Summer is out, and fall is in! You know what that means, Halloween is just around the corner.
Halloween is an interesting day that brings back childlike memories for plenty of you and your family, not to mention for your employees, associates and co-workers. Will you use this coming holiday to not only bond with friends and family, but also those that you work with? Or will you choose to actively ignore it? Already planned out the work day activities? Wondering just what your choice says about you?
Research shows us that looking at your behavior patterns for handling holidays, which can include uncertainty and increased stress, can speak volumes to your personality in the workplace. If you haven’t yet dedicated the time to better understanding your workplace behavior patterns and those around you, now is the time to do so before the holidays are in full swing. Creating a thriving workplace culture isn’t just an idea for this final quarter of the year, it’s a must when it comes to building the effective and productive team you need for 2017.
What can you do right now? Choose an activity outside of work to get involved in. Doing activities outside of work is a great way to learn more about the people you spend 40 hours a week with, and what better opportunity is there than Halloween?
Here are 3 ways to celebrate this coming holiday:
1. Carve pumpkins together. This is a fun and creative activity to do outside of the work place. If you don’t know your co-workers very well this is a friendly way to get to know each other without the awkward silence. Maybe even after carving the pumpkins you could put on a contest, share it on your social media to connect with your community and the winner could get a prize!
2. If you and your co-workers have kids, trick or treating is another option for this Halloween. Take the kids through the neighborhood and grow as friends! And who is to say that trick or treating is just for kids? You can put on your costumes and go trick or treating yourselves!
3. If you all have separate plans on this Halloween, then bring the celebrations to your office. You can decorate your office space and even dress up. Have a costume contest, a candy swap, or a Halloween lunch…there are plenty of ways to be creative this Halloween!
While this is about getting to know who you work with inside and outside of the office it is also about breaking down barriers and creating a venue for meaningful communication. Find opportunities, even past this coming Halloween, to get to know your co-workers. It will make your work experience much more enjoyable and enable you to grow as a person!
Wait a minute, did you say you can’t get anything done? Anyone who is successful in business today knows that one of the ways to stay successful in business is to get the work done. But what strategies are you utilizing in your practice to make sure it happens consistently?
It is a simple concept – someone hired you to do the work and you get that work done. Unfortunately, our daily lives are full of interruptions and having an afternoon to get work done without interruptions (let alone 30 minutes) is almost unheard of. The problem is distractions pile up and before you know it you can find yourself still at the office burning the midnight oil, just to keep pace.
In many ways, technology makes it completely impossible to avoid interruption. At any given moment, your cell phone, your office phone, your email, your text, your social media and a whole host of other things could interrupt you while you were in the middle of an important project.
Unfortunately, even minor distractions have catastrophic impacts on all of our productivity.
You need to learn to master your technology to create silence in the world around you. There specific, actionable strategies you can employ to help you succeed. You need to activate the technology you use to assist you in getting work done, rather than thwart you. When you take this proactive action, you will see an increase in your productivity and efficiency together with a reduction in mistakes.
Here are our top 5 best practice strategies for creating silence in your world so you can get things done:
1. Make a list of all your distractions.
What stops you from getting work done? While this is a loaded question, here we are talking specifically about your technology. Is it your phone ringing? Your smartphone notifications? Your news updates? Your obsessive need to check email? Spend at least a week observing your daily distractions and document them so you can know how to proactively limit then going forward.
2. Determine what you need.
Now that you know what is distracting you each day, you can make a list of the technology that creates this distraction. Once you’ve made this list we will move to training your device.
3. Train your device.
In many ways, the specific device you use will dictate how you create silence. Like it or not our strategies can be dependent on the tech you own right now. Specifically, we are looking at setting up do-not-disturb features. This may be silent mode, do-not-disturb, messenger assistant, or any one of countless others. While both the iPhone and the Android platform have preset to do-not-disturb feature built in, there are additional apps you can add to help you manage your technology. As stated in Step Two, the first step is knowing where you need to create your silence. The second step is determining what functionalities exist on each of the devices you use and, finally, setting them up to create the environment you want.
4. Allow for emergencies.
The people you care about in your life (and the court and the bar) still need to be able to reach you in an emergency. Within your device control features create a circle or group of individuals and contract information that can still reach you when you have the do-not-disturb settings on.
