Casual Friday: Does This Blog Make Me Look Fat? (or, When to Stop Talking and Start Communicating)

This week’s LMA conference in Denver has been notable for many things, not the least of which was the incredible spike in attendance. Over 800 marketing professionals swarmed the venue this week, as compared to the 500 or so who attended last year’s conference.

For many of us who couldn’t make it to the conference this year, it was the explosive growth in the use of Twitter that was most fascinating. From right inside the conference room, dozens of attendees posted tweets in real time, sharing what was happening and what was being said, from the announcements of the “Your Honor” awards to descriptions of the slides being used by the presenters.

While it must have been annoying for the speakers and panelists to see all these people in the audience with their heads down, pecking away at their smartphones, for those of us observing from thousands of miles away it was pretty cool to get the play by play. To follow along, all you had to do was set up and save a Twitter search using any combination of the hashtags #lma, #lma10 or #lmasocial, and voila!: an almost-live feed from the main and breakout sessions.

However, as my colleage Sonny Cohen pointed out, much of the tweeting was reportage at best, repetition at worst. Every time someone tweeted something, a dozen other people re-tweeted that same message, forcing one to scan quickly through piles of… well, piles of stuff in order to glean some very salient points.

In one of his tweets, Sonny made this request: “Tweeters: consider[] going the extra mile and adding opinion and not merely regurgitation of speakers. What do YOU think?” In essence, he was pointing out that those of us using Twitter to participate in the conference weren’t making full use of the tool’s potential for two-way communication.

(My suggestion for next year is that a few people be assigned the task of reporting, using agreed-upon hashtags, and that everyone else limit their comments to new, add-on or expanded ideas. It’s like running an efficient meeting — after a while, you have to ask people whose hands are raised, “Do you have something new to say, or do you simply want to express your support for a point that has already been made? If it’s the latter, thank you — and let’s move on.” All said very politely, of course…)

Sonny’s request got me to thinking: How often do we, in our various communications with clients — whether through newsletters, practice group descriptions or blogs — spend our time talking at our audience rather than with our audience? And do we risk oversaturation when we send post after announcement after release about relatively minor things that most people are already aware of?

It’s a fair question, and it’s not a new debate: quality vs. quantity. I think I can safely say that I come down on the side of quality. Sure, during periods of great activity or breaking news, quantity is absolutely appropriate. But in the day-to-day world of communications give-and-take, isn’t it better to keep people wanting more?

 

Building a Pre-Publication Article Archive

It’s said that experience is the best teacher. Today, I can vouch for the truth of that statement. And in the spirit of another great saying, “Learn from the mistakes of others,” let me take my recent experience and apply it more broadly.

About a month ago, I launched this blog. Before I did so, I created a story list — a group of articles-slash-blogposts, with titles and topics. The still-good idea was that I would write a number of posts ahead of time, on subjects that were timely but had a shelf life longer than the average 24-minute news cycle. With that set of arrows in my quiver, I could shoot out relevant blogposts even on those days when my schedule was too full to write something completely new.

This is a very smart thing to do. Many of my most successful friends and fellow bloggers have postings that are written up to a month in advance. Some of these are future-dated, so they automatically get published on their blogs at set dates; others are simply saved as drafts and pulled down when needed.

But, back to my story…

 

Casual Friday: Everything is Storytelling

Casual Friday: In which I write about things that are a bit more personal.

Some of you may know that, in addition to my work as a legal/business writer, I’m a playwright.

Well, as some who are close to me (and who don’t think I promote myself nearly enough) would nudge me to say: I’m an award-winning playwright.

Although the play referenced in the previous paragraph, In Times of War, is only one of several that have won various prizes, it happens to be the only play I’ve written in the genre occasionally referred to as “courtroom drama.” Probably no surprise, given how much time I spend working with lawyers… That particular play was a fictionalized exploration of an actual, World War II-era Supreme Court decision that later played a key role in building the legal foundation for the post-9/11 creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the military tribunals of suspected terrorists.

Why do I mention this, other than to point out how my professional and artistic lives cross-pollinate occasionally? Here’s the short answer:

 

If You Can’t Say Somethin’ Nice…

Over at Much Shelist, they put out what I consider to be one of the finer examples of a client communication, The Business & Legal Quarterly.

In the spirit of full disclosure, yes, I provide some editorial support for the publication — “some” and “support” being the operative words, however. The publication is very much a product of the firm’s commitment to providing value-added information and services to its clients and friends (e.g., readers, e.g., you), which means that my role is pretty much limited to helping the editor nudge things back onto a well-established path. (Somewhat like tapping a horse on the right or left side in order to keep it heading in a straight line.)

I’m thinking about this publication because a couple of recent articles — try here and here — have talked about some of the risks inherent in publishing online; namely, the possibility that certain statements posted on websites, through social media sites and via other internet-based media might be perceived as being defamatory and subject to litigation.

How does this apply to law firms?

