Barbara Walters Price

Thought Provoking Presentation: "The Real Life Social Network"

While this presentation, The Real Life Social Network, was created for developers (by Paul Adam), there is much, especially at the beginning (page down to scroll through) which should help marketing professionals (and interested fee earners) understand social networks and how they are evolving.

I recommend spending some time with this and thinking about the concepts presented and how they impact not only you personally but how you interact with your clients, referral sources, and prospects.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams

We're Almost Half Way Through 2011. Yikes!

My boss, Chris Mercer, often tells a story of the time, early in his career, that he spent with a very successful stockbroker. While with him, Chris took the opportunity to ask him the secret to his success. His response made a big impression on Chris and is an enduring truth. He said:

The key to my success is Momentum. If you have it, you do everything you can to keep it. If you don't have it, you do everything you can to get it.

We're approaching the mid-point of 2011. Time passes quickly. The days are long but the years are short.

Where are you on your goals?

Do you have the momentum to help you achieve them? Did you have momentum at the beginning of the year and now find yourself mid-year having lost that momentum?

Take some time in the next week or two to review your goals and, if needed, adjust or realign them to your current situation and then begin again to find the momentum you are seeking. For those of you who are on track, keep the momentum.

May the second half of 2011 be productive and successful for you and your firm!

Social Media and Travel - A Marriage Made in Heaven

In case you missed this article in Inc., check out "How Social Media Has Changed Business Travel." 

This is not just an article about which site helps you find the best deals (although that information is included). Instead this piece explores how to leverage social media to make your travel more productive and enjoyable. From expanding your network to finding cool places to eat, this is a great article not only for road-warriors but also for those that don't travel that often.

The article has three major sections: 

1. How Social Media Has Changed Business Travel: Before You Leave (with a sub-section on social media tools that are helpful before you travel)
2. How Social Media Has Changed Business Travel: While You're Away (with a sub-section on social media tools that are helpful while on the road)
3. How Social Media Has Changed Business Travel: After You Return Home

Before you leave on your next trip, take a few minutes to read.

 

 

10 Marketing Tips for Time-Pressed Professionals

In my experience, most professionals realize that "marketing" and business development are really not that hard to understand. There's no magic to them and marketing consultants that try to convince you otherwise are selling you a bill of goods.

So while "marketing" and business development themselves are not necessarily hard, doing them on a consistent basis is. Too many professionals fall into the trap of marketing only when they are not busy. You can't build any momentum this way and you know it. But you've got billable responsibilities and only so many hours in the day. What do you do?

Stacy West Clark has a useful article at Law.com entitled "10 Marketing Tips for Time-Pressed Lawyers." These tips apply to all professionals, not just lawyers. Stacy's main points are:

1. Don't shoot for the moon
2. Calendar marketing as you would a court appearance
3. Every Thursday breakfast or every Thursday lunch, meet with a client or referral source
4. Outsource ministerial marketing tasks to your secretary
5. Mentor a terrific associate so he or she can help you deliver responsive service to the client
6. Make marketing part of something you really like to do so it becomes part of your relaxation time
7. Create fast and easy communication devices to let clients know you are thinking of their business needs and goals
8. Look at where you spend your time
9. Focus your marketing activities on things that have the greatest payoffs
10. Use "downtime" to check-in with clients and referral sources

Read the article for helpful comments on each item. 

The point is that while marketing is not hard, taking the time for marketing activities can be. The easiest way to deal with this is to take small steps -- and take them consistently. I know this is not new advice but I post this because while most of you know what you should do but are currently not doing it (even though you have the best of intentions to, say, start a new development program after your vacation), a little nagging helpful reminder can't hurt.