5. Fine tune and enhance your strategy.
It would be counterproductive to tell you that this is a one-time solution. Every time there is a new update to your software, you add a device to your ecosystem or you change the way you do things, this process will need to adapt and change. Schedule monthly check-ins on your calendar now to make sure your technology continues to stay managed and doing what you need it to.
Remember, at the end of the day, you hold the keys to your own success. If you need a little help starting your journey to greatness and creating your strategies for implementation, let us know – we’d love to talk about it. Contact us on our website or at yourteam@practice42.com or by phone at 850-933-5072, and we will set up a complimentary 30 minute brainstorming session.
I was meeting with one of my good friends (and really respected colleagues) today and we were talking about a mistake made by a team member. A gut-wrenching, totally preventable, how-could-you-do-this-to-me-unless-you-really-do-want-to-sink-my-practice type of mistake. We talked about it, although there was nothing to be done. My colleague had already gone above and beyond and told the client the ultimate – I will fix it myself.
Our call was about another matter, but this filtered in because it permeated the entire day for her and in truth, there was nothing to discuss because she did exactly what she should have done in this situation. She saw the live grenade, dove on it, and saved the client (and the situation) for the firm and the team and herself. Because in truth, that’s what we do for our firms. There are times (and there will be times) when they require the ultimate sacrifice.
But what it meant in reality was working late tonight, after already 14 hours in, to fix someone else’s problem.
It got me reflecting because this is the fourth call I am having JUST LIKE THIS – JUST THIS WEEK WITH A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FIRM. A call where we spend the majority of an hour talking about how an employee has let you down in some capacity again, is not living up to his or her true potential or is outright just not getting the job done. To quote a gal pal of mine here in the deep south, “Well, honey, there isn’t anything to be done because she’s committed to permanently hiding her true potential.”
And it galls me.
You deserve better. Your business deserves better. We all deserve better. So I thought I would share with you my three key attributes I think define success when it comes to what I want from a team member.
Key Attribute 1 – Be Obsessive
I want you to vomit at work. I want you to be so invested in your delivery, in your job, in your work product, in what drives you that you become obsessive. I want you to be so involved that you puke when things go sideways or when you make a simple mistake. I’ll supply the bathroom; you supply the drive. But I want you to own your work at this level and I want you to care.
Key Attribute 2 – Find Yourself
I want you to desire your professional self. I am all about your development. I don’t care if I hire you as an associate, ask you what you want to do (thinking it’s to practice law or work at practice42) and we learn together you are God’s gift to marketing or a skydiver or a motivational speaker or a domestic facilitator. Life’s too short. Figure it out and be yourself – there’s nothing better.
Key Attribute 3 – Be Authentic
Tell me what you want. But more than that – tell yourself.
If you want to be the best juggler in the traveling circus – by all means – go for it! But tell me. Tell me if it’s your goal to join circus school in 6 months, start a part-time internship in 1 year and get on the road in 24 months. At least then we can plan. You might be surprised to find I not only support you, but I’ll help you get there.
I get you’re supporting my dream right now, and I want you to find yours.
But for those of you who are here and feel that supporting my dream could become yours, or at least a shared vision, don’t hold back. And don’t go halve-sees. Like most of my clients and friends, we’ve seen the amazing things that happen when you believe in someone else and something bigger than ourselves and we want you to have that experience.
So when I say I want you to puke at work, it’s because I want you to believe in something so strongly that you want it to succeed with every fiber of your being.
So when something goes sideways you feel it. Because it hurts.
Because you want to see the success of what can be. And you know it’s there. And if my firm or my company isn’t for you, I want you to tell me what you want. I want to know I should support you on your journey. And for you to have the courage to tell me at the end of the day to find someone else.
To quote my favorite decal on the wall at the yoga studio – Will it be easy? Nope.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Remember, at the end of the day, you hold the keys to your own success.
The truth is all of us can be daunted by what we don’t know, and then there’s the lurking complication that we don’t know what we don’t know. This blog is devoted to getting you some of the information you need to make sure your marketing is on the right track.
It also may lead to another question – just what is your marketing supposed to do? That’s a larger topic for another time but (in short) there are two things it needs to be doing for you at a minimum each week: clearly delivering your message and raising your profile with your target audiences. We’re talking about print, digital and verbal marketing here.
