Last time, on the LOMAP Blog . . .
This time, on the LOMAP Blog, social media marketing and giants battle it out, in the mind of Jared Correia . . .
Blogging is, basically, to draw an extrapolated line from some of the more original of our behavior, a continuing series of self-published, short (I know, I know) articles, released for a web audience, and often featuring links to other webpages, for information and reference. Blogs are not essentially social media. It’s more like the production of numbers of presentation pieces, more of that 0ld skool talking “at”, rather than talking “with”. Even if you include comments sections, I don’t consider blogs as social media, as the same process for delivering content and soliciting response is utilized with respect to the publication of online newspaper articles. But, for purposes of this discussion, blogs are close enough to social media that we can talk about them--the tipping point being that blogging is too effective an advertising mode to ignore (hey, this isn’t a scientific journal); and, there are those out there who do believe that blogging is a social media platform. The more important question (more important than a battle over semantics, surely) is the way that one may conceive of blogging, because those initial conceptions of what a blog is and how to blog are what gives rise to the form of new blogs, and, likely, what colors the process throughout which the blogger works. You remember that kid who you hated growing up, the one who used to play Dungeons and Dragons all the time in his basement? Yeah, he’s blogging now. But, the thing is, there were a lot of other annoying Dungeons and Dragons kids out there, too; and, it only took the internet for these kindred nerds to find each other. There are so many people online, with so many unique and diverse interests; each one now has an outlet, and a way to discover others who enjoy the same things. Blogs are one way to discover and engage specific communities of interest. And, if you’re the blogger, and not the blog reader (which does not disqualify you from reading others’ blogs, of course), you get to plant and grow your own, specific community, or sub-community. One of the obvious benefits of becoming the sower and gardener is that you become known more prominently, and known more prominently as an expert in a topic area; and, even if you never set out for that seminal role, it can be yours to discover. The most common reaction I get when I suggest that people start blogging is accompanied by a change of their pallor, as they shy away from the idea almost immediately, and tell me that they could never write that often, or that much, or impressively, at least, impressively enough to attract followers. It’s a scary concept for them; it’s difficult to start, and even more difficult to build, and maintain, or so it seems. But, trust me, it’s not that hard. I mean, c’mon, I have a blog, and I didn’t learn to tie my shoes until I was in the second grade. As long as you’re interested in what you’re writing, or into, at least, part of what you’re writing about, that should meet the motivation requirement. You do have to be unique. You have to speak from within your niche, executing on your specialty by way of interesting examples, and commentary on hot, or, at least, mildly interesting, issues. But, I mean, that’s sort of what you do at work everyday anyway, right? This is not at that distant a remove. And, you’re a lawyer: you can write; writing is the bulk of what this profession is and does. If nothing else, blogging may be more appealing than what you write now (given the inherent freedom and excitement attendant upon managing your own publication series), and may produce some experimentation in method, and so, a respite from your daily grind. There are two important considerations for the would-be blogger: (1) You’ve got to be consistent. You can’t write four posts one week, and take the next two months off. This is just like setting expectations with your clients; you have to train your readers, as well, to expect consistent and enlightening posts from you on a regular, standard basis. If you can post on the same day each week, or on the same days each week, then, that’s even better. Because, maybe then, people start to look forward to your stuff like they look forward to the appearances of their favorite television show . . . and its associated Twitter and Facebook accounts. (2) You have to develop your own style. As we preach consistently at LOMAP, you’ve got to continually be looking for ways, in marketing yourself and your firm, to separate yourself from the madding crowd. One way to do that is to develop a unique style. If you can get there, you will become known for, at least, something. (Let’s hope it’s something good, and not something like: that’s the dude who writes really long posts, and always talks about George Harrison. -He’s really annoying. -I know. -I hate that guy.) Another concern that is frequently expressed to me is: Well, What if I run out of ideas? Well, it’s not likely to happen, especially if you like what you’re writing about, and are engaged in your subject matter. Keep a handwritten list of post ideas on your desk. Drop interesting ideas for what you can write about to a segregated email folder. Draft parts of posts when the spirit moves, and finish later. Guest on others’ blogs, at topics of their recommendation, or of your own suggestion. Get others to guest on your blog. There are a number of ways to push content; but, you won’t discover how those work for you, unless you start out down the road. Blog design is not, either, something that should scare you off. There are a number of free and easy-to-use templates out there, including Blogger, WordPress and TypePad. And, you may build your website around your blog, using one of the blogging platforms available; if you do this, you’ll have an easy, built-in tool for refreshing your content. Each time you post a new blog (if that blog makes up the central measure of your website), your website will look new and different, as apart from that last visit. This will show that you’re cognizant of your marketing, that you take the time to present new material through your website (making it more likely to become a stopping point, as well) and that you are a subject matter expert, with plenty to say on the subject. Providing easy ways to link back to your prior content cements the point, as well as your authority.
The use of LinkedIn is more truly social media than blogging is social media. This is a far more participatory sport. Of course, there are degrees here. LinkedIn features status updates and messaging; but, it’s not as social as Facebook, and it’s not as essentially social as Twitter. It’s more of a static profile website than those others are. LinkedIn is a professional resume profile site, at base. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re out prospecting for jobs on LinkedIn; although, you could do that, and the LinkedIn universe can be an effective market to network for new positions. LinkedIn is more about networking with colleagues, whether those colleagues are attorneys, are within the legal field, or not. It envelops the business card and elevator speech, and churns out a profile page that is your resume + some bells and whistles + recommendations made of you + recommendations you have made out for others. It’s another website (or another part of your web presence, probably more appropriately), that serves to highlight who you are and what you do, at yet another corner of the internet. So, How do you conceive of LinkedIn? Well, you know your nerdy cousin Jeffrey, who went to Harvard Business School? He was probably one of the first people on LinkedIn. Via the social media features that allow you to market yourself through LinkedIn, you can present yourself as a subject matter expert, as a specialist, again, within your niche. In addition to networking and marketing, LinkedIn is useful for professional development; you can’t help but become tied to folks with similar interests, merely by accessing the site fairly regularly; and, you’ll pick up useful information. It’s the same for Facebook and Twitter. There is value to LinkedIn; and so, there is, especially, no excuse for not creating a LinkedIn page. If you’re fairly quick on the old computing machine, it may take you as little as 20 minutes to put one together. Once you fill out the resume portions of the profile, you can add an application, or two, and you can recommend some friends--if you’re lucky, they’ll recommend you, too. You should also upload to your profile a professional photograph of yourself, and this holds true for every social media site that you engage; there is a visceral connection made when someone can actually see what you look like; real estate agents hit this one on the head. (If you’re ugly, there’s always airbrushing. It worked tremendously for me. Airbrushing tools are like little Botticellis divining cherubic angels.) You’ll notice on LinkedIn that there is a status progress bar, that indicates how close you have come to “completing your profile”, which completion appears to be an arithmetical amalgam of information, applications, recommendations and use. Try to get as close to 100% as possible. (I’m at 90%, I think. I know it’s because of the minimal amounts of recommendations I have drafted and that have been drafted about me. But, 90% is aight. I can live with that. I’ll spend Wednesdays nights watching Man Versus Food instead, rather than crafting LinkedIn recommendations for friends, family and business associates that are passably competent and likable.) One thing about LinkedIn, and about any of these services, really, is that you truly do have to use them, in order to get anything out them. A trick I use with LinkedIn is, every time I get a new business card, I see whether that person is on LinkedIn, and will reach out to connect with them, if they are. This is productive of a system for using LinkedIn. (And, yes, I know, if I met you recently, and didn’t do this, you’re like, Liar! Okay. Maybe I do this only 90% of the time, too.) If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, and make things real easy for me here, here I am. Hello.
