Over 1,100 professionals have already read my latest article on JD Supra, “Two Checklists to Optimize Your Professional Practice Now and In 2022.”
If you missed it, it can be found here (along with my other articles on JD Supra) - https://www.jdsupra.com/authors/julie-savarino/
2. A Checklist to Optimize Virtual Coffees
Both checklists can be found here --- https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/two-checklists-to-optimize-your-2593206/
Wishing everyone a wonderful and safe holiday season! Julie Savarino
Don’t miss this webinar being held next
week! “Perfect Your Post-Pandemic
Pitching & Selling Skills” being held Thursday, May 27, 2021
from 1 to 2 p.m. ET.
The content of this webinar is sourced from hundreds of interviews Julie Savarino has conducted, and comments and suggestions from a multitude of actual clients of law firms and other professional services firms about how they prefer to be approached, pitched, and buy outside #legal and other professional services, including what irritates them most and how to avoid common pet peeves.
To read some of the rave reviews Julie Savarino’s webinars receive, click here – https://busdevinc.com/clients_say.html.
Each registrant will receive this checklist, "How to Optimize Your Online Presence," and is eligible to receive a free Kindle copy of one of my acclaimed books, “Perfect Your Pitch for Lawyers: Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching New Outside Legal Work,” or "Survive and Thrive Post-Pandemic: A Guidebook for Legal Services Providers."
Link
to register - https://busdevinc.com/webinars.html.
Consider commissioning one or more of these other highly rated webinars for interested lawyers and other members of your firm:
2. How Lawyers Can Get on Desired "Short Lists" for Outside Legal Work
3. How Law Firms Can Win More Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for Outside Legal Work Law Firms
4. How To Increase ROI from Your Law Firm's Events Using LinkedIn
5. How To Consider, Create & Calculate an “All In” Alternative Fee Arrangement (AFA)
6. Best Practices in Scoping a Matter/Case Using an AFA
In two weeks, three leading in-house counsel will discuss ways lawyers can “Perfect Your Online Pitch for Outside Legal Work” during this webinar being held Tuesday, May 4, 2021 from 1 to 2 p.m. ET.
If you cannot make the live webinar, register anyway. Only those registered before the start time will receive the recording if they miss the webinar.
Most RFP (requests for proposal) responses, and pitches for new legal work require some (if not all) virtual and online communications, such as video conferences, telephone calls, uploads, and emails.
When working remotely, video conferencing is the best proxy for an in-person meeting. So, all lawyers gain competitive advantages by optimizing their online pitch and proposal skills. During this webinar (based on the acclaimed “Perfect Your Pitch for Lawyers” workshops), three leading in-house counsel speakers will address the topics below and will provide specific tips for what to do and not to do when approaching prospects or pitching for new business online. The facilitator will summarize the key takeaways:
Pet Peeves — What Not to Do When Pitching and What to Consider Doing Instead:
Chasity Wilson Henry, Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at CECO Environmental Corporation.
Efe Ukala, an in-house international investment attorney with
extensive experience in private equity who is a board member of the Association
of Black Women Attorneys.
Sean Simmons, former general counsel, corporate secretary, and compliance officer for a Fortune 500 company.
Facilitator: Julie Savarino, Chief
Client Service Officer, Business Development Inc.
Each registrant will receive this checklist, “How to Optimize Your Online Pitch or Presentation,” and is eligible to receive a free Kindle copy of Julie Savarino’s acclaimed book “Survive and Thrive Post-Pandemic: A Guidebook for Legal and Professional Services Providers” — a $49.95 value!
Register today at this link - https://busdevinc.com/webinars.html
Register today for these two, highly rated webinars being presented by Julie Savarino, a leading client development advisor, trainer and coach for lawyers.
Julie has initiated, drafted, led, participated in, pitched, closed, followed-up on, and/or helped service at least 1,000 RFPs and proposals for outside legal and related services in person, online and on SaaS platforms, and her webinars consistently receive EXCELLENT ratings.
