a guest post for your site?

We’ve done many before, and can provide examples of published work if desired. Looking forward to hearing from you! :)

Joe

My advice? Don’t do it. Don’t publish guest post content on firm-owned blogs, and don’t let marketing . . . [more]

Running a small business successfully is tough – in any industry. In British Columbia approximately 98% of businesses are classified as small business, so those of us in B.C., and several other provinces actually, we’re in good company. The challenge, though, is producing high quality work while positioning yourself, and your business, for long term success.

You want to make smart business decisions and invest your time and financial resources wisely. Some firms will ponder marketing for a while before they begin, while others take a “let’s throw everything at them” approach.

Here are some of the most common questions . . . [more]

Do you have a giant client that gives you more than 50% of your revenue? That can be good news and the bad news. The good news is you can concentrate on the needs of that client giving them exceptional work and client service. The bad news is they consume your time and you have nothing left to develop other clients. Which leaves you with the looming question… “What would happen to my business if they took their work someplace else?” That one can keep you up at night! I know from experience the sleepless nights and the havoc it . . . [more]

At any given time there are many trends in the legal industry. Current topics include everything from alternative fee arrangements to e-discovery to virtual law firms. Some topics die away without much fanfare whereas others stay around and eventually take hold. My focus today is on social media at the highest level, which is definitely part of the latter group.

Social media is here. It is here to stay and you need to be part of it to ensure a growing practice.

That said you don’t have to do everything and you will want to be realistic about your goals. . . . [more]

We are several years into the social media era now. As social channels mature the major platforms are ramping up integration of paid advertising options into their systems. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube all offer paid tools to promote your posts, updates, tweets or videos to audiences beyond those with whom you are already connected. In short, significant advertising dollars are starting to go social. A question few in the legal industry have yet asked but that will increasingly need to be considered is whether paid social media advertising makes sense for your firm, and if so, how best to . . . [more]

Evernote is a digital notebook application with both desktop and mobile versions, all of which easily synch so that your information is available on any of your devices at any time. Evernote is a cross-platform application, which means that you can use it and information will synch even if you have a Windows desktop, an iPad and an Android phone.

Although many consider Evernote to be a productivity app, it can also be a helpful marketing and business development tool to help lawyers capture marketing and business development ideas, keep track of notes on prospective clients, and develop content, among . . . [more]

In my last column I talked about building reputations by being quoted in the media (proactive media relations). However, when you’re involved in something of interest to the media, it’s not always good news. Reputations can be threatened as well as made by media coverage. Reactive media relations involves the careful management of reputations, whether on behalf of a client, a lawyer, a practice group, or the whole firm.

How often does something occur in a law firm that unleashes the hounds of the media? More often than you might think. I had no trouble recalling ten examples from my . . . [more]

CHANGE. Few like it, and least of all lawyers. It’s important to have a firm culture built on good work but equally important is to build a firm culture around business development. If business development is at the core of how everyone thinks and goes hand-in-hand with excellent work, the financial health of your firm will be more stable. 

But… it’s easier said than done. Your team will resist change… we all do. Samuel Bacharach, a professor of labor management at Cornell, writes for Inc. Magazine… 4 Reasons Your Employees Resist Change–And How to Overcome Them. Bacharach suggests that . . . [more]

Having seen both ends of the spectrum from working with seasoned QCs to wide-eyed, gum-chewing articling students, over almost two decades, I’ve whittled down a long list of advice to ten of the most fundamental tips. Getting these underway early in your practice, where many senior lawyers, who lacked marketing support early in their career, didn’t know the best way to build a successful practice, will give you a significant boost.

Here’s my roadmap for summer students, articling students and the early years of your legal practice:

1. Building of a great reputation starts now. How you are perceived matters . . . [more]

If you are currently considering a new website, you may want to build it for the mobile generation, and you will want to include responsive design. All websites – including law firm sites – are seeing an increase in mobile traffic. Mobile users require unique usability and it is anticipated that in the near future, mobile devices will account for nearly half of your website’s visitors.

Responsive design is a technology aimed at crafting sites that provide an optimal viewing experience – easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling – across a wide range of . . . [more]

Law firm marketing activities should help enhance at least one of the four Rs: revenue, reputation, referrals, and retention. One way of enhancing reputation is to be quoted in the media. 

Now, some lawyers would rank facing the media right down there on the popularity scale with root canals. They would consider the idea of actually cultivating relationships with journalists to be unseemly. However, you’ve all read news articles where the same lawyers get quoted over and over again. I’m sure you’ve wondered, “That lawyer doesn’t know any more than I do about that topic. How come he/she gets quoted . . . [more]

One question I’ve been getting asked more and more frequently as I do presentations on LinkedIn for lawyers is whether it’s worth getting a paid LinkedIn account. For most lawyers, the basic (free) LinkedIn account has more than enough features to help you build your network, find and communicate with people and build relationships. But there are some advantages to having a premium account, depending on how you’ll be using LinkedIn. For example, if you’re planning to use LinkedIn as your main contact database, you might want to consider a premium account.

Here’s an overview of the different types of . . . [more]