As a business leader, your decisions have a long term impact on your company and your employees. Taking opportunities to improve your ability to make more effective decisions allows you to grow as a leader and increases the overall success of your business. Participate in the 2018 Vistage Executive Summit (VES) and bring a higher … Continue Reading
Decide Today. How you and your employees appear, connect, search and engage on LinkedIn is critical to increasing your sales pipeline and personalizing your marketing campaigns. Do you and your employees believe that? Does your sales force lead from a growth mindset? Are they aligned with your marketing folks? Have they honed the skills necessary … Continue Reading
Business Development Lead – Strategy + Marketing = Great Opportunity! (Belltown) hide this posting compensation: DOE – Salary + Bonus/Commission employment type: full-time Dynamic Computing is looking for a Business Development Lead! Dynamic Computing is a leading Managed IT Service Provider to small and mid-sized companies and organizations located in the Puget Sound region and … Continue Reading
Driving Dynamic Decisions Executives are in the business of making decisions. Difficult decisions. Big decisions. Decisions no one else can make. Many times, there are no clear-cut answers. But there ARE make-or-break consequences. This is the world you live in. Own it. Don’t just make a decision. Optimize it. What is the Vistage Executive Summit? Helmed by … Continue Reading
I write to express gratitude. Earlier this month, my Vistage CEO Peer Group welcomed member sixteen. I also signed the first member for my second CEO Group. Group two launches in the Spring of 2017. No success is achieved alone. The ongoing counsel and encouragement of Tom Zahniser, Sarah Fraedrich, MK (Murthy Kalkura) and Tim … Continue Reading
This is just a quick reminder about the private CEO breakfast/lunch meeting I’m hosting at Escala on June 21 from 7:30 AM to 12:30 PM. At this private peer advisory board meeting, we’ll hear from Vistage speaker Greg Winston. He’s talking about Generating Rapid, Repeatable Revenue. Greg explains how to improve sales and how to hire … Continue Reading
When I start a blog post, I do so with a specific person in mind. I think about that one reader that I know will read my blog post. Thinking about and connecting with just one reader helps me build momentum as a writer. I often end up with a solid draft post. At that point, … Continue Reading
Almost every serious professional probably has a website but not every professional has a blog. In fact, a small percentage of professionals blog. An even smaller percentage blog well. Therein lies the competitive advantage… The best bloggers are self-starters with a bias toward action. They realize that the vast majority of their peers don’t have the break-through … Continue Reading
You want blogging advice? Focus on a specific niche Choose a space that’s not crowded Blog on a consistent schedule Stay the course even when you don’t want to Focus on the quality of people following you–not the number How helpful was that? If you’re like me, not so much. I need a breathing benchmark wrapped … Continue Reading
Here’s what we all want to know: Who are you? What do you do? How are you different? Yep, that’s what inside counsel and consumers of legal services want to know. So, how do you convey what’s special about you? Please don’t say your law firm website. A bio stuck inside a static website is like … Continue Reading
These are challenging times for the nation’s 200k+ law firms. Just look at the pace of mergers. Combination announcements appear almost weekly. In fact, 2013 was a record year for law firm mergers. And, based on the first nine months of this year, 2014 will end with a similar number of transactions. Although the mega-mergers grab the … Continue Reading
No one should be surprised that Fortune 500 companies hire some of the biggest names in law for legal services. Corporate Counsel’s annual report lists the top ten law firms hired by the Fortune 500. As David Lat points out in Who Represents America’s Biggest Companies? (2014): …[T]he most-mentioned firms aren’t necessarily the most prestigious or the … Continue Reading
Because of the hugely influential role that the Fortune 500 companies play in the business world, studying their adoption and use of social media blogs offers important insights into the future of commerce. These corporations provide a look at emergent social media trends among America’s most successful companies. Read: Fortune 500 Blogs Validate Social Media Presence by Jack Loechner … Continue Reading
If you’re not online then you’re losing traction (and clients) to the professionals cultivating a strong online presence through the act of blogging. The Internet is a communication ecosystem that amplifies the effect of lucrative referrals with “word-of-mouse spread[ing] even faster than word-of-mouth,” according to a Harvard Business School study, The Economics of E-Loyalty. An Example of Traction … Continue Reading
Why read The Complete Beginner’s Guide to SEO? Because you need to know that: SEO is a tactic not a strategy and is part of an overall online marketing strategy that embraces social. Understanding the interplay of social and SEO is key to people finding and connecting with you. Google looks at 200 different factors … Continue Reading
With the Internet and social media spreading information in every direction how does a lawyer stand out? How do you get noticed among the 3 billion Google searches performed each day? First, develop a sense for where your clients and prospects tend to gather online. Second, get a feel for why they congregate on one platform over another and how … Continue Reading
We broke up. I dropped the bitch cold. No quarter. No compromises. No regrets. I left the practice of law. Here’s what happened next… 25 Years Ago (Circa 1989) Every couple weeks my Dad and I grab a dinner together. We’re in a sushi restaurant in Pittsburgh drinking cheap, hot sake and eating smelly fish. I … Continue Reading
Shut up and listen. Not you. Me. I can’t believe how often I blow the opportunity to help someone because I’m “listening” for an opening to articulate my thought or idea. That’s not listening. That’s one-way broadcasting masquerading as listening. I’m not alone. The average person listens at only about 25% efficiency. Two observations: One … Continue Reading
I never met Amy Hrehovick but the beat of her Twitter stream thunders: I’m sure that cartoon trigger chuckles in many marketers and business developers trying to help lawyers grow revenue. Why? The legal profession traditionally is slow to adapt. Well, slow-moving lawyers, change is afoot in law and social is a big part of that. Social changes how … Continue Reading
If you’re a lawyer whose online reputation doesn’t equal or exceed your offline reputation then you’re pretty much S.O.L. in today’s “social” world. Consider: Click on this infographic below and also see my related post, Top 5 Reasons Why Lawyers Need to Blog for more information. While I recommend reading the post in its entirety, here’s a brief … Continue Reading
Here’s Nicole Black on how to reach potential clients: If you want to establish a strong online persona, Nicole would say: Decide on niche and make that your focus. Subscribe to blogs where people write on your niche. Identify your “niche” influencers and follow them. Read their blog posts, tweets and updates. Take your “online … Continue Reading
I have no doubt that I could make good money ghost writing blog posts for lawyers — but this won’t happen. Why? Because it’s WRONG. Blogging is a two-way conversation that engages. If you’re expert and you want to be visible then stop with the excuses and write your own blog posts. That’s the only way … Continue Reading
Jay Baer talks about “breaking through the enormous amount of digital clutter.” Jay’s coaching in Why You Need to Market Your Marketing is spot on: We often think about content and social media as different, but they are really two sides of the same coin. Content is fire, and social media is gasoline. It’s much easier (and more effective … Continue Reading