After attending this course, you will be able to:
- Understand how to make social media, networking and collaboration work for you
- Understand how Online PR/social media can integrate across the organization
- Assess the relevance of social media to you and your company looking at user generated content, the publishing plan
- Develop an online PR and social media strategy for your organisation, brand, client...
- Understand how to map your online audiences and identify and monitor conversations and reputation online
- Identify and evaluate PR opportunities and threats from social media and user generated content
- Participate in networks through ‘social objects’, ‘social currency’ and ‘conversationalists’
- What shareware tools to use
- Your personal to-do list
To action
How to be more visible in search and through networks
How to proactively engage with stakeholders and enhance your brand reputation online
How to audit and monitor the online environment - what is being said about your brand/ organisation/industry. Identifying ‘traditional’ media targets and other influencers and their networks
Understand the risks and opportunities of social media engagement and develop strong strategies for reducing the risk of negative brand perception.
For all my friends in the legal profession
You need a Publishing Plan. Come up with a plan before you go online.
What is your goal; search engine results, talk about particular area of expertise, or interact with other attorneys? Local, national or global customer/prospects?
That is the simplest start to an overall social media strategy, get a publishing plan.
1st Learn, figure out how it works and how it can work for you. Then, implement a social media publishing plan that promotes your goals. Be active, be patient. Attend a course
Participate, an entire firm does not need to actively participate in social media, but appoint a champion, he or she should start with step 1, learn, be familiar with emerging Web 2.0 technologies and the ways in which those technologies can help and harm a firm’s bottom line. Attend a good course that helps you understand, simplify and start.
I am too busy, The next thing I hear from everyone: This takes too much time, I can't keep up with my email, I hate seeing pictures of people I don't know. Advice use a consolidator, the tools are many, drop me a note, I will send you the ones I love. Pklein@educatedc.com. Are you using Google alerts? this is the simplest form of letting the info find you, don't chase it.
Start, an easy thing to start with is all members of a firm should have online profiles posted at LinkedIn. It’s free to create profiles, and doing so allows you to get better SEO (search engine optimization) of large, established sites. Get started with the new social networks sepcifice for legal people. The Know List is a great one in Europe, you get noticed faster and again more SEO.
Facebook is another site to consider. Consider one for work and one for just close friends. It allows lawyers to re-connect with people they’ve lost touch with, opening up an entire network of potential client and referrers.
Who is your best writter and is passionate about a particular area of law. With a little instruction, blogging is the perfect way to showcase the lawyer’s expertise and thinking skills, while simultaneously increasing exposure and humanizing the profession.
Twitter is ideal for lawyers seeking to expand their network, increase their exposure and connect with influential people in all major industries.
Lawyers don’t have to participate in every form of online interaction, but one way or another, participate and ensure the chosen forums promote the firm’s overall media policy. That reminds me does your firm have a media policy. It not talk to us before it is too late.
Look outside your office. It’s got nothing to do with business and is all about socializing. This is a wrong, a mistake. There is a new language, new way to communicate, it is shorter, faster and whether you are talking with other lawyers, old friends, or people you’ve just met they have the potential to benefit you, your firm or your cause.
Social and professional networking do overlap. Don't be one dimensional and a boring person. Lawyers are more than their law firms, start sharing you and your passion, people like buying from like-minded people.
Who are you? It is important to have a website for your business, it is equally important for lawyers to cultivate a uniquely individual online persona or you are missing a trick.
Take off your “lawyer wig”. Talk to people, don’t sell, share a bit about yourself, your interests your passion. Don't be a jerk.
We suggest the 80/20 rule, it is the overlap between the social (20) and the professional (80) that makes a lawyer more likeable, more approachable and more in-touch.
Remember what it is like when you go into a company and you know someone who might know someone, it gives the meeting a human feel, even you have only been reading their blogs.
In all walks of life those who successfully leverage social media tools to communicate, collaborate and network have a distinct advantage over those who don’t.
Use this new language to your advantage, interact with potential clients and referral sources.
Lastly, Be a lawyer and do what you do best, patient, persistent and positive. Tailor your online activities toward the pursuit of specific goals and we call that a publishing plan.