Anyone who reads our #p42funfactsfriday feed knows we’re Stars Wars nerds here. So when I was putting together the CLE on the dangers of marketing content, it seemed to be a very apt title. After all, there is a very real, very dark side to marketing content.
Here are the top 3 attacks to be on guard against:
1. When it is unoriginal.
The reality is most of us do not have time to plan, develop and distribute original marketing content each month, let alone each day. We also do not have it in our budgets to hire someone to be on our staff to do it for us. As a result, the first thing to go by the wayside when we get busy and super-stressed is our marketing efforts (even when it was those efforts that directly led to the “too busy” problem).
The majority of us fall somewhere in between sporadic marketing efforts and outsourcing the responsibility. Let’s talk about the latter. Unfortunately, most of the major solutions out there are not giving you what you need in today’s marketplace because they’re not developing custom content just for you or using a branded message. In the best case scenario, this type of marketing content will hopefully crossover with your message 30% of the time. In the worst case scenario (that we see all too frequently), your content is shared with the other couple hundred or so subscribers with a message directing the reader somewhere else away from your website and contact information.
2. When it is just wrong.
Most of us don’t have time to stay up-to-date on every social platform launched (or redesigned), search engine functionality and/or business directory out there. Keeping this contact information continuous and consistent, however, is at the very heart of brand management and vitally important to your success.
As ridiculous as it may sound – how your business information is listed makes a huge impact on your marketing efforts. For example, if you own an LLC, the question becomes is it really “LLC” or “L. L. C.” or “L.L.C.”? The slightest bit of inaccuracy can have a devastating impact on whether or not a search engine finds you. What’s the impact? If the search engine can’t find you, your potential clients can’t find you.
3. When you don’t really own it.
Let’s say you get the first two attacks handled. Then, at some point in the future, you decide not to move forward. Before you say anything, you need to re-read (or read) the fine print of your contract.
In over 2/3 of all standard contracts out there for marketing services, you do not really own “your content” or “your momentum” at the end of your contract. Instead, the company owns it and will decide the next steps. You need to have a backup plan in place before you start asking questions or considering termination. Questions like:
When it comes to your marketing content, reading about the dark side can be hard. It can be even harder to have a conversation about it but you need to so you know where you stand. And, if it is not where you want to be, you need to plan your next steps.
Let us know if you want to talk about where your marketing contracts stand. If you want more on this topic specifically, let me know. Content ownership (and the disturbing lack of custom content for most business professionals) is a topic near and dear to my heart.
Each month we get asked (a lot) about what to talk about with your audience in your monthly marketing content. We thought it would be helpful to share with you where we start each month and devote a new newsletter focus each month dedicated to content rich topics you can use for your own business (just click here if you want to sign up for our newsletter 1Weekly).
We are big fans of coming up with your own ideas (see #p42funfactsfriday) but we know not all of us have the time (or desire) to create original content. While we know the content you develop can depend on your audience, we follow four quick rules for finding and utilizing attention catching content no matter what your industry.
1. National Holidays and Events.
This is an easy content grab for both sharing/recognizing important life events and creating your own content. It is also evergreen, refreshing each day or month.
2. Popular Industry Hashtags.
This is a great way to join a conversation that you may not be a part of yet or to gain inspiration for what others are talking about. Make sure you balance the hashtags you use with a tie into your own website. (Don’t forget to take a minute to find out what those hashtags mean too).
3. Share Location.
Letting people know where you are is a great way to get fresh new content (demonstrating you are participating in social media) while engaging with your audience. Think where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re with – if you’re on Instagram share a picture.
4. Food!
As in recipes, not pictures of food – although we are guilty of that sometimes. The reaction to a recipe post can and will generate more interaction than you’re expecting. Keep it balanced, unless you’re a foodie, restaurant or food/beverage industry insider.
What will you do in your business? Reach out and let us know or tag us in your upcoming posts. We look forward to hearing from you!
Recent studies continue to show the top two most trusted digital referral sources for your business are friends and family. The research revealed makes sense. There are two powerful psychological associations in using someone recommended to you by these two groups. First, social acceptance – sharing in the positive experience your peer group is benefiting from right now. Second, affirmative association by individuals who share your standards. For example, if your mom and best friend are satisfied with a services provider chances are you will be too and you will have something to share together.