1. How Law Firms Can Win More Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for
Outside Legal Work - Wednesday, March 24, 2021 –
1-2 p.m. ET.
Law firms’ RFP win rate is decreasing! Register for this webinar to learn myriad master-level strategies, approaches, and techniques your law firm can use to win more RFPs, proposals, and pitches for outside legal services. Julie will review actual examples of what adds meaningful and measurable value in RFPs – from both the law firms’ and the clients’ perspectives.
Topics include best practices in: the RFP intake process; ensuring personal contact is made with either the RFP issuer, decision maker(s) and/or influencer(s) before drafting a written response or pitching; the RFP evaluation/qualification process and making the go/no go decision; the RFP completion, pricing, and tracking processes; the post-RFP/post-pitch evaluation process; and how to get ahead of RFPs by identifying which key, existing clients and best prospects issue and use RFPs to retain outside counsel.
How Lawyers Can Get on Desired “Short Lists” for Outside Legal Work - Wednesday, March 31, 2021 – 1-2 p.m. ET.
During this webinar,
Julie Savarino will describe numerous best practices, proven strategies, and
tactics for getting on the “short list” of desired clients for outside legal
services; how to identify and approach prospective target clients in the most
effective and ethical ways; how to your focus time and effort to get on short
lists most efficiently; and the best ways to stay in touch to ensure you are on
the short list.
Each registrant is eligible to receive a free Kindle copy of Julie Savarino’s acclaimed book “Survive and Thrive Post-Pandemic: A Guidebook for Legal and Professional Services Providers” — a $49.95 value!
Additional registration discounts are available when registering more than five or more professionals from the same firm/organization, or for registering for more than two webinars.
Please contact Julie Savarino for more information, Julie@BusDevInc.com, +1 (734) 276-1900.
If you
cannot make the live webinar, register anyway. Only those who register before the
start time will receive a link to the recording if they miss the webinar.
1. How Litigators Can Optimize Their LinkedIn CONNECTIONS for New Client Development – WEBINAR being held Wednesday, March 3, 2021
These webinars will be presented by Julie Savarino, a top client development advisor, trainer and coach for lawyers, whose webinars consistently receive excellent ratings.
“Julie Savarino’s webinar on how to optimize your LinkedIn connections is excellent! I highly recommend it for every lawyer.” Theodore Wood Esq., Wood IP LLC;
"This webinar is fantastic! Julie Savarino provides a wealth of strategic and practical guidance, suggestions and ideas. Plus, she encourages viewers to follow along and do the actions on their own LinkedIn profile. This is a unique, effective and great approach." A webinar attendee who wishes to remain anonymous.
Description: Each of these hands-on webinars* will cover only one targeted topic** related to LinkedIn: the best ways the specific type of lawyers can optimize their LinkedIn CONNECTIONS to develop new contacts and relationships for new legal work. These webinars will walk the attending lawyers through most results-focused and successful ways to:
Each registrant is eligible
to receive a free Kindle copy of Julie Savarino’s acclaimed book “Survive
and Thrive Post-Pandemic: A Guidebook for Legal and Professional Services
Providers” — a $49.95 value!
If you cannot make the live webinar, register anyway, because only those who register before the start time will receive a link to the recording if they miss it.
Click here to register. Discounts are available for registering more than five lawyers from the same firm/organization. Please contact Julie Savarino, Julie@BusDevInc.com for more information.
*Each webinar attendee is encouraged to use two devices during this webinar; on one device (tablet/laptop/mobile phone), log in to your LinkedIn account so you can access it during the webinar, and on the second device (desktop or laptop), log in and listen to the webinar.
**Because the topic of optimizing LinkedIn overall is vast, and this webinar is only 50 minutes long, this webinar will NOT cover other important LinkedIn topics, such as how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, how to optimally post and share on LinkedIn, how to increase your connections/followers on LinkedIn, etc. If you need information, training, or coaching on these other important LinkedIn topics, please contact Julie Savarino.
