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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Yesterday, I watched a video on TED, featuring Simon Sinek, the author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. In the video, Sinek explained his theory on what makes successful innovators and leaders.
In his Talk, Sinek describes what he calls the Golden Circle, which is basically a visualization of the way organizations and people communicate to others. The visualization is made of up three concentric circles with “why” at the center, “how” at the middle ring, and “what” at the outer ring.
According to Sinek, most people communicate from the “what” to the “why,” but he suggests that successful innovators and inspiring leaders communicate from the inside out. He gives a great example, using Apple:
If Apple communicated like everyone else, they may say this: “We make great computers. They are beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Wanna buy one?”
Instead, Apple communicates like this: “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?”
Can you see the difference in these two examples? With his examples, Sinek tries to show that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. In other words, people don’t do business with someone because that product or service provider has what the consumer needs; they do business with organizations and people who believe what they believe.
With Twitter, Facebook, blogs, webinars, phone apps, television, direct mail marketing and countless other outlets for advertising and communications, attorneys are marketing their services in more ways and in more places than ever. However, like most people, these attorneys tend to focus on the “what” – what services they provide, what documents they can create, what they can get for their clients, etc.
Maybe it is time for lawyers to start thinking more about the “why.” Why did you become a lawyer? Why did you start your own law firm? Why do you provide legal services? If you want to be the type of lawyer that stands out as a leader among the thousands of people offering similar legal services, the answer to these questions should be an answer that speaks not to what your clients want but instead to what your clients believe.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Today, I hosted a Blog Talk Radio show on attorney obligations to comply with the rules of professional conduct that govern law firm marketing. Our featured guests were two experts on ethics and legal marketing: Will Hornsby and Nancy Roberts Linder.
Hornsby is counsel in the American Bar Association’s Division for Legal Services, chair of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission Hearing Panel, a Cook County arbitrator and an adjunct faculty member of the John Marshall Law School. Hornsby has written several articles and two books on technology, law firm marketing and legal ethics, and he also teaches a class on the professional responsibility of a technology-based law practice.
Nancy Roberts Linder is the Principal of Nancy Roberts Linder Consulting, a LaGrange, Illinois-based marketing consulting practice for professional service entities, primarily law firms. She consults in a variety of client development and client relationship management areas, including strategic planning, communications development, and attorney skills enhancement. In addition, Linder has written numerous articles on lawyer marketing; designed and implemented marketing databases; advised on website design, content and usage evaluation; taught HTML to marketing support staff; evaluated marketing-related software for law firm applications; and developed curriculum to teach marketing skills to law students.
Both of my guests gave some great tips, and you can access the entire show here, but here are a few highlights from today’s show:
- The ethics rules that exist now were written in the 20th century, and many people would argue that they reflect 19th century values, but now we are dealing with 21st century technology, so the ability to apply those rules to current opportunities for client development can create a lot of friction.
- Lawyers who use new technology are ahead of the policymakers, so they need to weigh the benefits of using that new technology with the potential risks that their may be issues or unanswered questions under ethics rules.
- Generally, issues with ethics rules will not arise from the technology itself but instead from the way you use that technology to present messages and market your law practice.
- The ethics game is largely played with semantics, and ethics rules can often rest more on how an attorneys says things rather than what the attorney is trying to say.
- There is some subjectivity in the interpretation of rules, but when lawyers understand what the rules say and how they apply they can learn how to use them to their advantage.
- Ethics rules are very nuanced and can vary widely state-by-state. Attorneys have an obligation to comply with the rules of the states in which they are seeking clients.
- Listen to the full recorded show and learn how to do the following and more: use ethics rules to your advantage; create disclaimers for your website that is seen by people in multiple states; prevent conflicts when potential clients send you unsolicited messages through your website or email; maintain client confidentiality and security when communicating online; and write blog posts that subtly promote your expertise and practice without conflicting with ethics rules regarding advertising and solicitation.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Refocusing social media to add real business value to your law firm
As social media makes its inevitable march to mainstream business, many small law firms, astutely, are already establishing a strong social media presence before their competitors jump on the bandwagon. In justifying time spent on social media, many firms argue that, although all of the benefits of social media have not been realized, staying ahead of the curve will keep them well poised to take advantage of any benefits that may materialize in the future.
As businesses, law firms must find more value in social media to justify early adoption. As more people start using social media more frequently to solve real problems, new ways to leverage social media will become evident. That, however, does not mean there is not real business value in social media today. To keep your social media investment productive, refine your approach by focusing on these three business goals.
1. Listening to your Customers – One of most useful thing that service providers are finding about social media is that they can listen to customer feedback in a manageable way. Prior to social media tools, such as Twitter, customers and businesses alike were frustrated with the lack of any good option for conversing. From a business owner’s perspective, the exorbitant cost of establishing a forum for customer feedback prohibited.
For customers, support lines, e-mails and Web forms generally were frustratingly slow and unresponsive. Now, business owners can listen to what customers are saying about their business and join the conversation. Customers are talking about your business, so you should listen, and perhaps more importantly, join in. For example, engaging customers with Twitter provides an easy, public forum for you to respond to your customers, and it sure beats mass e-mails with a “do not reply” link at the bottom.
2.Increase your Web Presence – contributing to social communities has the peripheral benefit of increasing your searchability. Google indexes your social media content, including your Twitter posts, so Google results may link back to your Web site, Facebook, or LinkedIn profile. Leverage that knowledge to your advantage by making more likely that potential customers will find you when they are looking for your services.
3.Networking and Word-of-Mouth Marketing – Building peer relationships – Finally, think of your social media time as networking time in the real world. You attend real social events to build your personal relationships that may result in business sometime down the line. The same principle applies to social media. Although you cannot measure social media’s ROI in the same way you would traditional marketing, you can still use it to expand your social network and develop your word-of-mouth marketing. So, stick with your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter efforts even though you are not seeing immediate results in terms of business walking in the door.
Focusing on these three social media benefits will guide you to making smarter business decisions about social media. The obvious pitfall to avoid, of course, is wasting too much time with social media. However, on the flip side, you do not want to fall behind your competitors and lose the opportunity to maximize your social media benefits.
Author: Moeed Saeed, Esq.
Follow me on Twitter: @moeeds
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Have you put your law office on Google maps? If not, you should go do that now! When people search for your practice specialty on Google, you want to show up somewhere near the top of the search results page. While you may need extra help to get listed nationally on the front page, you can get listed in Google on the front page of a search within your local region by taking a few simple steps:
1. Visit Google Local at local.google.com.
2. Click the “Put your business on Google Maps” link.
3. Enter the appropriate information for you law firm (Be sure to include search tags that are relevant to your practice areas.)
4. Click submit, and then follow the instructions to verify your information (you may verify by postcard of telephone)
5. Check your listing in about 7 days by visiting local.google.com and entering the search tags you selected when submitting your information.
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