 

Personal/Firm Branding: Swimming Into the Deep End

Depending on who you ask, branding is either alive and well, thank you very much, or so very ten years ago.

I would argue that such discussions miss the point altogether — especially when it comes to the world of professional services. To my eye, they seem to be flailing around in the shallow end of the pool: While name awareness and recognition are important, the creation of a deep and lasting personal and firm brand is dependent upon how well you deliver what you say you can deliver. If your values, your words and your actions are aligned, and that alignment is demonstrated over time, your brand will flourish organically.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently, as I’ve tried to emphasize this point to my clients in the building of their web content. Somewhere between the Mary Kay Cosmetics mantra of “fake it ’til you make it” and the Field of Dreams cliche “build it and they will come” is a better, middle way: Think aspirationally (“What is it I want to do/become, for myself and my clients?”) while speaking and acting accurately (“This is what I’m great at–and here’s the proof!”).

 

LIFTOFF LAW has Launched!

Once a press release has been… er, released… then I guess you can reasonably say that something is official. So here it is: with great pleasure, I introduce you to LIFTOFF LAW llc!

Here’s a link to the website, and here’s a link to last week’s press release.

What is LIFTOFF LAW? We are a collaborative of eight senior marketing and business development specialists who have joined forces to to provide turnkey business development and marketing support to BigLaw spin-offs, new boutiques, virtual law firms and traditional firms engaged in new initiatives.

It’s a great group of people to be associated with. The structure of the group enables us to continue delivering the high-quality, focused expertise that we each possess already (whether that’s as a writer, a designer, a marketer, a business coach, a public-relations professional or a web-development specialist), while offering direct access to a menu of coordinated services that can take a client’s business from A to Awesome.

It’s the best of both worlds. Clients can (and hopefully will!) continue to come to me for my professional legal/business writing services — but if they need something more, it’s just a phone call away.

I. Can’t. Wait.

 

Writing for Multiple Audiences Redux

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the two audiences a legal/business writer must keep in mind when creating any sort of content that will — or may — appear online: the real, human readers of your story, and the search engines that will scour your story for keywords, phrases and links.

PRWeb has recently put out an interesting white paper on “Writing Great Online News Releases.” The subtitle is “How to release your news across the web to get the best results.” And what does it say on page 3 of the whitepaper? I quote:

“To get noticed you need to write for two audiences: The people searching for your businesses, products and services [and] the search engines that find your content and bring it to those people.”

You can get a free copy of the white paper at this link. Before you can start the download PRWeb does ask you to create a free account, but you have the option (when registering) to uncheck the box allowing the company to send you its updates.

 

Casual Friday: “What’s with that ‘legal/business’ thing in the title of your blog?”

It’s Casual Friday again, the day when I let my hair lie a bit flatter (because there isn’t enough of it to let down) and talk about things a bit less formally. And talk about less-formal things.

(Think of this as the self-employed person’s water-cooler conversation — only limited to once per week.)

I’ve been asked the following question many times: “Why do you call the work you do ‘legal/business’ writing, rather than legal writing or business writing?” Here’s my answer:

 

Adapting to the Monkey Mind: Five Years Later, and More Relevant Than Ever

Five years ago, I wrote an article for Professional Marketing, the monthly publication of the U.S. branch of PM Forum: The Professional Marketing Forum, entitled “Adapting to the Monkey Mind: Creating Successful Web Content.” A year later, in 2006, Twitter was launched — and since then we’ve seen a virtual explosion in the use of social media, blogs, microblogs and other communications tools, from Facebook and LinkedIn to YouTube and Reddit.

(For more information on the use of social media for businesses, check out this Q&A that I wrote for one of my clients last fall.)

Instead of becoming stale (five years is forever in internet years!), it turns out that the message of my earlier article has become more relevant than ever. As website visitors are both seeking and receiving increasing amounts of information every minute of every day, your own website needs to get better and better at attracting visitors, keeping them there and — most important of all — motivating them to act: to buy your product, to pick up the phone and give you a call, or to pass the word that you are a reliable source of high-quality information and services.

The best way to accomplish this is to recognize that website visitors come in three main types: lookers, searchers and readers.

 

Web Writing: The Silent (Search-Engine) Audience

Back in the not-so-distant but oh-so-naive days of the internet — you know, pre-Google, pre-social media — writing for the Web was so much simpler.

Back then, a writer wrote for a reader, just as he had for centuries, whether what he wrote was copied in calligraphy by monks or printed with an early Gutenberg press.  For eons, the truest measure of the writer’s skill was in how well he or she was able to retain his or her unique voice while still communicating a message effectively.

Nowadays, there’s a third party in the transaction:  the search engine. Today, when a writer writes for publication — which almost always finds itself on the Web, in one form or another — it’s no longer sufficient to ask, “Did the reader understand what I was trying to communicate?” or “Was my message clear?” or “Was I persuasive?”

Today, the writer must also ask, “Will what I’ve written get picked up by a search engine?”

Unfortunately, search engines and humans don’t read or process information in the same way.