Heather Morse LMAWell, they listened. Last week I encouraged LMA members to not leave their passion behind, and so far, they haven’t disappointed. To quote Danny Zuko: “It’s electrifyin’!” The conference is packed. We’re at about 1200 registrants. The venue is beautiful, and the layout is conducive to getting to the sessions, networking. We even have some fresh daylight. The coffee sucks, but a Starbucks is about to open any moment. From the Twitter feed, the pre-conference sessions went well. The First Timers reception was packed. They turned the lights off to get us to leave the opening reception. I’m seeing sweaty people from Darryl Cross‘ workout walking around. People can’t wait to hear Prof. David Wilkins, Director, Program on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School. I am so torn between the four sessions at the first break out. Great topics and great friends speaking. It really is electrifyin’! and the conference officially hasn’t even begun. Lucky for us, what happens in Vegas won’t be staying in Vegas. If you’re not here, follow along on Twitter. Oh, and registration is already open for the 2014 conference. I’ll be there!

I know. I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been really busy and I am trying to clear my plate at work, at home, with the Girl Scout troop so I can really enjoy my time at the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, in Las Vegas!!

I’m starting to go over the conference schedule, and one thing that is jumping out at me is that our personal passions are coming out, and we’re sharing them with our fellow LMA members:

Side note: The Mob Museum in downtown is AWESOME. Give yourself several hours in there. Catch up with me at LMA and I’ll even tell you about my family’s Vegas mob connections.

  • The Sports Dude is tagging along, and you’ll be able to find him at any given poker tournament.
  • There will be a Tweet-Up to meet your favorite LMA Tweeters (and lurkers): You can join in on the fun Monday night at 6:30 p.m. at the Gold Lounge at the Aria.
  • Oh, if you get in on Saturday, they’ll be a bunch of us hanging out by the pool. Tweet a message to #LMA13. We’ll save you a lounge chair.

(FYI – I do have a few extra boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I’ll bring some with me … Tweet a message to @heather_morse. No Thin Mints. Sorry.)

Looking forward to seeing everyone next week.

Kevin O'Keefe & Me at the Clipper's Game.
Kevin O’Keefe & Me at the Clipper’s Game.
I’m lucky to know some really cool and smart people out “there.” These really cool and smart people have individual thoughts and opinions, sometimes contrary to what the other really smart and cool people think, believe, and hold dear. I like hanging out and around people who get social marketing. They don’t all agree what that means, how to do it, and what the best practices are, but we have really great conversations. Some will say that social marketing is about the content. Others will say that it’s about the promotion. And others about the opportunity for engagement. I say that it’s a cycle: Content > Promotion > Engagement > Content > Promotion > Engagement. And not necessarily in that order. I got to spend some time with Kevin O’Keefe last week and we talked about using social tools for engagement. And how you identify and build relationships. Yesterday I got to spend time with Adrian Lurssen in my office and we discussed creating content. He wrote a blog piece, What Does Marketing Mean Anyway (Maybe the Opposite of What You First Think …), that was inspired by our meeting, which had great bullet point actions for lawyers to take:

  • Look at your analytics. They’ll take the guesswork out of what interests your market. Technology can tell you exactly what interests these people.
  • Once a month, look closely at which of your articles did well, and which did not. Look for patterns and trends. Try to figure out why (lots of shares? Means it struck a common chord. Pick-up by another blog or press outlet? etc.)
  • Escalate the content that does well. Write another post on the topic. Turn it into a series, a webinar, a video, a stand-alone blog of its own. (All of these are options, depending on how big the reception, and how much you want to be known for this topic.)
  • Look at the searches that drove people to your content. Why are you being found? These keywords are, among other things, a pretty clear expression of what interests your readers right now.
  • Look at who is coming to your work – which companies? which subscribers? which networks? All of it valuable insight into the current interests swirling through your marketplace.
  • Ask your clients what they want to know about. Think how pleased they’ll be to a) see you care, and b) read your thoughtful response.
  • Read industry periodicals with an eye to how editors frame the issues.
  • Rely on your own insights. You know your clients and what makes them tick. Don’t go looking for something else to write about; write what you know.
  • Join active LinkedIn groups populated by professionals in the industries you serve. Listen to their conversations in those groups.
  • Once a month, measure who socially shares your written work. What are they saying? If a share leads to conversation, be pleased with the compliments. Use the negative comments as fodder for your next writing assignment – you know what your audience cares about…