Register today to learn: “How You Can Optimize Your LinkedIn CONNECTIONS for New Client
Development.”
The 20% discount off webinar registration expires THIS FRIDAY, Feb 19th!
Here are the three upcoming webinars:
1) For Lawyers of Racial, Ethnic,
Gender, and Preference Diversity: Unique Ways
for DIVERSE LAWYERS to Optimize Their LinkedIn CONNECTIONS — webinar being held
next week, Wed. Feb 24
2) How You Can Optimize Your
LinkedIn CONNECTIONS for New Client Development: For LITIGATORS – Wed. March 3
3) How You Can Optimize Your
LinkedIn CONNECTIONS for New Client Development: For INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWYERS – Thurs. March 4
If you cannot make the live webinar,
register anyway, because only those who register before the start time will receive
a link to the recording if they miss the webinar.
Link to "What Clients Say" about my
webinars - https://busdevinc.com/clients_say.html
Link for more info and to register - https://busdevinc.com/webinars.html
As Seen on The Impact Lawyers magazine
Because I have been using LinkedIn for more
than 17 years, have
over 16,000 connections on LinkedIn, and have been named
a Top Thought Leader on LinkedIn, I wrote this
article as a step-by-step guide on ways to optimize your use of hashtags on
LinkedIn.
Please note: This article is not intended to be a 100% comprehensive or exhaustive discussion of all the things that can be done to optimize your use of hashtags on LinkedIn, but it does contain over seventeen best practices. Learning and mastering LinkedIn is a time-consuming science and art, and there is always something new to learn about it.
Hashtags have been available on LinkedIn for only about two and a half years, and based on what is known about the LinkedIn algorithm, here are some things to know and consider when using hashtags on LinkedIn:
o
Use up to three concise hashtags in
each post or share, and up to five in each article.
o
Keep hashtags short. If you use
several long hashtags in the same post, users may see them as spam instead of a
legitimate message.
o Here is an example of a recent LinkedIn post that only contains hashtags and way too many hashtags to be optimal:
1. Write a relevant, interesting, compelling, typo-free, and great post (use up to around 700 characters) or an article (which is not easy and is an art and science on its own). Once that is done, consider which hashtags to add.
2. Always keep your ultimate objectives in mind when selecting hashtags to include in your post. Your goal and objectives should be to 1) reach your target audience, 2) attract readers, likes, comments, and engagement, 3) add followers, 4) increase your credibility by adding interesting, useful, and relevant content, and 5) increase top-of-mind awareness about you and your company or firm.
3. Carefully consider which three hashtags might be best to add to your post. Remember: A good hashtag is strategic and targeted.
If you want some ideas or are not sure which hashtags might be best to use, check with your LinkedIn network. How? Click on My Network, on the left menu, scroll down to # Hashtags, and click on it, and you will see the hashtags trending in your network. Below are the hashtags trending in my network when I wrote this article. Since these are trending (i.e., are hot topics), I will likely use one or more of these hashtags in my LinkedIn post once this article is published.
A best
practice is to first search for each hashtag you are thinking of using on
LinkedIn.
Run the hashtag through LinkedIn Search to see how many followers it already
has. How? In the LinkedIn search bar (on the upper left), type in a hashtag
symbol (shift-3) then the words, with no spaces. You should see a dropdown
showing what you typed in.
For example,
when writing this article, I typed in “#marketing” then clicked on the first
hashtag listed in the auto-dropdown and saw that the marketing hashtag (#marketing) has 20,366,443
followers. Twenty million is a large number of followers. But not all hashtags
have that many followers.
Generally, you should choose hashtags:
1. --- That have the most
followers on LinkedIn,
2. ---That are unique to the content in your
post, and/or
3. --- That reinforce your brand/event/conference
or message.
Here are some best practices for each of these three types of hashtags.
Alternate your use of hashtags for each post or article and over time. But you may want to include your branded hashtag in each of your LinkedIn posts, shares, and articles.