Alright. We’ve reached that time during the party when we talk about Facebook, subject of a very popular recent movie that I refuse to see: because I can’t think of anything more boring than a movie about how someone created a website. (Watch for “Rosebuds: The Google Search Algorithm” (alternate title: “Citizen Kane 2”). Really. Really?) I’ve called Facebook, previously, “the informal LinkedIn”, and, in alternation, I’ve also called Facebook, “Not Your Grandfather’s LinkedIn”; but, neither of those are quite right. Facebook is more of a site for personal matters (and issues). However, the business commences and continues, as you see more and more “old people” and “salespersons” on the site. (Not necessarily my words, but the words of some original and younger users, who lament the loss of the “old Facebook”, which was far more purely a social networking endeavor. These persons see the change in terminology from “social networking” to “social media” as sort of signifying that movement away from Facebook as a way to connect with friends toward Facebook as a way to connect with products and consumers. But, then again, nearly every good thing is corrupted by commercialism.) Facebook has the most social networking and sharing features of the Big Four. There is less emphasis on resume inputs and business bona fides on Facebook. It’s more of an informal environment, where strict business marketing becomes secondary to personal engagements. There’s more of an emphasis on the remainder of your personality. When it comes to Facebook, yes, it does help if you’re cool. You’re never looking for the hard sell here, of course; but, this is true of all social media marketing. You’re looking to connect with people, and to see where things go, slow-playing the business relationship, as it were, to borrow a popular term from poker. Facebook also serves as an excellent content aggregator; and this is, for me, perhaps the most striking business-related feature, aside from the more obvious engagement marketing tools. You can drop all of your content to your Facebook page, as we have done at ours, and that sort of constant bleed provides for an entrance into the subconscious of your potential clients and referral sources; it’s like an IV of marketing excellence. (And, it looks so durn pretty, that, as I’ve said previously, it could probably serve as your primary website, if you wanted it to.) But, you’ll only understand that if you understand the ubiquity of Facebook. And, if you’re not aware of the usage patterns of primary Facebook users, you wouldn’t necessarily know how this all works. So, let me drop some knowledge on you: The main page of Facebook is not the profile page. It’s the Newsfeed. That’s where all your friends’ and likes’ updates come through, via a running scroll (think: Twitter feed). If someone “likes” your business’ page, and you consistently post (content) to your page, all those people who have liked your page continually see your updates and consistently regard your name and specialty. But, How do you know they see you? Well, let me tell you . . . the young people (you remember the young people, don’t you?), those primary, first users of Facebook, they never miss an update. Seriously. Never. My wife runs her Facebook newsfeed through her phone all day, checking from time to time to see what’s up. At night, when we get home, she turns the computer on and leaves it on, checking the scroll from time to time, and, eventually, reviewing nearly every update, from the coursing of that day. In the morning, she refreshes the night’s posts. You have no idea. I’m totally serious. This is what actually happens. (For those who did not grow up with Facebook, the easiest conversion example I can think of is that checking email/Facebook/Twitter is really just like checking three email accounts, if only you retained a staggeringly refined ability to mutli-task. That’s Generation Y for Ya.) The trick, of course, is to get on the newsfeed. So, you have to get people to like you/your business. Then, “you’re in like Flynn”, to borrow an old person’s expression. (Whoops. Perhaps an “age-challenged” expression?) So, what’s Facebook really “like”? What kind of ways can you conceive of it? Well, one way would be as follows: It’s like hitting a killer keg party in college. You know, man. Everybody’s there. It’s sweet. But, then, like, everybody else shows up. Even your parents. Yikes. Sort of a buzzkill, I know; but, Facebook is still the best way to connect with people in the realest online way. Of course, Facebook becomes a tremendous marketing vault for the start-up firm, mostly because all of your friends and family are there, too. The establishment of a Facebook page for business becomes a quickfire way to attract the most loyal and dedicated fan base you will ever have, immediately to you. What better way to begin to build goodwill, than to engage those persons who will always be most invested in spreading the good word about you? (Remember, your last client may like you, but your Mom will always love you; and, she will delight in talking about you, a lot. Facebook is both for baby pictures and the new big baby pictures.) You’ll even have friends and family you don’t yet know, or don’t really remember, coming out of the woodwork, just to find you. Although that sort of catch-up gap-filling was perhaps not what the creators of Facebook had in mind (again: have not seen the movie), it is now an essential part of Facebook, because the program has evolved from a method for information exchange between college students to the method of information exchange for just about everybody in the world, and their baggage. It is probably clear from the rest and remainder of the discussion here, but I’ll reiterate it: I think it is important to not be stiff on Facebook. Be yourself; be personal and personable. You don’t have to maintain the same persona on each social media service; you just need to broadcast a consistent message; you have various aspects of your personality, and you may dedicate particular personae to different marketing engines; I don’t see this as an inconsistency at all: My interaction on Facebook is different from my interaction on Twitter is different from my interaction on LinkedIn, because they are essentially different platforms categorized under the same broad, generic heading. I’ve written exclusively on Facebook as a useful marketing platform option elsewhere (well, elsewhere at this blog, not, like, elsewhere elsewhere); you can read the remainder of my recitation here.
And, with that, we come to the clean-up spot, as Twitter is the fourth and final social media marketing option I wanted to take some time to address. It’s relatively easy to figure what Twitter is and does, mostly because it’s such a simple engine. People call it a mode of microblogging; but, it’s not really like blogging at all, because you’re not expanding on content; you’re contracting it, distilling it, instead, within that defined set of 140 characters. Twitter has taken the concept of status updates from LinkedIn and Facebook (remember the Newsfeed; the vast majority of newsfeed updates are rolling status messages), and made it the entire program. It’s sort of brilliantly simple, in its way, even though it’s completely lifted. In many ways, the creators of Twitter really figured out the essential importance of status updates before the creators of the superstructure media did. (And, perhaps they struck at the right time, too. Social networking really got going in the early 2000s; and, it was college-aged kids, at the dawn of Facebook, who really provided the initial push for this thing to take off. Those folks are now approaching 30. Everybody older, though (including me), sort of missed the boat, and had to catch up later. The genius of Twitter, then, may have been that it introduced older generations to the concept of social networking in a really boiled-down way, so that they, too, could intuitively “get it”, in a sense. I think the progression worked something like this: Older folks were on LinkedIn, because it was a professional resume profiling and building website. That’s easy to understand; and, it’s easy to use. But, they didn’t really utilize the social networking features. Then, Twitter rolls up, and they jump on that, because they now understand the power of status updates and what pure online, social communication is about, because that’s really all that Twitter is. Now, it’s on. These folks start using Facebook, too, initially, maybe, because they wanted a way to talk with their kids on their terms, or to see pictures of their grandchildren; but then, in using the program, and connecting with family and old and new friends, much of the full power of social networking (and social media, when they begin to broadcast content, and realize that they can soft-sell their businesses on these services) is revealed to them. Although, I don’t know that the importance of the Newsfeed, as analogous to a screened Twitter feed, has yet been clearly picked up, which is why I spent some time discussing its importance in the above section. (Ain’t I nice?) And, certainly, there are those who took the LinkedIn-Facebook-Twitter path, as well; but, I think the learning curve is the same, in the sense that Twitter is the driving force for teaching older generations what it is that social networking really is and does. So, if there was use of Facebook, initially, it became more robust, and much better understood, through the use of Twitter.) What that parenthetical aside just told you (or, one thing that it told you--see, you love my parenthetical asides, you know you do), was that the older crowd, say, the 45-54 year old age demographic, is adopting and using Twitter (really, has adopted Twitter, some effectively for business). And, that’s a community of interest you want to reach, too, right? Right. One part of this is accessing those young persons who are becoming the driving economic engineers of society; but, the other part is accessing those people who already are that. I think that Facebook is the best spot for the former, and that Twitter is the best spot for the latter. If you can project yourself via Twitter as a specialist/subject matter expert/niche performer/boutique stylist/ what have you, you’re more likely to engage those who are successful and comfortable (relatively), as opposed to those who will become so, as they grow all up. The combination use of Facebook and Twitter allows you to access the potential and the kinetic energies of the business world. (Harnessing that energy just might make you the most powerful person in the universe. Careful of burning yourself, though, and don’t stick any forks into any light sockets. Trust me.) So, Twitter’s one great way to access the establishment. The Man, opened to your approaches. But, keep in mind that, you’re not only going to get the people you want to commune with on Twitter, but also everybody else, too, including crackpots, spammers, pornographers and various other low and mean creatures. So, you must be careful, careful of who you follow; but, perhaps more so, careful of who you appear to advocate for, who you retweet. I would never use Twitter if I didn’t do it for work. It’s like Facebook Lite . . . very Lite. (Don’t you love it when the traditional spellings of words are changed for the purposes of sales and marketing, especially when it’s driven by a beer company.) I don’t get much out of it, personally. (Why not just use one service, like Facebook, that has an update stream and lots of other stuff, too?) But, I do get some decent mileage out of utilizing it for the purpose of marketing LOMAP. That, coupled with the fact that it’s not overwhelmingly difficult to use, and the fact that it’s not really time-intensive, means that Twitter is an attractive option for the advertisement of products and services. (Yeah, obviously, I know, that’s why every business and celebrity is on Twitter.) I like Twitter for work because it’s a great place to republish your stuff = content. It also has a potentially exceedingly broad reach. If a person with a number of followers, or a business with the same endowment, decides to validate your content by retweeting you, or making a nice remark about something you’ve done or said, you’re reaching a bunch of people, yeah, but you’re also becoming an influencer within yet another community of interest. And, that reach can extend out as far as internet communication exists. I am always amazed when someone from Germany follows me. (And, I have a ton of German followers. As I’ve said before, I am the David Hasselhoff of Twitter.) So, Twitter allows you to access a global market of consumers, by means of short bursts of information, whether original to you, or forwarded. And, retweeting takes, literally, like, one second. Plus, there are organizing platforms to help you to manage the deluge that will become your unchecked Twitter feed, platforms like TweetDeck and HootSuite. There is much to recommend the use of Twitter, and very little, including the spectre of lost time, to argue against it application in the context of business marketing. I have, previously at the LOMAP Blog, written in great detail, and at great length, on methods for getting the most out of Twitter as an agent of your marketing platform. You may find my tome on Twitter push available here.