The cool thing is, I don’t have to agree with all or any of these bullet points, or any of his article, really (although I do). I just get to be inspired by his inspiration that was inspired by an engagement which was inspired by some content. And Adrian’s blog post inspired me to write this, which makes him a valuable asset in my arsenal of doing a good job. And Kevin reminds me again and again about engagement. What I have found, over these years, is that content, promotion and engagement are one activity. Rinsed and repeated over and over again. I cannot promote what’s in someone’s head (mine or anyone else), so I need that content (a blog post, an article, a tweet). My formula for successful content marketing and business development:

  • Create content of value (determined through trial and error, measured by analytics).
  • Promote content via social media tools (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube).
  • Engage with other people out there (retweet, @, hyperlinks, LinkedIn connections).
  • Build network of value (Twitter Lists, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, etc).
  • Engage some more.
  • Rinse and repeat.

Over time, and not a long amount of time, you will attract and meet people you didn’t otherwise know. Your social marketing will convert these strangers into people you do know. (I picked that up from a nifty slide Adrian had yesterday). And it is with these people that you now know, with whom you will develop relationships, where you will find new business opportunities (direct or referred). Increasing that pipeline, baby.

Some more really cool and smart people
It’s a symbiotic relationship: content + promotion + engagement. As are our personal relationships. Alone, none of them mean a thing, or can be successful. Together, they can be magical. Adrian was worried that my big leave behind from yesterday’s meeting was that Google Reader is being retired (don’t get me started again). But it wasn’t. The leave behind for me was this: To get a lawyer to open up his or her mind and to pour their thoughts out so that I can turn that intellectual capital into content, that can then be promoted, and eventually used to engage new people and build trusting relationships, that will lead to new business opportunities, they have to be inspired. And for the lawyers in my firm to be inspired, I have to be inspired. And I get inspired by really smart and cool people. Thank you Kevin and Adrian. You inspire me. You really do. (as do Gail, Gina, Laura, Tim, Laura, Lindsay, Rebecca and Nancy, and so many, many others). Viva Las Vegas!

I invited JD Supra’s Adrian Lurssen to my San Francisco office to give a presentation to our lawyers up here. Fire them up to take our blogging and content to the next level. We had a full house. Great discussion. And then he broke the news to me about Google Reader being retired.

Just had a cool working lunch with @heather_morse at @bargerwolen in SF. Biggest takeaway for Heather: Google Reader is shutting down. 🙂

— Adrian Lurssen (@AdrianLurssen) March 14, 2013

I had my own little tantrum. But I have to say, Hitler sums it up for me below. Enjoy. Damn you Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25VgNZDQ08&w=560&h=315]

A couple years ago I started a Facebook group for Legal Marketers Extraordinaire (LME). The group is “secret,” per Facebook’s definition, but open to all legal marketers. However you need to be invited in (leave a message in the comments below if you need an invite).

We’re a mixed bunch: in-house legal marketers, outside consultants, and service providers.

We cover all 5 Ps of marketing (product, price, promotion, place, people). So our conversations are as diverse in theme as they are diverse in sophistication.

For anyone who is part of an industry group, whether on Facebook, LinkedIn, an association listserv, etc., the value of the group is dependent upon the membership and the content.

One bad apple can spam the group into silence and make it irrelevant, which I have found to be true of most of the LinkedIn groups to which I belong. They have lost their value as more and more people just dump links in an effort to self-promote themselves.

Not so with the LME group on Facebook. We have great conversations. Touch on some high level topics. Some irrelevant, but still valuable, threads.

One of our esteemed members sent me an e-mail yesterday asking the following question:

Heather, what’s your policy / thinking / take re members posting links to their blogs on the site? Most bloggers are not, like you, in-house, but are consultants.

My response, which I posted publicly to the group:

For me, it comes down to value and content.