It is not always a good idea to use hashtags that have the most followers on LinkedIn because your content might get lost among the many other posts.
According to Hootsuite, branded hashtags have high potential. If you create a hashtag worth following, chances are the LinkedIn algorithm will surface posts that use it to the hashtag’s followers. Examples from major companies include Lyft’s #LifeAtLyft, Nike’s #SwooshLife, or Adobe’s #AdobeLife. Here is an example of a branded hashtag in the legal industry.
John Croft, President of Elevate – one of the first and most well-regarded law companies - uses (and encourages others to use) the hashtag #lawcompany in his LinkedIn posts. Why? Because “law company” is key to Elevate’s brand, and Elevate is at the forefront of companies providing a new type of legal services to law firms and legal departments.
By using the hashtag #lawcompany, John and Elevate communicate their brand and fuel this relatively new trending topic. Yet, if you type “#lawcompany” into the LinkedIn search bar, LinkedIn does not provide drop-down options; probably because the hashtag #lawcompany is relatively new and has not yet amassed many followers. However, it’s clear to see all the other posts that have used the #lawcompany hashtag. #Lawcompany is unique, and by using it, John and his company are reinforcing their position as market leaders.
Consider business- or practice-related hashtags. For example, I work in the legal industry with and for law firms and law departments. So, each year, we look up the number of followers of hashtags related to law and legal services. Here is the post I did about it. Almost every industry, topic, issue, and subject has a niche community online, and there are often existing and specific hashtags to consider using (or you can create a new one).
Consider location-specific hashtags. For example, if you work or practice in a certain city, state, province, county or country, consider using the name of that location as a hashtag, such as #NovaScotia, #Leeds, #NYC, #Boston, #ClarkCounty, #Ireland, etc.
Consider using hashtags of trending issues or topics. But use them only if these hashtags have an authentic relationship to the content in your post or article. Adding your voice to a hashtag that is already popular can help attain your goals and objectives. For example, some recent trending hashtags on LinkedIn (and on most other social media platforms too) are #blacklivesmatter and #COVID19.
Create and use a unique hashtag for
events, conferences, and awards. This is probably the most effective single
use of the hashtag. For example, the event hashtag #ABATECHSHOW is popular in the legal industry, and
other groups also create and use unique hashtags for their events, such as
#CLOC2020, #IntappConnect 20, and #CLIO2020. Creating your own unique hashtag
for your event and conferences and using these hashtags can piggyback your
content with a popular conference hashtag and are great ways to move your
content toward parties known to be interested and increase your
followers/connections on LinkedIn.
As mentioned at the beginning of this
article, the use of LinkedIn AND optimizing your use of hashtags on LinkedIn
are each arts and sciences on their own. They both take considerable time and
commitment to master but can never truly be mastered because there is always
something changing or new.
Remember that choosing the right
hashtags for your LinkedIn posts and articles will change on a post-to-post,
share-to-share, and article-to-article basis. A best practice is to try various
hashtag combinations and options, test, then track and measure the results to
decide which hashtags work best to attain your goals and objectives on
LinkedIn.
The best practice is to do some research,
make strategic choices, and create a plan and deploy it. Every year, for
branding and optimal SEO purposes, many companies/firms make and distribute a
list of optimal hashtags to encourage all employees to use and follow
consistent hashtags as they desire.
*If you are not sure what hashtags are and the
benefits they can provide, or are not sure how to optimize the content you post
on LinkedIn, you may want to study these and other many other resources
available online.
Email
- Julie@BusDevInc.com,
Connect
with/message me
on LinkedIn,
Phone
+1 (734) 276-1900
By: Julie Savarino, author of the highly rated book Survive and Thrive Post-Pandemic
The general counsel panel discussion held during the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) Global Summit was excellent! This article summarizes some key takeaways.