Does your marketing plan include reaching these individuals? How will make the interaction meaningful? What is your plan and within it what are your objectives and tactics to reach success? Your relationship marketing plan needs to be consistent and easy for you to implement in your business.
Here are practice42’s 3 simple strategies for engaging friends and family:
1. Interact with past clients.
These are satisfied people who benefited from your services, paid for them and are perfect candidates to be walking endorsements for you. They can’t do this, however, without your direction. Your relationship marketing campaign needs to create multiple ways – both digital and personal – to connect with them to generate referrals.
2. Make relationship marketing part of your strategic campaign.
Relationships generate clients but relationships don’t start and stop with one or two meetings. Your strategic campaign should be designed for multiple, consistent interactions across multiple platforms. In today’s marketing landscape you will not reach everyone the same way. Take the time to invest in others and your practice by building relationships in your digital and local community.
3. Give them something to share.
No one can talk about you all the time if you don’t share frequent materials with them. Your campaign should be built with topics to discuss and share. Easy starters are conversation topics like: life moments, upcoming events, teaching new concepts, sharing important updates. Let them be proud of you and informed and watch the word spread.
The easiest way to do all three of these things? Start a digital relationship marketing campaign that’s lets you build and maintain momentum. Knowing that you want to positively impact friends and family is only the first step in the right direction, now you need to put the plan in place to make it happen.
Not sure where to start? We would love to share ideas with you. These are important considerations for you to define before you engage in any marketing campaign where you will be dedicating your time and money to generate new clients.
Did any of your employees not come in for work on Monday, February 29th, because leap year added an extra day to the year? Does your employee handbook mention Leap Year explicitly? Does it outline what is expected on the 366th day of the year? Or did your employees simply plan on being at work like any other normal (365 day of the year) Monday?
While I would have anticipated the latter, I was surprised to find a number of no-shows in the workplace this Leap Year Day. In interviewing different businesses I work with, the rough number was two out of five employees chose not to come in on Leap Year Day. I can’t assign any particular features to the issue such as specific ages, genders, or education levels yet, but there were numerous reasons given – from I didn’t know if I’d be paid for my time to how was I to know what to do to it was never addressed in the Employee Handbook – and a surprising lack of apologies.
After my Leap Year Day experiences at the start of this week, I have three take-aways. My first is immediately actionable. Go right now and update your employee manual to very specifically mention a Leap Day policy. You may want to go the extra mile and add in other possible day-off warranting holidays such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Boss’s Day. My second take-away is this issue could easily have been avoided with a conversation on both sides of the management team. It could be as simple as a paid time off policy update at the start or close of the calendar year. If you’re refreshing your policy manual, why not bring this up too?
My third take-away focuses on creating an environment of trust and respect in the work place. Both of these features need to be present in the behavior of each member on your team. You need to have a balanced approach to promoting employee self-worth and value together with reaching your business and profitability goals. In a recent presentation I gave on overcoming multi-generational work force challenges, I shared with the audience that the majority of the younger generation work force is actively looking for worth-oriented recognition, streamlined advancement, and a culture focused on team building, all focuses that were not required (and demanded) in the work place by previous generations. This dramatic shift in work force culture is resulting in trust issues on all sides and, if left unaddressed, will easily results in unpredicted, damaging moves – like an entire team not arriving for work on a busy Monday morning.
Most attorneys we talk to spend an average of 90 minutes per legal blog post. First, let us say there is nothing wrong with this strategy. Second, we encourage well-researched, in-depth blogs. The problem is, however, that this amount of time spent on a law firm blog post significantly limits the amount of content the firm can publish in a month, let alone a week.
Over the last year, we’ve been working with some of our favorite lawyers to develop a law blog style that both fits their marketing needs and works for them. Blogs are a great platform to get the law firm's message out there and we guarantee that you can find the time to write them over the lunch hour.
Let us share with you Practice42’s 9 Minute Guide to Writing Great Blogs.
Minute 1
Brainstorm as many topics as possible. Record them so you have all your terrific ideas on file.
Minute 2
Pick one topic. For that topic only, develop three bullet points.
Minutes 3 – 5
Write two sentences per bullet point, spend one minute per bullet point.
Minute 6
Give each bullet point a one sentence call to action. (Think: What do you want your reader to do?)