. . .
I’ll end. (Yes, there is an end. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .) I’ll end by providing to you what I believe are seven effective tips for the use of social media in marketing your practice, generally. Let’s call these the . . .
(ahem)
“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Social Mediates . . . Mediators . . . Medeors . . . Mad Men . . . (well, something)”
(1) Identify Your Niche/Specialty; then, promote it, most vigorously
(2) Don’t Be Uber(German Twitter people influence)-Professional; in my experience, clients like lawyers who are human beings; act like one and you know, this is the internetting, people like a little sizzle with their steak and shake
(3) Engage Others; while you’re being so darn engaging yourself, you charismatic old devil, you
(4) Discover Communities of Interest; these are whence you will draw your potential clients and referrals, as determined, eventually, through your ROI analysis)
(5) Be Consistent
(6) Be Repetitive; because you’re always ”on message”
(7) Create and Utilize a Marketing Plan; to manage your social media marketing platform, and especially for that continuing ROI analysis
. . .
Liner Notes
At the risk of sounding like a 15-year-old girl: You really have to go out and buy the new Taylor Swift album; it’s super awesome.
(I know, 15-year-old girls probably don’t use semicolons. Touché.)
But, you know that I have a sophisticated American musical taste, right? So, no I don’t play any instruments, and I don’t listen to Beethoven regularly or anything; but, I do listen to songs that are over 18 minutes long, and I know what a pedal steel guitar looks like. So there.
Now, while you may have been led to believe that Taylor Swift is one more crap pop star, it’s just not the case. Her lyrics are always great, and often jarring in their uniqueness and quality. (Yeah, almost all her songs are about love; but, what songs aren’t?) Musically, she has matured with each successive album outing. Her music is diverse within her range; and, if you take the time to listen through an entire album, you’ll likely find that her conceits and flourishes are much more than what you would have expected a modern artist capable. She’s certainly not some other invented stage kid, like Justin Beiber. In fact, Taylor Swift is the best modern singer-songwriter that I can name, and by a wide margin. (Yes, the field is mostly fallow; but, still . . .) And, “Speak Now”, released this Monday, nearly cements the place of that rating.
For someone who seems to be, for all the world, a sweet girl, Taylor Swift takes names, writes them down, and then composes songs trashing the people attached to those names. It seems that there are two surefire ways to get yourself onto a Taylor Swift album: break up with her, or steal her boyfriend. (It seems the only safe place to be is to registered as her unrequited love, like a male Beatrice, like the dude from “Hey, Stephen”, off of her last, “Fearless” album.) And, yeah, there are plenty of those songs on this album (really, it's like Carly Simon wrote "You're So Vain", and liked the feeling of killing that relationships so much that she was like, "Man, all of my songs are going to be about this from now on"), perhaps the most virulent in the strain being “Better Than Revenge”, in which she tears apart some chick I never heard of for stealing from her Joe Jonas, who I wish I never heard of. (Includes the immortal line: “She’s not a saint, and she’s not what you think: she’s an actress/But, she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” Oh, snap.) My most cherished revenge track on this disc, however, is “Dear John”, in which she absolutely eviscerates John Mayer, in the style of John Mayer, for almost 7 minutes. (If someone is trashing John Mayer, count me in. Room for squares, indeed. Shut your piehole, John Mayer. You suck.) And, the love songs (and the revenge songs are sort of love songs; they’re just about love gone wrong--terribly, horribly wrong) making up this album are finely wrought, as always. But, a close listen reveals some new subtleties, lyrically and musically (there’re shades of 80s music here, a very little country, some stuff that sounds like Fleetwood Mac, etc.), especially in comparison with her last album. This sort of growth bodes well for Taylor Swift; being so young, she hopefully has a lot of albums left in her; and, I am interested to see the ways in which her talents develop.
There are some other tracks on this album which I should highlight, for various reasons:
“Mine” is the prevailing radio hit. It’s really catchy, and is more of the sort of song that would have appeared on her last album; so, it’s a nice segue therefrom. It is, however, representative of the movement toward a more mature musical and lyrical flavor.
“Speak Now” may be my favorite Taylor Swift song ever. This is an immensely cool song about a girl who makes an objection at a wedding, to successful termination. Really excellent lyrics here, often striking. (This is something of an opposite cousin to Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar”, in which the protagonist breaks off her own wedding, when she discover that her groom is, well, a white liar.)
“Never Grow Up” is a sad song about moving away, and moving on, and experiencing, for the first time, the ravages of time. A very mature effort, which appears as an outgrowth, and perhaps an extension, of last album’s “The Best Day”.
“Enchanted” is a straight pop song that draws you into a great, hooky chorus. It’s quiet at times, but effectively so.
“Long Live” is a song that will be played at roughly 93% of high school graduations over the next 20 years. Mark it down. It’s a cool song; and, due to my aforementioned, made-up statistic, it will be the anthem for everyone who turns 18 between 2011 and 2031. (It seems like a really good idea to write songs for occasions. The Beatles’ Birthday never overtook “Happy Birthday to You”; but, that was a long road to hoe; and, it will still always be popular, because of its connection to a marked day. Billy Joel’s “This Is the Time” was probably more like a graduation song; but, Taylor Swift’s version is more specifically so, and should thus be longer-lived in that sub-genre.) There’s also an element of the “lost love” theme here, which is well, and subtly, played.
“Mean” is the only song that could be considered anything like a country tune on this album. It’s really excellent; and, it, perhaps unconsciously, addresses a couple of the meanings of the word “mean”. This song sort of hearkens back to the “old” Taylor Swift. You see, when Taylor Swift started out, she was a country singer. “Tim McGraw” was a country song, about a country singer. So was “Teardrops On My Guitar” (a country song, not about a country singer) . . . that is, until they drafted a pop version of the song, for consumption on stations similarly situated to Boston’s Kiss 108. At that point, it was all over. And, since her first album, Taylor Swift has become less and less country, to this point, where she is about as country as Jason Mraz is. I mean, it was probably a shrewd move on the part of her team: the country genre will always be a limited one, respecting sales: most people, especially those with disposable income, buy pop music; so that’s where the money is. Being a country fan, though, as I am, it is disappointing that Taylor Swift has been essentially lost to country music, especially because, as “Mean” signifies, she offered a more of a traditional country sound than that prevailing in Nashville these days, which is in perpetual motion toward pop anyway.
But, once I got over the fact that Taylor Swift was not a country singer anymore, I could listen to the music and enjoy it just fine. Or, as fine as I could. But, hey, if you’re not a country fan to begin with, this sort of inane banter don’t matter a french lick.
Now, when I say that you should rush out and grab the new Taylor Swift album (which I intended to make clear previously), I should clarify: you should go out and grab the Target Deluxe Edition of the CD, which includes six more songs: three more originals, two acoustic versions of album tracks and one (ugh) pop remix . . . of a song that was already a pop song to begin with. (Ummmmm . . .) The highlight of the additional tracks is “Ours”, which certainly could have been an official album track.
Hopefully this little review has been effusive enough in its praise to ensure that I will never be cut down in a revenge song on any future Taylor Swift album.
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Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Up-Standing Committee: BBA New Lawyers Section Offers Pro Bono Opportunities Through Subcommittee
Today marks the near beginning of the 2010 National Pro Bono Celebration, ongoing for the remainder of this week, and sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service. The Celebration is meant to highlight the, often underlighted, contributions of attorneys working for the public good, to the advantage of their clients and the American system of justice.