No one here should be posting a link to every single blog post they write (and no one is, thank goodness). Linking to your blog should be done in context to the conversations that we’re having, or topics and themes we’ve been discussing.

Example: We’ve had some interesting conversations around pricing recently. If a consultant/service provider has a great post, that they feel adds value, I would appreciate them posting and taking the conversation to a higher level.

We’re all adults here. We know the difference between adding value, and spamming the group. And, really, from the variety of conversations we have, everyone should be able to highlight their wares very nicely.

I think that advice resonates across the different platforms where we can promote ourselves and our business offerings: speaking at conferences; leading a webinar; writing a blog post or e-newsletter; participating in a LinkedIn or Facebook group; or, replying all on an association listserv.

We consumers of information do not want to be spammed. But if you are really smart, and have something to say, by all means, elevate the conversation, even if that mean posting your latest blog entry, adding the slides from your recent presentation, or linking to the YouTube video you just posted.

When doing so, you add value. And, in adding value, you promote yourself in the best light possible.

But if you are adding content again and again in the attempt to self-promote, we consumers of information are sophisticated enough to recognize it, note it, and eventually block and/or unsubscribe to it.

David Freeman has a great video this morning on how to engage in a conversation with a potential client, not just regurgitate a boring and pre-planned elevator speech.

With all due respect I would officially like to kill the concept of the elevator speech and replace it with an approach designed to start a memorable conversation.

I couldn’t agree with David more. No one wants to be talked to, especially by a lawyer, no matter how charming and brilliant you are (wink).

 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpIPUghE8oo&w=560&h=315]

Take a deep breath when meeting someone new. Ask some engaging questions about the other person. Their business. Their industry. Their challenges. And listen to the responses.

If you have the legal skills to help solve their business problems, feel free to share some tips or suggestions.

If there is a potential there for a new relationship to form, you need to start introducing yourself and your firm to the prospect.

Odds are, you won’t walk away with the business today. This is just the first touch point of many that will be needed to establishing that know, like and trust so necessary to converting a prospect into a client.

The most important step in this initial meeting is to walk away with your next step confirmed.

You need to ask for the permission to contact them again:

“I’ll send you a link to that article when I get back to the office.”
“I’ll put you in touch with my partner Bill so that he can get you that information. It really is his specialty.”
“Let’s meet back here for a cup of coffee after the last session. I have some ideas that I’d like to run by you that might help.”

In these initial meetings the 80/20 rule is so important to follw: Listen 80%, speak 20%.

I had a day yesterday like no other. It began with the snake’s lunch getting loose (found later that day, by the Sports Dude, in the nanny’s lunch … ick factor 100 on a scale of 1 to 10). Business meeting. Major family drama. Which, having four siblings meant long calls with my mom, older sister, younger sister, brother, former brother-in-law, back to my mom, quick one with younger sister, long one with older sister, and closing the night off with my brother. Lucky for me, baby sister just had a baby, so one less phone call. Oh, crap. I just realized no one called our dad. Then my daughter opened up about all the drama that’s been going on with her circle of friends. I so hate 7th grade. One of my Girl Scout families popped by to pick up some more cookies. Then panic sets in as I realized, at 10:00 pm, I had yet to order all the cookies for our booths this weekend. Oh, and work in between all of this. Taking that all into consideration, one of the first articles to hit my stream this morning was Tech’s Best Feature: The Off Switch.

It’s Friday evening. The smells of rosemary chicken and freshly-baked challah fill the house. My daughters, 3 and 9, sigh as I gently detach the iPads from their laps. One by one, our screens are powered down. My husband, Ken, is usually the last holdout, in his office, madly scrambling to send out just one last email before the sun sets. Then he unplugs too. We light the candles, and sit down to a sumptuous meal. I’m prepared. I’ve printed out the next day’s schedule, along with maps and phone numbers that live on my cell phone. Most people in our lives know they will not be able to text, tweet, email, Facebook, chat, or Skype with us for 24 hours. If they want to reach us, they call our landline. Or they come over. And so it has gone, every week for three years. Our “tech Shabbat” lasts from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.