Minute 7
Read your law blog backward to proof it.
Minute 8
Make corrections and format.
Minute 9
Create a title and post your custom blog.
Try this out this week and let us know how it goes. Need help getting started or simply don’t have time? Let us know – we can help.
Happy writing!
Your website needs to be mobile-friendly.
A mobile-friendly website is responsive. This means your website content, structure and brand adapt seamlessly to the mobile platform your audience is searching for you on. Right now, mobile searches account for more than half of all Google searches. Think of your clients asking legal questions on their smart phone or tablet, have you positioned yourself to be able to answer them quickly and effectively?
Your website needs to have excellent mobile responsiveness or your visitors (your future clients) are going to leave. They’re not going to do what you want them to do, which is call you, fill out your contact form, or schedule an appointment. What they are doing is leaving your website. And, if that’s not the worst thing that could happen, Google’s ranking algorithms penalize you if your website is not optimized for use on a smartphone. If you’ve been wondering why you no longer show up on the first page of search engine searches in your area that is going to be one of the reasons.
An ever increasing number of people search for answers to their questions on the internet via mobile technology today. You need to be out in front answering those questions. To do so your website design needs to convert to a mobile format that best meets the needs of your audience. It needs to include calls to action that motivate your reader to act. Offer a free consultation? It should be there. Available for a call 24/7/365? It should be there. Have a must-read, free monthly newsletter? It should be there.
Think of one (or three or five) competitors in your area. Look at his or her website on your smartphone. Is it mobile friendly? Is it engaging? Is it easy to read and find answers? If you’re answering yes to any of these, there’s a strong possibility that your competition is engaging more clients than you are resulting from web searches. Chances are pretty good they’re meeting the clients who left your antiquated site. In a Google research report, 61% of users said that if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they’d quickly move on to another site.
I know you’re thinking – my website is not antiquated. It was built only three years ago! I spent good money on this! We hear this from a lot of our clients. The simple fact is that search engines, like Google, are rapidly changing to meet the needs of their consumers and changing technology. We have to stay abreast of these changes, determine what matters with each one, and adapt our course of action to avoid being left behind.
Why does it matter?
Let me give you an example. Imagine your kid or your spouse or your best friend asked you a really important question. One it would be easy for you to immediately answer.
Instead of answering it immediately, you back up about 100 yards away from them and shout your answer back. Even better, you don’t speak. Instead, you write your answer with white chalk on a dark piece of poster board and hold it up. Or maybe don’t even write your answer, just list a bunch of tiny topics they could choose from to select an answer.
Think they’re feeling irritated yet?
How do you think the visitors to your website feel when they’re trying to watch your tiny videos or scroll through your shrunken text to find the answer they desperately need? Ever tried to read website text in a four point font? No, of course you didn’t. You left the website and went somewhere else to find the same answer. Maybe even a second (or third or fourth) rate answer but you used it anyway because it was readily available and easy to read.
Web design matters more than ever before. You need to be using a web design that meets the needs of your clients and showcases you as the thought-leader you are.
Want to learn more about mobile-friendly web design and other cutting-edge tech topics? Join us for our free discussion of Marketing Today on Thursday, February 25, 2015, at 3:00 pm (ET) / 12 pm (PT). Can’t make it? Sign up for our weekly newsletter where we’ll be recapping the highlights from the live event.
When I start to work with a new marketing client, I hope I’m put on hold.
I hope I’m put on hold because in those few minutes of wait time I learn a lot about your marketing development, your brand, your savvy, and goals. When we are creating the right marketing campaign for you, every action you take needs to be consistently building value and designed to convert potentials into clients. Hold music is a great example of an often overlooked tool in that arsenal.
Law practice on hold music needs to be a branded, customized message. This design is an important call to action within your marketing campaign. I consider myself a hold music connoisseur. I like well-paced, educational content in place of actual on hold music. It’s a throwback to when I was practicing and concerned about leaving free advertising space on the table without a scripted hold message. Your hold music needs to engage your listeners so they want to learn more about you. This is a place to share your enthusiasm for your practice, right alongside clear motivating calls to action.
Not sure where to start? Here are the top seven on my list for creating great hold messages that generate clients.
The right hold music can positively impact your law practice success. Let us know what your great ideas are or if you need help developing the right message for you.