Of a number of local events occurring throughout the country is a Pro Bono Celebration to be held right here in Boston, at the Boston Bar Association, tomorrow, October 26, 2010, starting at 4:30 pm. This Celebration, presented by the Pro Bono Subcommittee of the New Lawyers Section, will feature as speaker Victor Garo, a local attorney who, for nearly thirty years, worked pro bono on the Joseph Salvati case. Mr. Garo, whose work eventually resulted in Salvati’s exculpation, will relay his experience working on this notable case. For more information on the program, and to RSVP, visit the BBA’s event page, here. A networking reception will follow, at which those appropriately inspired attorneys may learn more about pro bono and public service initiatives available through the BBA.
Of course, it’s easy to celebrate pro bono work for one week, or for a couple of hours, or over beers at a networking reception. It’s quite another to actively engage in such work on a regular basis; and, there are many attorneys, sung or unsung, who do. For those interested in becoming active members of the pro bono community, a great place to start is with the BBA New Lawyers Section’s Pro Bono Subcommittee. To learn more about the Subcommittee, or to find out about attending subcommittee meetings and other, related events, contact Lucas Burke, subcommittee co-chair, by phone at (617) 455-7294 or via email at lb@lucasburke.com.
Working at LOMAP, and working closely with Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, I talk with and visit with numbers of attorneys who have significant and vibrant interest in pro bono work, for its own sake, in addition to the inherent value-add from gaining case experience (more so for starting attorneys) or through supplementing private practice with the clean-wash refreshment that is the embarking upon of a charitable endeavor.
. . .
I have written this blog post, in part, as a contributing response to the Celebrate Pro Bono Challenge that is the brainchild of TechnoLa’s Kate Bladow. Kate, through her PledgeBank page, has promised to publish a blog post in honor of this second National Pro Bono Celebration . . . if ten others write posts on the same subject. To date, 29 more authors have signed on for the Challenge.
In addition to the obvious fact that this BBA program takes place tomorrow, my remaining motivation for publishing this post so early in the week is to solicit, for Kate, more authors. Those wishing to sign on to the Celebrate Pro Bono Challenge, and to write a post themselves, in fulfillment of Kate’s larger promise, may register through October 30. Take the Challenge here.
Of a number of local events occurring throughout the country is a Pro Bono Celebration to be held right here in Boston, at the Boston Bar Association, tomorrow, October 26, 2010, starting at 4:30 pm. This Celebration, presented by the Pro Bono Subcommittee of the New Lawyers Section, will feature as speaker Victor Garo, a local attorney who, for nearly thirty years, worked pro bono on the Joseph Salvati case. Mr. Garo, whose work eventually resulted in Salvati’s exculpation, will relay his experience working on this notable case. For more information on the program, and to RSVP, visit the BBA’s event page, here. A networking reception will follow, at which those appropriately inspired attorneys may learn more about pro bono and public service initiatives available through the BBA.
Of course, it’s easy to celebrate pro bono work for one week, or for a couple of hours, or over beers at a networking reception. It’s quite another to actively engage in such work on a regular basis; and, there are many attorneys, sung or unsung, who do. For those interested in becoming active members of the pro bono community, a great place to start is with the BBA New Lawyers Section’s Pro Bono Subcommittee. To learn more about the Subcommittee, or to find out about attending subcommittee meetings and other, related events, contact Lucas Burke, subcommittee co-chair, by phone at (617) 455-7294 or via email at lb@lucasburke.com.
Working at LOMAP, and working closely with Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, I talk with and visit with numbers of attorneys who have significant and vibrant interest in pro bono work, for its own sake, in addition to the inherent value-add from gaining case experience (more so for starting attorneys) or through supplementing private practice with the clean-wash refreshment that is the embarking upon of a charitable endeavor.
. . .
I have written this blog post, in part, as a contributing response to the Celebrate Pro Bono Challenge that is the brainchild of TechnoLa’s Kate Bladow. Kate, through her PledgeBank page, has promised to publish a blog post in honor of this second National Pro Bono Celebration . . . if ten others write posts on the same subject. To date, 29 more authors have signed on for the Challenge.
In addition to the obvious fact that this BBA program takes place tomorrow, my remaining motivation for publishing this post so early in the week is to solicit, for Kate, more authors. Those wishing to sign on to the Celebrate Pro Bono Challenge, and to write a post themselves, in fulfillment of Kate’s larger promise, may register through October 30. Take the Challenge here.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Platform Shoes: Social Media Marketing, Fitted for Your Practice (Part, the Fir£t)
I’m feeling sort of black opal today. (Am I a shiny object of some kind? Am I the combination of all colors? No. That’s just my way of saying that I am going to write a really long blog post now (in two parts, no less); so, it’s my own adjectival form of “opus”.)
On September 21, I presented, with attorneys and social media marketing proselytes David Harlow and Bob Ambrogi, on social media marketing for lawyers, at the downtown Boston office of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. And, for that presentation, I made up some presenter notes, as I am wont to do--especially because I couldn’t possibly go on without a script, for fear of screwing up. After having done so, I thought back over the vast amount of media we’ve dropped here at LOMAP; and, I realized that, although we have written about aspects of social media marketing here before (most explicitly about Facebook (here and here) and Twitter (here and here)), and although we have a templated email covering the topic, which templated email I often pass along to our clients, I’ve never written about social media marketing, in a broad way, at this blog. So, I said to myself, “Self, Why must you selfishly hoard your program notes on this topic?” (I agreed that that was selfish.)
So, this has got a con-version version factor of two:
It is true, nearly 100% of our clients have marketing questions of some kind. (Hence the large numbers of attorneys flocking to our LOMAP Marketing Group.) It is not true that all of our practice start-up clients have no money. But, a number of them are, certainly, working within very limited budgets. It is not true that none of our clients are particularly tech-savvy. Some are very strong in that area; some are not so strong. And, surely, the negatives of those propositions represent two very large stumbling blocks. So, What do you do if you want to advertise effectively, but you’re short on cash and you’re not tech-savvy? Or, even if you’re smart? Wait . . . What? Yes, that’s right. Even if you’re smart. What do you do? Enter social media. Social media is generally free/cheap. It’s easy to use. Best of all, it’s effective. Nobody uses the Yellow Pages anymore. (Well, maybe some people do.) Hell, even "the new" Yellow Pages knows that the web is the future, and that the future is now. People get found now via the web, through Google searches (page 1), through profile websites (like LinkedIn and Avvo) and, increasingly, through communities of interest aggregating across social media websites. (Did you know there is a Second Life Bar Association? Well, there is.) And, these are just some of the reasons that I feel like, more than defaulting to the standard of getting online with a website, you really need a web presence, more than anything else.
Marketing, branding . . . it’s always been about perception. How do you present yourself? What is your professional image? But, it’s not really about your own vision, respecting those things; it’s about what others see in you. How are you perceived by the public, specifically, your targeted clients? (Those are who you are really trying to impress anyway, right? Potential clients. Potential referral sources.) That is the question. Social media serves to ramp up the “them” side of the equation. Social media is not really a method for the release of presentation pieces, where you’re talking “at” people; with social media marketing, you really need to be talking “with” people. By dint of its very name, social media necessitates a conversation. The watchword here is engagement. You must, if you are to be effective in social media marketing, begin to think of your advertising as interactive. This is, certainly, part and parcel of living in a world where the arenae for private and personal access become narrower and narrower. This is, also, however, an outgrowth of the economy. The economy is still terrible, and everyone knows it. And everyone is looking for a deal. So, your potential clients flock to the internet to find those deals, or to find information (= empowerment) that will get them those deals. Plus, they also know other things . . . Like the fact that you’re probably hurting for business, because the legal field ain’t so good right now, either. Customer service, then, becomes paramount. And, modern customer service represents a recognition of the fact that that the playing field between service provider and consumer has leveled. Engagement and interaction, then, meeting clients on their terms, in significant ways, become essential to marketing. You’ve got to compete at a number of levels: pricing, collaboration and convenience, to name a few. So, you’re offering alternative fees, you’re moving your practice to the virtual and you’re engaging (truly) in social media marketing. Of course, that is only the foundation. You not only have to be unique; you now have to bring that uniqueness to the people, much on their terms.