Panelists:
Maaike de Bie, group general counsel
and company secretary, easyJet
Bradley Gayton, senior vice president
and general counsel, Coca-Cola
Dev Stahlkopf, corporate vice president,
general counsel, and corporate secretary, Microsoft
Moderator:
Mike Haven,
CLOC board
member and senior director, associate general counsel, and head of legal operations
at Intel.
On the current state of the legal industry -
Trends -
On moving forward -
Culture and change management are constants -
Virtual backgrounds on Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms often make the person’s head/shoulders pixelate and appear to dissolve to others watching on the video-call. This can be quite distracting! Given that #remotework and #WFH is not ever going away completely, here are some possible solutions:
Do not use fake backgrounds at all. Instead consider:
For more tips on how to optimize the use of videocams, check out these free tutorials by Nancy Myrland from Myrland Marketing:
LinkedIn 2021: LinkedIn has now been around for over 17 years! It currently has over 610 million members and approximately 303 million active monthly users (40%, or approximately 120 million, of whom visit the site daily), and includes 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers who are active users. Plus, LinkedIn has over 700,000 users with a General Counsel title, and over 800,000 with the title Corporate Counsel.
Yet many busy lawyers and other professional services providers still do not use LinkedIn regularly, or do not use it optimally, even though – in this largely remote and digital world – LinkedIn is one of the best places to develop new clients and referral sources and nurture and expand existing relationships.
Main reasons busy professionals have not optimized using LinkedIn: The fact is that learning and mastering LinkedIn is a science and art in and of itself. It can be extraordinarily time-consuming and distracting, and there is always something new to learn about it.
The main reason busy lawyers and other professionals do not use LinkedIn optimally is due to a lack of time. Billable time demands, plus life, easily take up 24 hours each day, so busy professionals simply do not have the time to devote to LinkedIn. Other reasons LinkedIn is underutilized by busy professionals include:
Fear of making mistakes or fear of
social media in general;
The misconception that you must post
content on LinkedIn to get anything out of it; and
The lack of enough knowledge to be
confident when using LinkedIn.
I am here to help. Why me? One law firm retained me to join LinkedIn in 2003 to learn and master it for them, get all the firm’s interested lawyers on LinkedIn, and then train and coach them how to use it and get the most from it (which I continue to do). As a result of my joining LinkedIn early on, I now have over 15,000 connections, have been named a Top Thought Leader in Legal on LinkedIn, and consider myself an expert user of the platform. In 2020, my program that handholds busy lawyers and other professionals through the process of getting on LinkedIn and making the most of their LinkedIn presence and connections has been in great demand.
Here are some tips from my program on how to optimize your connections on LinkedIn in 30 minutes a week (assuming you already have a profile on LinkedIn and ideally have optimized it – a separate and complex topic that this article does not cover).
An important note: Do not feel like you need to do all these things at one time on LinkedIn. Instead, I recommend you do one of these things for 30 minutes maximum each week (or spend more time on LinkedIn if you have it or are getting results, but make sure your notifications are set appropriately so you can be responsive).
1. Commit to Self-Discipline and Consistent Use of LinkedIn Over Time:
a. It is very important to schedule 30 minutes
each week for yourself (and your LinkedIn coach if you have one) to work on
LinkedIn. To do so, reflect on a typical week and identify a day/time when you
can carve out 30 minutes to devote to working on LinkedIn. There may not be one
good day/time, but the best practice is to pick one and schedule an automated
calendar meeting with yourself or ask your assistant to remind you each week.
If something urgent or more important comes up on that day/time, do not
“dismiss” the calendar reminder, instead move it to another day/time that week
when you will most likely be able to spend some time on LinkedIn.
b. If you simply do not have the time to devote
to LinkedIn on a weekly basis, ask a professional with knowledge, skills, and
discretion, such as your assistant or your firm’s marketer, to handle your
account for you and post and/or connect on your behalf, or hire a qualified
coach (like me) to do so for you. But be sure to take the time to meet with
them first to discuss your privacy choices on LinkedIn, how you would like to
handle connections and other key issues, etc.
a. Create a shortcut on your desktop for LinkedIn.
b. Download the LinkedIn app on your cell and
tablet from the App Store or Google Play.
c. Adjust the notifications settings on LinkedIn
to optimize your productivity and avoid distractions.
d. If you are not a premium member of LinkedIn or do not subscribe to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, consider doing so, but only if you currently use or plan to use LinkedIn consistently for at least 30 minutes a week.