I thought it was a God shot, until I realized that today is National Day of Unplugging. So it’s a coincidence. Yet I don’t believe in coincidences. DEFINITELY a God shot. I have fear around unplugging. I want to blame it on the fact that I would have to unplug not only myself, but a teenaged girl, her tweener sister, and the Sports Dude. Too many moving parts. What if there’s an emergency? (oh, yeah, I have a landline, too.) Yikes. What an order. Can I go through with it? It’s not like I haven’t done it before. Both the Sports Dude and I unplugged during our honeymoon, and our world did not come to a crashing end. I even blogged (irony) about it here: I think the Hippies were on to something:

The Sports Dude and I just returned from our honeymoon to New Orleans where we departed for a four-night cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. The Sports Dude and I headed off to Mexico via Carnival As we made our way down the Mississippi we knew we’d lose 3G reception at some point, so we snapped some pictures and got them posted to Facebook before we went dark. We had no cell phone, 3G or WiFi for three entire days, as in 72+ hours. For three days my iPhone 4, which is usually in my hand or on my person somewhere where I can easily hear/feel the phone ringing, sat in the safe in our stateroom. For three entire days I lounged around the pool with my fully loaded Nook enjoying my summer time reading. I blew through The Lincoln Lawyer, and made headway through New York: The Novel (an 800+ page volume that would normally NEVER make it onto my poolside reading list. I love my Nook).

We unplugged for four days, and they were a blissful four days. Leaving my phone behind, allowed me to be present. I gotta do this. I need to recapture that energy. I HAVE to recharge. And, how lucky for me, I will not be alone. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get my family to participate, but I don’t need their permission to turn it all off for 24 hours. But I don’t want this to be about the next 24 hours. I want it to be about reclaiming a part of my life. unplug HMM I’ll let you know how it goes. Yikes. I can do this!  

Oh, the bane of the marketing department’s existence: sports tickets. Let’s give a collective eye roll here. They suck time from the department. Too many lawyers use them to “entertain” quote “clients,” who are really personal friends. We know it. And yet, they can be an incredible business development tool, but it is so hard to measure their impact, and the financial investment.

Lucky for me, our client base is not based in Los Angeles, so I just buy tickets as we travel, and I use a broker.

My ticket guy, Matt Anis (who is FABULOUS and always takes care of me when I need tickets in a strange city) from Spotlight Ticket Management, Inc. just sent me their new Business Impact Calculator for sports tickets, and it looks like this: ROI Calculator

From Matt’s email to me:

The Company Ticket ROI Calculator brings together the expertise of the world’s top law firms, auditors, accountants, sports teams, and over 4,000 Spotlight customers into one simple step-by-step analysis of how much you can demand from your company tickets.

Highlighting the tax benefits, legal liabilities, and business impact of your current tickets, the no-cost ROI calculator is a necessary tool for any business with sports, concert, or theater tickets.

Click on the image to go to the live calculator.

I’m not sure how accurate it is, and there is an advanced calculator that you can use as well, but it’s the first time I have every seen anything like this come around, so play around, have fun, and let me know what you think.

The world was a buzz yesterday with Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer‘s new policy banning working from home. Everyone seemed to have an opinion. And, for every opinion there was a counter opinion. For every business leader who thought Yahoo! was wrong, there was another business leader who thought they were doing the right thing, for them. I would have weighed in yesterday, but I was really swamped. I worked from home for a little bit. Took care of some personal business. And then headed into the office. Took care of business there, rushed home, said hi to everyone, changed out of my suit and into some jeans, and headed off to a personal meeting. I got home close to 10:00 and fell asleep watching the Top Chef finale — no spoilers please. So you would think that I would personally be outraged by the new policy. I’m not. I get it. I’m finally finding the time to weigh in, and I have to agree with the Wired Magazine:

Yahoo’s reported decision to bar employees from working from home has led to the predictable backlash: “Crusty old Yahoo just doesn’t get it!” And the predictable backlash to the backlash: “Today’s workers are so spoiled and entitled!”