Neither is social media going away. This is not a fad (well, everything popular, in the long lens of time, becomes a fad; but, you know what I mean). Now, you may not have noticed, if you hadn’t been watching for it, but over the course of the last couple of years, social media has become mainstream. Watch any television show, or any commercial, for that matter, and you’re bound to presented with, at least, some derivative of a Twitter account or Facebook page for that television show/commercial product. What this means, other than being an identification of the flow of a culture, is that, if you’re not doing it, too, you’re missing out on the largest percentage of the social conversation. And, you’re missing the younger side of it; this is, incidentally, the same age bracket that will come to support your practice, perhaps, even, as their parents once did.
Let’s take a moment, then, to talk about the evolution of legal advertising over, let’s says, the period of the last fifteen years. It used to be that you had to be on Martindale-Hubbell to have arrived online. (And, I hardly remember that; I’ve mostly been told.) Then it was that you needed to have a website, to display your bona fides. Now, you likely don’t even need that website; but, rather, as alluded to above, what you require, instead, is a broad web presence. (What, then, becomes of your website; well, it can become a relatively simple version of an online business card--your major contact points (probably including social media anyway), and some other brief information, the rest of who you are and what you do, being spread over the vast reaches of the interwebs. I frequently tell people, as well, that I like the Facebook for business page interface so well, that I think that it would work as a primary website. That, and your remaining social media presence, would get you up and about on the web pretty durn well, and fast--especially if you don’t want to spend a lot of time designing a website.)
So, everybody’s doing it. But, the question for you to determine is: Where, exactly, are they doing it? . . . so you can do it there, too. There are, certainly, a lot of social media sites, and lots of social media-built communities. When you consider the number of people who use the internet, and how often they use it, and their diverse range of interests, the numbers are likely staggering, perhaps not even truly measurable by human tools. So, when you seek out where you want to promote your niche, you have to keep in mind all those good things laid out in your marketing plan: who your target clients are, what makes you unique, how your fee structure sets you apart, etc. But, very simply, you want to be where everybody else is, so you can reach the most people possible. Start there, and that will, at least, give you a platform from which to launch. From there, you’ll begin to see which specific communities of interest you’ll need to engage more deeply, which are the places where your message will drop most effectively. Once you begin to engage these communities of interest, it’s that old matter of figuring out your return on investment again, to see what works and what doesn’t work, to know where you need to stay, and when you need to go, and where. But, you can’t figure that out until you make a start. It’s like the answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg? It don’t matter.
Oh, but, I haven’t told you where to go, and what to do, yet. My bad. These are the places you need to be/the things you need to do: (1) blogging; (2) LinkedIn; (3) Facebook; and, (4) Twitter: “the Big Four”, as I so uncleverly call them (no, I don’t mean the audit firms). Why do you want to be on them? Because this is where the most people are/what most people are doing regarding social media, sort of. I’ll explain.
. . . Next Week.
To Be Continued . . .
On September 21, I presented, with attorneys and social media marketing proselytes David Harlow and Bob Ambrogi, on social media marketing for lawyers, at the downtown Boston office of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. And, for that presentation, I made up some presenter notes, as I am wont to do--especially because I couldn’t possibly go on without a script, for fear of screwing up. After having done so, I thought back over the vast amount of media we’ve dropped here at LOMAP; and, I realized that, although we have written about aspects of social media marketing here before (most explicitly about Facebook (here and here) and Twitter (here and here)), and although we have a templated email covering the topic, which templated email I often pass along to our clients, I’ve never written about social media marketing, in a broad way, at this blog. So, I said to myself, “Self, Why must you selfishly hoard your program notes on this topic?” (I agreed that that was selfish.)
So, this has got a con-version version factor of two:
It is true, nearly 100% of our clients have marketing questions of some kind. (Hence the large numbers of attorneys flocking to our LOMAP Marketing Group.) It is not true that all of our practice start-up clients have no money. But, a number of them are, certainly, working within very limited budgets. It is not true that none of our clients are particularly tech-savvy. Some are very strong in that area; some are not so strong. And, surely, the negatives of those propositions represent two very large stumbling blocks. So, What do you do if you want to advertise effectively, but you’re short on cash and you’re not tech-savvy? Or, even if you’re smart? Wait . . . What? Yes, that’s right. Even if you’re smart. What do you do? Enter social media. Social media is generally free/cheap. It’s easy to use. Best of all, it’s effective. Nobody uses the Yellow Pages anymore. (Well, maybe some people do.) Hell, even "the new" Yellow Pages knows that the web is the future, and that the future is now. People get found now via the web, through Google searches (page 1), through profile websites (like LinkedIn and Avvo) and, increasingly, through communities of interest aggregating across social media websites. (Did you know there is a Second Life Bar Association? Well, there is.) And, these are just some of the reasons that I feel like, more than defaulting to the standard of getting online with a website, you really need a web presence, more than anything else.
Marketing, branding . . . it’s always been about perception. How do you present yourself? What is your professional image? But, it’s not really about your own vision, respecting those things; it’s about what others see in you. How are you perceived by the public, specifically, your targeted clients? (Those are who you are really trying to impress anyway, right? Potential clients. Potential referral sources.) That is the question. Social media serves to ramp up the “them” side of the equation. Social media is not really a method for the release of presentation pieces, where you’re talking “at” people; with social media marketing, you really need to be talking “with” people. By dint of its very name, social media necessitates a conversation. The watchword here is engagement. You must, if you are to be effective in social media marketing, begin to think of your advertising as interactive. This is, certainly, part and parcel of living in a world where the arenae for private and personal access become narrower and narrower. This is, also, however, an outgrowth of the economy. The economy is still terrible, and everyone knows it. And everyone is looking for a deal. So, your potential clients flock to the internet to find those deals, or to find information (= empowerment) that will get them those deals. Plus, they also know other things . . . Like the fact that you’re probably hurting for business, because the legal field ain’t so good right now, either. Customer service, then, becomes paramount. And, modern customer service represents a recognition of the fact that that the playing field between service provider and consumer has leveled. Engagement and interaction, then, meeting clients on their terms, in significant ways, become essential to marketing. You’ve got to compete at a number of levels: pricing, collaboration and convenience, to name a few. So, you’re offering alternative fees, you’re moving your practice to the virtual and you’re engaging (truly) in social media marketing. Of course, that is only the foundation. You not only have to be unique; you now have to bring that uniqueness to the people, much on their terms.
Neither is social media going away. This is not a fad (well, everything popular, in the long lens of time, becomes a fad; but, you know what I mean). Now, you may not have noticed, if you hadn’t been watching for it, but over the course of the last couple of years, social media has become mainstream. Watch any television show, or any commercial, for that matter, and you’re bound to presented with, at least, some derivative of a Twitter account or Facebook page for that television show/commercial product. What this means, other than being an identification of the flow of a culture, is that, if you’re not doing it, too, you’re missing out on the largest percentage of the social conversation. And, you’re missing the younger side of it; this is, incidentally, the same age bracket that will come to support your practice, perhaps, even, as their parents once did.
Let’s take a moment, then, to talk about the evolution of legal advertising over, let’s says, the period of the last fifteen years. It used to be that you had to be on Martindale-Hubbell to have arrived online. (And, I hardly remember that; I’ve mostly been told.) Then it was that you needed to have a website, to display your bona fides. Now, you likely don’t even need that website; but, rather, as alluded to above, what you require, instead, is a broad web presence. (What, then, becomes of your website; well, it can become a relatively simple version of an online business card--your major contact points (probably including social media anyway), and some other brief information, the rest of who you are and what you do, being spread over the vast reaches of the interwebs. I frequently tell people, as well, that I like the Facebook for business page interface so well, that I think that it would work as a primary website. That, and your remaining social media presence, would get you up and about on the web pretty durn well, and fast--especially if you don’t want to spend a lot of time designing a website.)
So, everybody’s doing it. But, the question for you to determine is: Where, exactly, are they doing it? . . . so you can do it there, too. There are, certainly, a lot of social media sites, and lots of social media-built communities. When you consider the number of people who use the internet, and how often they use it, and their diverse range of interests, the numbers are likely staggering, perhaps not even truly measurable by human tools. So, when you seek out where you want to promote your niche, you have to keep in mind all those good things laid out in your marketing plan: who your target clients are, what makes you unique, how your fee structure sets you apart, etc. But, very simply, you want to be where everybody else is, so you can reach the most people possible. Start there, and that will, at least, give you a platform from which to launch. From there, you’ll begin to see which specific communities of interest you’ll need to engage more deeply, which are the places where your message will drop most effectively. Once you begin to engage these communities of interest, it’s that old matter of figuring out your return on investment again, to see what works and what doesn’t work, to know where you need to stay, and when you need to go, and where. But, you can’t figure that out until you make a start. It’s like the answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg? It don’t matter.