3. Decide How You Want to Protect Your Connections (or Not):
a. Unless you are an open networker (known as a LION
- LinkedIn Open Networker), meaning you are open to connect with anyone on
LinkedIn - acquaintances and strangers alike - you may want to be selective
with whom you “connect” and from whom you “accept” connection invitations on
LinkedIn. For example, some judges, public officials, and lawyers may choose
not to link to direct competitors or opposing parties.
b. If you are already very well connected and do
not want anyone to see your connections or access them, you may want to change
the default LinkedIn setting that allows all your connections to see your
personal connections (i.e., your “Rolodex”). REMEMBER, power comes from whom
you know, and lawyers may want to protect that power to the greatest extent
possible. To change the settings, click on your name/icon in the upper right
corner; on the dropdown menu, choose “Settings & Privacy”; on the left menu
bar, select “Visibility of your profile and network,” then scroll down to “Who
can see your connections” and, based on your privacy preference, select “Only
you” or “Your connections.”
a. As a rule, when
sending invitations to connect to a person on LinkedIn, unless you know the
person well, the chances of your connection request being accepted increase
exponentially if you do NOT use LinkedIn’s default message to connect. Instead,
take a minute to include a tailored message in the connection request. How?
Mention a specific reason why you are inviting them to connect, such as “Dear
Pete, since we are both in legal technology, would you like to connect on
LinkedIn?,” or “Hi Alice, we met several years ago at the DRI Conference in
Nashville. Would you like to connect on LinkedIn?”
b. If you have not
imported all your contacts from Outlook or a web-based email account like
Gmail, you may want to consider doing so selectively. Once you upload all or
some of your contacts to LinkedIn (do so by clicking on “My Network” [found on the
upper toolbar, once you are logged in],
then “Connections,” and then in the upper right corner click on “Manage synced
and imported contacts” and follow the directions to upload your contacts), you
can select each to connect to separately or select all to connect to at once.
If you select all, LinkedIn automatically sends a generic connection request to
each.
c. To maximize “My Network,” on the left bar,
click on “Teammates” and scroll though the list. If you are not already
connected to every other professional in your firm/company on LinkedIn,
consider doing so. One never knows where the next
referral (or new client) will come from.
i. Another way to see everyone employed by your
firm/company on LinkedIn is to type your firm/company name in the LinkedIn
search bar and you should be able to see and click on your firm/company’s
LinkedIn page. On the right side will be a line that says, “See all ___
employees on LinkedIn.” Click on that and send a tailored connection request to
all you know or even those you do not know.
a. Your tailored connection message could read
something like, “Dear Sarah, although we have not yet met, we both work at
____, so would you like to connect on LinkedIn? Please let me know if you would
like to schedule a time to chat so we can learn about each other’s practices.
Thank you. – NAME.”
b. You can do the same for your prior places of employment,
charitable/pro bono entities, and all your alma maters (if the entity/firm/company has a page on LinkedIn).
d. Under “My Network,” you can also scroll down to the “People You May Know” section, which LinkedIn automatically populates with professionals you may know from the information in your profile and your connections. Select those with whom you may want to connect but insert a tailored connection message as described above.
These are just a few of the many best practices and tips that busy
lawyers and other professionals can use to make the most of their time spent on
LinkedIn in 30 minutes a week.
If you would like professional assistance to optimize your LinkedIn presence and connections, please contact me, Julie Savarino, the author of this article:
Email - Julie@BusDevInc.com,
Connect
with/message me
on LinkedIn,
Phone +1 (734)
276-1900
§