I think the truth is somewhere in between these absolutes of either or. As my friend Tim Corcoran pointed out in his blog post, The Work from Home Calculus:, “Productivity + Inequality – Collaboration + Quality of Life – Cost” = business solution. What is happening at Yahoo! this week is the solution to their calculus problem. And, thank God for men like Tim, because I don’t do math. And while I don’t do math, I do, however, have a gut feeling. And my initial gut reaction is that Yahoo! had swung the pendulum too far with the working at home, and it got out of hand. There was no oversight, and there was too much resentment towards those taking advantage of the policy, and it was creating an unhealthy, unproductive, and non-creative working environment at Yahoo! And now they are swinging it back. It will weed out those who are the slackers, hopefully bring some new energy into the halls of Yahoo! and a better work environment in time. Is it just me, or do you see this as a Five Dysfunctions of a Team case study? Eventually they will allow the pendulum to land somewhere in the middle, because that is the reality of our working world today. Or not. And I am not alone in this thought:

I think Marissa Mayer is way too smart for this to be the ultimate resolution of whatever challenge they’re facing,” says Tony Schwartz, the founder and CEO of The Energy Project, a consultancy to Fortune 100 companies that advocates for a more flexible workplace culture.

But the workers there will have a choice. They can not choose to commute into the office, or not. And not will mean finding another job. In the meantime, Yahoo! will be able to measure this new policy, because I do believe that they did not make this decision in a vacuum. There is something to be said for the energy created by people within an office. The brainstorming that takes place by the water cooler, or during cake day, or bumping into somebody and having an impromptu lunch meeting. When taking a new job, I half jokingly say that I like my office to be somewhere between the men’s room and the kitchen. After a long conference call, people get up, go use the restroom, grab a cup of coffee, and look for someone to talk to as they stretch their legs. And there I am … open door with toys on my desk to welcome you in. And it works. There is also something to be said for working at home as well. It allows me to maximize my time when commuting that day will make me less productive. Keeps me from taking sick days or personal days when I can work, I just can’t leave the house. As an extrovert, I build my energy by being around others. I don’t think it would be good for business for me to work from home most of the time. And I don’t think it would be good for an introvert to work from home most of the time. However, I do appreciate the ability to do so, when necessary. One thing I have learned from my most recent “let’s assess the team” exercise is that we each bring something special to the teams in which we belong. Whether you’re the visionary, or the implementer of that vision, or all the other necessary roles needed to accomplish the goals and strategy of the team we need one another to balance things out and create a functional entity. So I will not judge Yahoo! But I will watch. And I will learn.

As a member of the Legal Marketing Association‘s (LMA) Board of Directors I get the inside scoop to what’s going on in our association. But sometimes I am under the “cone of silence” and can’t say a thing.

I am so excited to officially get to spill the beans on some exciting news: LMA has launched a Client Value Shared Interest Group (SIG) focused on Pricing, Project Management and Process Improvement. From our board president Aleisha Gravit‘s message to today:

The SIG is being formed under the leadership of Toby Brown, Director of Pricing and Strategic Analytics at Akin Gump, along with some of the industry’s top leaders in legal pricing, project management and process improvement, many of who will be joining the LMA community as new members. These leaders bring with them a group of nearly 150 pricing and process improvement experts from the legal and business community and we are excited about the amount of experience and perspective they will bring to our pricing discussions and other LMA topic areas.

This SIG’s focus furthers LMA’s position as a thought leader for the legal marketplace as it relates to the 5 P’s of marketing: Promotion, Placement, Pricing, Product and People. Members will share best practices and create an informed dialogue about pricing structures, project management and process improvement trends in the legal profession. LMA already provides content related to pricing considerations in the legal market; the new SIG not only extends but elevates our programs in this topic area.

I for one am so excited to welcome Toby and company to LMA. I plan to sit front and center, live-Tweeting his session at the LMA Annual Conference (April 10-12 | Las Vegas). I’ve even officially joined the SIG. Can’t wait for the first in-person meeting at LMA, and all the webinars to come in the near future.

This is an exciting new venture and direction for our professional association. Pricing, project management and process improvement are a PERFECT fit to where are are evolving as a group, and as an industry. We’ve come a long way since Bates v. State Bar of Arizona.