Oh, but, I haven’t told you where to go, and what to do, yet. My bad. These are the places you need to be/the things you need to do: (1) blogging; (2) LinkedIn; (3) Facebook; and, (4) Twitter: “the Big Four”, as I so uncleverly call them (no, I don’t mean the audit firms). Why do you want to be on them? Because this is where the most people are/what most people are doing regarding social media, sort of. I’ll explain.
. . . Next Week.
To Be Continued . . .
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Part I: Basic Considerations in Creating a Website Using Wordpress
I recently redesigned our website using WordPress. On a few occasions, Rodney and Jared probably overheard just how much fun I was having. So much fun that Jared let me write a blog post on it.
My frustrations were not caused by WordPress. No. WordPress is pretty awesome. In fact, it is so awesome that I have a bunch of random tips for working with it, which I will write about in a later post. Don’t expect to find them here. For now, I offer only my general thoughts on using WordPress to build your website.
To explain the difficulty I faced, I first need to distinguish between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. I could have set up our site using wordpress.com, without understanding anything about how websites work, since you can create a website right there, and simply map a domain name to that wordpress.com site. That would have been easy. Unfortunately, wordpress.com is rather limited in its features. For example, you cannot install Plug-ins. None. I tried, and wasted a lot of time before finding out that it is actually impossible. We wanted Plug-ins because we wanted, among other things, additional audio and video functions, as well as Twitter and Facebook integration. So, we went to wordpress.org.
Wordpress.org requires using an ftp server to upload WordPress to a web server, and thus, to a website. The company that hosts said website will have an effect on the ease of the installation process and its continued operation. DreamHost has a particularly good reputation for its performance with WordPress, so I thought it was worth it for us to make the switch away from our then-current host. Although I have nothing on which to base a comparison, I can say that we’ve had no DreamHost-related problems, per se. We did, however, have a load of problems in transferring our website’s hosting to DreamHost.
Those problems wouldn’t have been nearly as traumatic as they were, had I been a little less stubborn, given up at a sensible point, and simply asked our absolutely amazing IT guy to handle this portion entirely. (Chris Morse, by the way, is the only reason I didn’t cry on no less than three occasions throughout this process.) But, I am stubborn, and I know Chris is a busy man, so I did what I did. By the way, did any of you try to email us on September 10th, between 12pm and 3pm? Yeah—my fault those emails got bounced back. Oops. So, unless you have a deep understanding the following words, and how they interrelate, let your IT folks handle your transfer: Uniform Resource Locator, domain name registrar, domain name server, IP address, file transfer protocol, hyper text transfer protocol, web server, ... By the way, “Yeah, I’ve heard of that” does not constitute a deep understanding, nor does merely reading the Wikipedia explanation thereof.
. . .
As to using WordPress itself, it is a straightforward endeavor, for the most part. And, where it is less than straightforward, figuring it out is usually quite manageable. There are a few basic points to consider when getting started.
First, as I recommended in my post about creating a Facebook Fan Page, learn the basics of writing html. It’s pretty easy, particularly with help like this. You will want the flexibility that html-writing produces, rather than just relying on formatting inside the WYSIWYG input fields, which you will find neither consistent nor versatile.
Next, I want to share a couple simple, but significant, observations on formatting. Understanding that your Frontpage, Pages, and Posts have distinct purposes, you might consider changing the template of your Pages to exclude the Widget-filled sidebars that you will want to display on your Frontpage. And, while you will probably want to allow comments on your Posts, you may want to exclude them from your Pages. There is no setting that will allow you to default to these modifications; so, both of these adjustments must be made on a page-by-page basis. Tedious? Yep. And, as it relates to Widgets, formatting is intuitive, but sometimes wonky. Yes, wonky. And, note that the Text Widget is html-friendly. So, for example, you can use it to generate a picture, simply by inputting the html for the image you’d like to display.
Now, a couple quick notes if you’re importing posts from another blogsite. The importer tool and the tool that converts between tags and categories are easy to use, and work quite well, almost every time. But, you’ll want those previous posts to have a unique url on your WordPress site, most likely. This is not as easy to figure out as the importer tool, but just as quick to implement: From Permalinks, under Settings, use the following custom structure: /%category%/%postname%/. Done.
And, I just have to say this: Don’t get too excited when you see an awesome Plug-in. Not all Plug-ins are so easily “plugged-in”. Some require a good bit of work to set up. I’ll talk about my favorites and troubleshooting in my second post on this topic.
Finally, while it may be obvious, I will mention that creating and maintaining a website using wordpress.org can be time consuming. While nothing about it is particularly difficult, you’ll find that a good portion of your goals will involve more work than you expect. Having said that, I can’t imagine a more user-friendly interface than WordPress.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Generational Intersection: Lawyers and Communication Across Age Gaps
I had the good fortune of recently being interviewed for an article about the ways in which lawyers communicate with colleagues and clients across the generation gap. You may find the full article here, very well-written, as it is, by Correy Stephenson of Lawyers USA.
You’ll find me planted squarely in this piece as the representative for Generation X. I didn’t even know I was part of Generation X; but, there you go. Reading about it on Wikipedia, it’s a pretty apt description of me and my views (this is just like when Pandora reads my mind); although, maybe, I’m sometimes Y, too. But, it’s alright by me: I think the fact that I was selected for Generation X means that I was the youngest person quoted in the article. In fact, I’m drinking a juicebox and curling barbells right now, really exploring the studio space, as it were. (I knew I should have led with some high-minded concepts. Instead, I spoke plainly, and I don’t up end up being a theorist, but only an exemplar. Ah, well. I guess I’ll just have to cry instead.)
Now, I’m not passing this article along to you for my own self-aggrandizement. (Well, I am a little, but . . .) I really do think that this is an interesting piece, including the comments by some real experts in legal communications and legal marketing, like Jordan Furlong, Tom Kane and Ed Poll. (I’ll be sure to call Tom, if I ever need to reach him.) And, more generally, the article represents a fairly fascinating take on preferences, and on the thoughtfulness that should be applied in targeting communications for best effect. It also underscores the staggering pace at which technology has advanced, and continues to advance, in modern society: that each generation has its own, separate, favorite communication platform is nothing short of amazing. Especially as I think that, like, the chief communication method, for, like, the first several generations, was, like, hitting sticks together, or something . . .
You’ll find me planted squarely in this piece as the representative for Generation X. I didn’t even know I was part of Generation X; but, there you go. Reading about it on Wikipedia, it’s a pretty apt description of me and my views (this is just like when Pandora reads my mind); although, maybe, I’m sometimes Y, too. But, it’s alright by me: I think the fact that I was selected for Generation X means that I was the youngest person quoted in the article. In fact, I’m drinking a juicebox and curling barbells right now, really exploring the studio space, as it were. (I knew I should have led with some high-minded concepts. Instead, I spoke plainly, and I don’t up end up being a theorist, but only an exemplar. Ah, well. I guess I’ll just have to cry instead.)
Now, I’m not passing this article along to you for my own self-aggrandizement. (Well, I am a little, but . . .) I really do think that this is an interesting piece, including the comments by some real experts in legal communications and legal marketing, like Jordan Furlong, Tom Kane and Ed Poll. (I’ll be sure to call Tom, if I ever need to reach him.) And, more generally, the article represents a fairly fascinating take on preferences, and on the thoughtfulness that should be applied in targeting communications for best effect. It also underscores the staggering pace at which technology has advanced, and continues to advance, in modern society: that each generation has its own, separate, favorite communication platform is nothing short of amazing. Especially as I think that, like, the chief communication method, for, like, the first several generations, was, like, hitting sticks together, or something . . .
Friday, October 8, 2010
Revised Outlook: Credenza Introduces Significant Product Upgrades
Somewhere along the line, I became the unofficial reviewer of the Credenza practice management system. I don’t quite know how this happened; but, it’s true. I mean, I’m even quoted on their homepage: See. (I don’t think I’m the “official” reviewer, or the Credenza laureate or anything like that, because I’m pretty sure I would have demanded a cash prize, or something, if that were the case.) And, yet, here I am.