Hat Tip to Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog where I found Stacy's article

Marketing Info You May Have Missed

• How ICANN's Approval of New Domains Will Change the Web - Mashable (A must read)
• How smart people who are poor writers create great content - David Meerman Scott (good stuff here)
• Google's Un-Personalized Search. Tools to Hack the Code - SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog (GREAT stuff here to "turn off" Google's personalized search)
• LinkedIn Can Lead to New Business: A 5 Step Approach - Social CPAs (this one discusses using Groups to your advantage)
• The 25 Wackiest Mobile Apps Ever - Schaefer Marketing Solutions (Just for fun)
• How to Grow Your Business by NOT Marketing - Michael A. Stelzner via RainToday (But isn't content marketing still marketing?)
• Protect Your Law Firm Name or Suffer the Consequences - Larry Bodine (Something to think consider given ICANN's new top level domain naming scheme)
• The Mystery of Chronic Pain (Elliot Krane) - TED Talks (while this is not a marketing topic, I thought it was fascinating)

 

Good Advice from Ian Brodie

In Ian's post, It Never Happens to Me, he provides simple, yet powerful, wisdom that can help you develop business. Check it out.

Smart QR Codes

Check out this post by Drew McLellan - Creating Smart QR Codes. It contains good resources for QR code creators that provide good stats. If you are using QR Codes or planning to, read this post.

It's Not About the Technology, It's About the Experience

Loved this quote from Chris Brogan in a recent post (Don't Get Hung Up on the Tech):

Don't Get Hung Up on the Tech. Think instead about how you can enable your buyers to connect with experiences in meaningful ways. ... Who cares about the tech that brings it [the experience] to you? Focus on the experience of what that’s going to do for your buyer.[emphasis added]

We can get so hung up on the technological tools available to us that we forget to think about the experience for the user. I was on a website today that I'm sure was easy for the owners of the site to update but was a horrible experience for me, the end user, to use. Don't fall in love with technology. It's just a means to an end. Spend your time on creating a positive experience for your prospect and/or client.

 

22 Ways to Use Evernote

This post from Ian's Messy Desk, How to Use Evernote: 22 Ways, is worth a read. I LOVE Evernote but don't use it as expertly as I should. This list helped me and I know it will help you.

"Professionals rehearse. Amateurs jump the couch"

Love this article from Dr. Nick Margan at HBR. Titled "Why You Must Rehearse," he tells the true story (details changed to protect the guilty) of a CEO who had a great story to tell and wanted to tell it to a large crowd and got that chance and then ...

The speaker began at the podium, but soon left it to roam the stage.

A couple of minutes in, he jumped up on the couch [on stage because the stage was so big] and executed what everyone figured out later must have been a half-remembered Kung Fu move. It was dramatic; the audience was riveted. Then he jumped down, uttered a few lines from the speech, and jumped up on the couch again, performing another semi-martial-arts maneuver, and a few more lines from the speech.

He kept up this astounding mixture of speaking and martial arts ballet until he had managed to get through — incoherently — about half the speech. Then he (mercifully) stopped and asked for questions.

There were none. 6,000 people in the audience were stunned into silence.

You see, the CEO/speaker who had this amazing story of success and apparently a "compelling" speech written for him didn't think he needed to rehearse. 

Once everyone was happy with the speech, we proposed that the speaker rehearse. The CEO resisted, saying, "I'm very comfortable under pressure, because of my extensive martial arts training. I'll be fine."

So, what was the legacy left by this mangled presentation?

The CEO has never spoken in front of a large audience again. ... The organizer of the event has a 'bootleg' tape of the speech which is played at late night 'after event' parties to riotous laughter. They coined the phrase 'jumping the couch' from this incident to describe a speaker who melts down during a speech. [emphasis mine]

"Jumping the couch." I love it. I thought only Tom Cruise did stuff like that.

Don't let this happen to you. Don't ever believe that you can do your best without rehearsing, and then rehearsing again, and then again, and ... well, you get the picture.

Resource: The BEST book I've ever read on public speaking is Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. It's not the typical rah-rah, superficial stuff you get from many professional speakers. It's real, it's funny, and it contains great lessons. If you're serious about using public speaking as part of your marketing strategy, you should read it. It will make you better.