HOW LAWYERS USE LINKEDIN - 7 THINGS EVERY ATTORNEY SHOULD KNOW ABOUT #LINKEDIN

Successful attorneys spend a great deal of time networking to generate new clients, cases, and referrals. There is no better networking tool online today to support these efforts than LinkedIn. Some attorneys today are literally building their entire practices through the heavy use of LinkedIn while many others continue to struggle in fully understanding the potential value provided by LinkedIn in helping to support their legal practice. The following are seven of the most important aspects of LinkedIn that every attorney should know…

LinkedIn is Now Your Online Resume and CV

LinkedIn is now looked at as one of the most trusted sources for professional and company information online.  Gone are the days when a CV request is sent. Nobody now wants to make this request and wait for the response when all they typically need is now online and real-time with LinkedIn.  Your LinkedIn profile is now your resume and CV and it is now online – so make it work for you!

HELPFUL TIPS AND HINTS:

• Make sure you create and fully update your LinkedIn profile. Add ALL of the pertinent information you would normally include in a CV – the more detail the better. Also make sure to regularly update your information and include important links to other online properties such as websites, blogs, etc.

Most attorneys are on LinkedIn

According to recent studies, upwards of 95% of ABA members currently have LinkedIn accounts. Moreover, roughly 770,000 members of the legal community are also on LinkedIn. The bottom line is that LinkedIn is the most widely-adopted social media / online networking site for the legal industry, period. Marketing 101: Fish were the fish are. If you are not on LinkedIn now, you are simply not keeping up with the legal industry.  

LinkedIn Is the Most Effect ATTORNEY Business Card Rolodex

Some of the most effective networking attorneys have historically maintained a voluminous rolodex of business cards. With LinkedIn, those days are gone – and the trees are now celebrating. The problems that plagued business cards in the past have now been largely solved by LinkedIn – namely; how do you best manage and utilize your contact data AFTER you receive the business card? Moreover, with all of the other means of collecting contact information (Outlook, Gmail, etc.), how can you manage them all together? Again, LinkedIn is now the answer…

HELPFUL TIPS AND HINTS:

• You can import any of all of your contacts from Outlook and Gmail into LinkedIn and make connections to them from LinkedIn.  Save the time and manage them from one location moving forward – it gives you far more options and capabilities.
• You can now easily find and create connections to your law school and/or graduating class alumni in LinkedIn. You can also build your connections by connecting with past clients. Why let past relationships fade away when you can utilize them to your advantage moving forward. Need to build up your referral bases? Why not start with people you already have various types of connections to already?  Through the “advanced” search feature, you can select contacts from graduating schools and classes that you may have lost touch with over the years. Connect and see what happens to your referral network…
• When making LinkedIn connection requests make sure to personalize your messages and try not to use the default wording instead. The more personal, connecting and compelling the message, the better the chance you will have in getting your connection request accepted.
• Include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your email signature, business cards and online profiles. Use phone number test: anywhere that you feel compelling to promote a phone number should also include your LinkedIn profile link.
• Download “cardmunch” to your smart phone and use it to scan every business card you receive. Cardmuch fully integrates to your LinkedIn account and allows you to scan and connect with other people within a matter of seconds. Cardmunch is the most effective app for attorney networking on the market today.  The next time somebody hands you a card, take out your smart phone, take a picture of it using cardmunch and hand it right back to them…see what kind of initial reaction you receive.  Then tell them that they will receive a connection request from you shortly in LinkedIn and ask them to accept it. This is the future of networking and you will be potentially introducing them to it firsthand. What will that say about you? Think they will now remember you better?
• Build connections with “people with leverage.” Do you know other attorneys who seem to know everybody? How about people who are well known and respected in circles of people you want as clients? These are called people with leverage and chances are if they know everybody, they are connected with many of them now on LinkedIn. Take the time and effort to connect with them on LinkedIn and all of the sudden you will have access to all of their connections and moreover, they can see you are a part of that leverage person’s network – which potentially gives you added credibility.