As I was working on finalizing a review of Credenza for the ABA’s GP|Solo magazine (which review will be released in the December issue, so watch out for that), I received word, which I had known would be coming, that Credenza had dropped a major product upgrade, between the time that I had drafted my article and the time that I would be revising it. With a quick turnaround time on final edits for the article, I could only change information that had become outdated per the product upgrades that Credenza had made; this meant that I was not able to discuss, at any great length, the value of some of the new features. So, I’d like to take the opportunity, now, to address those features, as well as some other primary changes, which are more superficially covered in my article; obviously, I’ve chosen the ol’ LOMAP Blog for my board of sounding.
. . .
Credenza has provided this link, where it has collected a list of recent program changes. The listing is well-done, with a pithy description of the each change, plus a screenshot, so you can see just what’ll happen within your system. (I love screenshots.) We’ll get back to this listing of late September-early October changes in a moment.
The most significant improvement to Credenza has its own page. One of the original drawbacks to Credenza (Credenza 1.0, as it were, now) was that, although there were collaboration tools, those tools could only be leveraged by workgroups of up to three. And, that was a fairly significant issue, for example, when you’re talking about a solo attorney with a secretary and paralegal . . . well, that’s really all you were talking about, because the Credenza share would have been maxed out by that small office. Now, however, Credenza offers team functionality. The essence of this change is that user limits are gone. Now, a Credenza team, or teams, can consist of any number of persons. Credenza, then, is no longer hamstrung as a solution for only the small law office; Credenza, with teams, can now be used in small firms, mid-sized firms and large firms. Team access can be further split into sub-groups, as teams may be gathered around specific client files, and client file sets. In addition to the, um . . . addition, of, more people, the Credenza team version allows for deeper flexibility, in how those persons are arrayed, as well as in how they access information, than the previous work group-based incarnation of the program did. One significant movement arising from the creation of teams centers around ease of access. Because behind the curtain synchronization occurs in the cloud, Credenza users may now access Credenza anywhere they have internet access; users are no longer required to get access to their office network, to get access to Credenza. Such a major upgrade, of course, means that nearly every feature of Credenza is touched by the implementation of the team functionality. A review of the Credenza features page, then, with an eye to the new team-specific functionality and its effect across the platform, is in order, not only for those familiar Credenza users, but also for those curious, especially those who were previously too big for the box.
But, there are other, not insignificant, changes to Credenza, as well. And, those are laid out at the aforementioned updates page. Certainly, you should review the full set of new upgrades at the updates page (it doesn’t take that long); but, I just wanted to highlight several of the new features that I found to be particularly impressive/that I think will be most useful: Credenza now supports Outlook 2010. A web documents feature has been added, so that team members can share documents via the internet. Credenza now offers a backup utility, with an automatic backup option, for each time that Outlook is restarted. An accounting template for PCLaw is now available.
Of course, following such an aggressive general update, coupled with the addition of the powerful new team functionality, it’s probably a safe bet that the rock bottom pricing for Credenza is going to change a little bit, too, right? Right. But, it’s not so bad. And, this all really comes down to the teams feature again, which acts now as the fulcrum point between the new and the old Credenza, between the original Credenza, and the let’s-call-it-the-“enterprise-version” of Credenza, for lack of a better term. Single licenses for Credenza will remain priced at $9.95/month. The enterprising Credenza, basing collaboration and sharing on teams of finitely large numbers of people, will cost $19.95/user/month. Still reasonable, says I; but, an added cost, sure. The Credenza pricing schemata is laid out here.
. . .
For my original general review of Credenza, see here.
. . .
Liner Notes
I was all set to write a Liner Notes on one of my favorite bands, a profile, as it were, one of which I have not done for quite some time. But, damned if last night’s episode of “Community” on NBC didn’t steal my thunder! (GREAT show, by the way, obviously.) Now, because I’ll look like a poser, I can’t talk about . . . Oh, never mind.
But, I did find a theme in today’s post: Upgrades. So, I’ll name a musician, or band, and a career move they made, and I’ll say whether I think it’s an upgrade, or a downgrade, or a push. This ought to be fun. Let’s call this . . .
(drumroll please)
“The David Caruso Files”
Denny Laine
The Moody Blues → Wings = Upgrade
I think Wings is probably a better band, but it’s closer than you might think. What makes this a slam dunk is that The Moody Blues did not really become The Moody Blues until after Denny Laine left, and they changed their sound.
Richie Furay
Buffalo Springfield → Poco = Downgrade
The Buffalo Springfield was just a legendary band, even though they’re now mostly known for one song. Poco was one of the founding bands of country-rock; but, their contribution does not overwhelm Springfield’s, Poco being, essentially, Buffalo Springfield without its chief architects: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.
Steve Winwood
The Spencer Davis Group → Traffic = Upgrade
The Spencer Davis Group had some nice, good-timey pop hits, with some underlying complexity; but, Steve Winwood couldn’t even drive a car when he joined the band. He matured musically with Traffic, a seminal group. (Nobody ripped up the Hammond B3 like Steve Winwood). Oh, yeah, and he was also in supergroup Blind Faith, and had a wildly successful solo career.
Genesis
Peter Gabriel → Phil Collins = Push
This is a tough one. When Genesis brought Phil Collins out from behind the drum kit, to take up the mantle of lead singer, following Peter Gabriel‘s departure from the group, they certainly became less creative, and slid further down, with each succeeding album, the slide of popcrafty songsmithing. But, I like the height of Phil Collins-Genesis better than the height of Peter Gabriel-Genesis, even though the latter Genesis is deducted points for that loss of creativity. Phil Collins, though, is one of the illest drummers ever. (Let’s not talk about post-Phil Collins' Genesis.)
(The Jared Correia Listening Project is on “G”, for Gensis . . . perhaps the “genesis” of this post.)
AC/DC
Bon Scott → Brian Johnson = Downgrade
This is sort of unfair, because Bon Scott died, and did not leave the group of his own accord. However, this is not a sympathy vote. The Bon Scott-led AC/DC had a rawer sound, bordering on the crazy: it was like the pitch of his voice could have up and shanked somebody at any moment. And, even though Brian Johnson is aight, and even though he sang lead on AC/DC’s most famous album, “Back in Black” (a tribute to Scott, by the way, released only five months after his death), my proverbial tip of the cap goes to the progenitor.
As I was working on finalizing a review of Credenza for the ABA’s GP|Solo magazine (which review will be released in the December issue, so watch out for that), I received word, which I had known would be coming, that Credenza had dropped a major product upgrade, between the time that I had drafted my article and the time that I would be revising it. With a quick turnaround time on final edits for the article, I could only change information that had become outdated per the product upgrades that Credenza had made; this meant that I was not able to discuss, at any great length, the value of some of the new features. So, I’d like to take the opportunity, now, to address those features, as well as some other primary changes, which are more superficially covered in my article; obviously, I’ve chosen the ol’ LOMAP Blog for my board of sounding.
. . .
Credenza has provided this link, where it has collected a list of recent program changes. The listing is well-done, with a pithy description of the each change, plus a screenshot, so you can see just what’ll happen within your system. (I love screenshots.) We’ll get back to this listing of late September-early October changes in a moment.
The most significant improvement to Credenza has its own page. One of the original drawbacks to Credenza (Credenza 1.0, as it were, now) was that, although there were collaboration tools, those tools could only be leveraged by workgroups of up to three. And, that was a fairly significant issue, for example, when you’re talking about a solo attorney with a secretary and paralegal . . . well, that’s really all you were talking about, because the Credenza share would have been maxed out by that small office. Now, however, Credenza offers team functionality. The essence of this change is that user limits are gone. Now, a Credenza team, or teams, can consist of any number of persons. Credenza, then, is no longer hamstrung as a solution for only the small law office; Credenza, with teams, can now be used in small firms, mid-sized firms and large firms. Team access can be further split into sub-groups, as teams may be gathered around specific client files, and client file sets. In addition to the, um . . . addition, of, more people, the Credenza team version allows for deeper flexibility, in how those persons are arrayed, as well as in how they access information, than the previous work group-based incarnation of the program did. One significant movement arising from the creation of teams centers around ease of access. Because behind the curtain synchronization occurs in the cloud, Credenza users may now access Credenza anywhere they have internet access; users are no longer required to get access to their office network, to get access to Credenza. Such a major upgrade, of course, means that nearly every feature of Credenza is touched by the implementation of the team functionality. A review of the Credenza features page, then, with an eye to the new team-specific functionality and its effect across the platform, is in order, not only for those familiar Credenza users, but also for those curious, especially those who were previously too big for the box.
But, there are other, not insignificant, changes to Credenza, as well. And, those are laid out at the aforementioned updates page. Certainly, you should review the full set of new upgrades at the updates page (it doesn’t take that long); but, I just wanted to highlight several of the new features that I found to be particularly impressive/that I think will be most useful: Credenza now supports Outlook 2010. A web documents feature has been added, so that team members can share documents via the internet. Credenza now offers a backup utility, with an automatic backup option, for each time that Outlook is restarted. An accounting template for PCLaw is now available.
Of course, following such an aggressive general update, coupled with the addition of the powerful new team functionality, it’s probably a safe bet that the rock bottom pricing for Credenza is going to change a little bit, too, right? Right. But, it’s not so bad. And, this all really comes down to the teams feature again, which acts now as the fulcrum point between the new and the old Credenza, between the original Credenza, and the let’s-call-it-the-“enterprise-version” of Credenza, for lack of a better term. Single licenses for Credenza will remain priced at $9.95/month. The enterprising Credenza, basing collaboration and sharing on teams of finitely large numbers of people, will cost $19.95/user/month. Still reasonable, says I; but, an added cost, sure. The Credenza pricing schemata is laid out here.
. . .
For my original general review of Credenza, see here.
. . .
Liner Notes
I was all set to write a Liner Notes on one of my favorite bands, a profile, as it were, one of which I have not done for quite some time. But, damned if last night’s episode of “Community” on NBC didn’t steal my thunder! (GREAT show, by the way, obviously.) Now, because I’ll look like a poser, I can’t talk about . . . Oh, never mind.
But, I did find a theme in today’s post: Upgrades. So, I’ll name a musician, or band, and a career move they made, and I’ll say whether I think it’s an upgrade, or a downgrade, or a push. This ought to be fun. Let’s call this . . .
(drumroll please)
“The David Caruso Files”
Denny Laine
The Moody Blues → Wings = Upgrade
I think Wings is probably a better band, but it’s closer than you might think. What makes this a slam dunk is that The Moody Blues did not really become The Moody Blues until after Denny Laine left, and they changed their sound.
Richie Furay
Buffalo Springfield → Poco = Downgrade
The Buffalo Springfield was just a legendary band, even though they’re now mostly known for one song. Poco was one of the founding bands of country-rock; but, their contribution does not overwhelm Springfield’s, Poco being, essentially, Buffalo Springfield without its chief architects: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.
Steve Winwood
The Spencer Davis Group → Traffic = Upgrade
The Spencer Davis Group had some nice, good-timey pop hits, with some underlying complexity; but, Steve Winwood couldn’t even drive a car when he joined the band. He matured musically with Traffic, a seminal group. (Nobody ripped up the Hammond B3 like Steve Winwood). Oh, yeah, and he was also in supergroup Blind Faith, and had a wildly successful solo career.
Genesis
Peter Gabriel → Phil Collins = Push
This is a tough one. When Genesis brought Phil Collins out from behind the drum kit, to take up the mantle of lead singer, following Peter Gabriel‘s departure from the group, they certainly became less creative, and slid further down, with each succeeding album, the slide of popcrafty songsmithing. But, I like the height of Phil Collins-Genesis better than the height of Peter Gabriel-Genesis, even though the latter Genesis is deducted points for that loss of creativity. Phil Collins, though, is one of the illest drummers ever. (Let’s not talk about post-Phil Collins' Genesis.)
(The Jared Correia Listening Project is on “G”, for Gensis . . . perhaps the “genesis” of this post.)
AC/DC
Bon Scott → Brian Johnson = Downgrade
This is sort of unfair, because Bon Scott died, and did not leave the group of his own accord. However, this is not a sympathy vote. The Bon Scott-led AC/DC had a rawer sound, bordering on the crazy: it was like the pitch of his voice could have up and shanked somebody at any moment. And, even though Brian Johnson is aight, and even though he sang lead on AC/DC’s most famous album, “Back in Black” (a tribute to Scott, by the way, released only five months after his death), my proverbial tip of the cap goes to the progenitor.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Virtual So: Online Practice Primers
If you liked Stephanie Kimbro’s series of blog posts on the virtual practice of law previously gracing our LOMAP Blog (you can find part 1, part 2 and part 3 linked out from here), you’re gonna love her book.
Stephanie’s book, published by the ABA, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”, represents a handbook for the establishment of a virtual law office for the interested attorney. If you want to try some before you buy some, as it were, you can preview the table of contents and chapter 1--note the the use of cool, futuristic font, showing definitively that this is a book about the future not to be trifled with. (Kurt Vonnegut would be so proud.) (Full Disclosure: Alright, I haven’t read the book yet: it’s only available for pre-order, and we haven't gotten our copy yet; but, I will, and we will. Or, at least, I’ll have someone else read it for me. Rachel? But, yeah, I’m still vouching for it: you read Stephanie’s blog posts here, you know she’s good and thorough, and she knows what she’s talking about.)
But, if you’re like, “Man, I can’t wait for a book, I wish somebody would just come to Massachusetts to tell me about this stuff”, well, I guess you’re out of luck.
Just kidding. You’re, in fact, in luck. On November 4 from 4 pm to 7 pm, at the Massachusetts Bar Association, and online (to be archived, as well), through the MBA’s On Demand platform, Stephanie will be appearing via video feed (that’s cool, right; I mean, it’s at least appropriate) to discuss what a virtual law office is, and how to market same, as well as some of the ethics issues surrounding same. Yours truly to moderate. (That’s right, you can see me! If you’re trying to get a visual, I kind of look like a hotter version of a cross between George Clooney and Sasquatch. I mean, What more do you need for an inducement?) You can register for the program here.
And, as if that were not enough, just to whet your appetite, a veritable orderv, as it were (wait, Where’s my French spellcheck?--oh, there it is: hors d’oeuvre), I will host one of the MBA’s inaugural lunchtime legal chats, covering virtual practice options short of the full-scale virtual law office that Stephanie will address most fully. You can register for my program here. (Please Note: This program is only available via webcast; but, you will have the opportunity to, and it will be encouraged that you do, ask questions and engage the suave presenter.) Come by and chat, won’t you? We’ll talk about collaboration and communication, records management and records protection, and lots of other fun stuff along the way.
Looks like we’re all moving from caveperson lawyers to robot lawyers. Well, oil me up, as I ponder wherefore the sun is eating the moon?
Stephanie’s book, published by the ABA, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”, represents a handbook for the establishment of a virtual law office for the interested attorney. If you want to try some before you buy some, as it were, you can preview the table of contents and chapter 1--note the the use of cool, futuristic font, showing definitively that this is a book about the future not to be trifled with. (Kurt Vonnegut would be so proud.) (Full Disclosure: Alright, I haven’t read the book yet: it’s only available for pre-order, and we haven't gotten our copy yet; but, I will, and we will. Or, at least, I’ll have someone else read it for me. Rachel? But, yeah, I’m still vouching for it: you read Stephanie’s blog posts here, you know she’s good and thorough, and she knows what she’s talking about.)
But, if you’re like, “Man, I can’t wait for a book, I wish somebody would just come to Massachusetts to tell me about this stuff”, well, I guess you’re out of luck.
Just kidding. You’re, in fact, in luck. On November 4 from 4 pm to 7 pm, at the Massachusetts Bar Association, and online (to be archived, as well), through the MBA’s On Demand platform, Stephanie will be appearing via video feed (that’s cool, right; I mean, it’s at least appropriate) to discuss what a virtual law office is, and how to market same, as well as some of the ethics issues surrounding same. Yours truly to moderate. (That’s right, you can see me! If you’re trying to get a visual, I kind of look like a hotter version of a cross between George Clooney and Sasquatch. I mean, What more do you need for an inducement?) You can register for the program here.
And, as if that were not enough, just to whet your appetite, a veritable orderv, as it were (wait, Where’s my French spellcheck?--oh, there it is: hors d’oeuvre), I will host one of the MBA’s inaugural lunchtime legal chats, covering virtual practice options short of the full-scale virtual law office that Stephanie will address most fully. You can register for my program here. (Please Note: This program is only available via webcast; but, you will have the opportunity to, and it will be encouraged that you do, ask questions and engage the suave presenter.) Come by and chat, won’t you? We’ll talk about collaboration and communication, records management and records protection, and lots of other fun stuff along the way.
Looks like we’re all moving from caveperson lawyers to robot lawyers. Well, oil me up, as I ponder wherefore the sun is eating the moon?
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