LinkedIn Supports Frequency Marketing

Ever wonder what Coca Cola runs highly expensive ads during the Super Bowl? Every heard of Coca Cola before? Of course you have – we all have, many times.  There is an old saying in marketing that you should touch your prospects (in one form or another) at least 7-12 times a year for them to actively member you when they will need you. That is the basis for frequency marketing. This also applies to legal marketing as well.

Most attorneys rely on the majority of their business from referrals from other clients and attorneys. Since many of these referrals tend to happen infrequently with intervals ranging from weeks, months to even years, how are these people expected to actively member you when they will potentially need to send business your way? That is where LinkedIn can help…

HELPFUL TIPS AND HINTS:

• Provide news and/or links to your blog entries in your LinkedIn profile. Why? Because this will provide you with a means of actively staying in front of all of the people on LinkedIn you are connected with so when they see your posts on LinkedIn, they will more actively think of you. In the past, LinkedIn used to provide an App called BlogLink that allowed you to do this automatically. Today, it has become a manual process but should only take a minute to simply copy and paste from your blog into your profile updates stream.
• Join LinkedIn Groups – Alumni, practice area specific groups, target client profile organizations, etc. are all waiting for you to join them. This will allow you to collaborate, participate and help you build your awareness and network of contacts. Group associations will also help you in making connection requests through increased search options and mutual association.

LinkedIn Allows You to Build a Better Referral Network

Referrals are the lifeblood of most legal practices. A recent 2012 ABA study has shown that around 75% of corporate counsels regularly use LinkedIn to help them select third-party counsel. Why? Because it is the most effective way to find detailed information about other attorneys and connect to them. The same applies for your referral network.

LinkedIn provides robust “advanced” search capabilities that allows you to find and connect with other people and attorneys based on location, demographics, education, position, employer, past employers, keywords, title, experience, industries, groups they are associated with, etc. There is literally nobody you cannot potentially reach and connect with on LinkedIn and since roughly 95% of attorneys have LinkedIn profiles, you should be able to find most everybody you want when you are building your referral network.  The larger your number of connections, the easier it is to build on them so don’t delay and get start today.

HELPFUL TIPS AND HINTS:

• Write recommendations for other attorneys – it is easy and VERY effective. If you look at another attorney’s profile, you may or may not see recommendations from others. Ask yourself: what impression do these recommendations make over others who have none? Writing recommendations is also good karma: you should to give in order to receive. Make the effort to write solid and relevant recommendations for other attorneys and clients and watch what happens in return…

LINKEDIN IS THE TOP WEBSITE FOR PROFESSIONAL RECRUITERS

Gone are the days when job boards like Monster.com and others were the way for professionals to find and be found for jobs online. Most recruiters today want easy access to search for and find people based on their complete profile and job history. That is why good professional recruiters today start most of their job candidate searches on LinkedIn.  

LINKEDIN IS THE #1 SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC GENERATOR TO YOUR WEBSITE

Even though a broad-based social media strategy should be utilized by a law firm, not all social media vehicles produce the same results. According to the Q3 2013 Audience Insight Survey, LinkedIn drives fully 64% of website traffic from social media sources (In comparison - Twitter: 14%, Facebook: 17%).

Like it or not, most LinkedIn profiles and pages for attorneys and law firms are commonly in the top search results in Google. This means that referral clients and other attorneys are commonly seeing your LinkedIn information at the top of search results when looking for you and information about you.

HELPFUL TIPS AND HINTS:

• If you haven’t done so already, create a LinkedIn companypage for your law firm. These are related to but separate from your individual profile so make sure you have both. LinkedIn pages also DO NOT require that users have connected access to review them – unlike profiles. When properly optimized, they also tend to show up high in Google for law firm searches by name.
  
• If you have a website, blog and other social media, you should also provide links to them from your LinkedIn profiles and pages. This will both provide an easy access point to your other online properties but will also provide link value authority to them as well.

               

               

LINKEDIN CLE CREDITS / TRAINING

As you can see, LinkedIn provides attorneys with a combination of unprecedented capabilities to help grow their practices through increased awareness, branding, referral networking, and new client and case generation. If you would like to learn more about how lawyers use LinkedIn, you can inquire about our CLE program on Attorney LinkedIn Networking provided by Dustin Ruge.

More information:

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/dustinruge

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dustinruge/

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