In Part 1 of this series, we covered reasons why digital reputation is becoming increasingly important for attorney job seekers and I advocated the AIM Model for growing a targeted online reputation.  In Part 2 of this series, we discussed “assessment” strategies under the model and in Part 3 we discussed “influencing” your reputation under AIM.  Today, we talk about monitoring and maintaining the online reputation that you’ve worked so hard to establish.

Don’t Forget To Monitor & Maintain

If you do nothing else but read this series of posts, please pay attention to this next piece of advice.  Even if you do everything described in the series, please likewise pay heed.

Set up Google Alerts for your name!

Setting up these alerts allows you to receive email notifications advising if your name is referenced on the web in the future.  Personally, I have these set up for myself, my husband and my young daughter, as well as my employer and everybody else whose web fortunes can impact my personal reputation.

If anybody so much as whispers about you on the web, you want to know about it.  If something nice is being said, go say “thank you.”  If something less flattering is being said, take appropriate curative steps.

Set these alerts up for all possible variations of your name, including maiden names.  Have the alerts sent to an email address that you check regularly.

Besides setting up the alerts to monitor your name, there are also maintenance steps to implement in building your rep.  Calendar a quarterly reminder to tour your online digital assets to assess whether they still accurately reflect your marketing message and target audience, and make changes accordingly.

Good Luck & Get Started

Following the steps outlined in this series of blog posts will get you off to a great start in affirmatively building your digital reputation, and put you miles ahead of many of your fellow new lawyers.  There are big changes afoot in the legal industry and digital marketing savvy has never been more important.  Jump in now with both feet!

“See” you on the web!

To see Part 3 of this series, click this link

To see Part 2 of this series, click this link

To see Part 1 of this series, click this link

In Part 1 of this series, we covered reasons why digital reputation is becoming increasingly important for attorney job seekers and I advocated the AIM Model for growing a targeted online reputation.  In Part 2 of this series, we discussed “assessment” strategies under the model and today we discuss “influencing” your reputation under AIM.

Influencing Your Digital Reputation

You will never own your own digital reputation!  You can only influence it.

Read those last two sentences three more times.  They are that important.

What do I mean by “own” a reputation?  Just as with offline life, outsiders can come along and hurt (or help) your digital reputation.  A spiteful ex-girlfriend or any other random person can digitally post negative information about you (or somebody with a name like you) and it can turn up under a search for your name in the search engines.

So how do we control what we can control (aka “influence”)?  By acquiring as much digital real estate as possible where we can put up our desired (focused) message.

Each little acre of digital real estate you acquire on a different platform gives you the ability to snag one spot in the list of results that come up when somebody searches your name in the search engines (“Search Engine Results Pages” or “SERPs”).

To see an example of this, google my name “Tracy Thrower Conyers” and you’ll see my name in connection with a slew of different little digital “houses” – some that I control and many that I don’t.

What digital real estate do I recommend for lawyers just starting their professional careers?

At a minimum, I highly recommend that you register a .com domain name related to your professional marketing name.  If you do nothing else with this domain name other than register it, you’ll have at least locked it up for later expansion of your digital empire.  You should also set up an email address attached to this domain name for your professional marketing.

For tips and more information on choosing and registering domain names for your digital empire, and setting up email accounts branded to your domain names, see Domain Name Branding For Lawyers.

Next, set up a couple of profile pages on prominent social networking sites.  You don’t “own” this digital real estate (unlike having your own website where you “own” the site), but you do control the message you contribute.

For creating profiles that rank well in the SERPs, I recommend Google Profiles/Google Plus, LinkedIn and About.me.

As an aside, About.me, is one of my new favorites.  Not only is it a place where I can aggregate links to my other digital real estate, About.me also partners with a printing company called Moo. com.  With just a few clicks, you can get free business cards (you pay shipping) with your contact information and a printed QR Code so that smartphones with bar reader apps can read your code and take their owners directly to your About.me profile page with all that great information about you and links to your other digital assets.

And yes, new lawyer, you definitely need business cards as a job seeker.  Hand them out everywhere.

When setting up your profiles, make liberal use of your “keywords” discussed above.  Equally important, don’t add any information to your profiles that doesn’t support (or worse, contradicts) your concise (focused) marketing statement.

Let’s say, for example, that Jane Doe is a marathon runner.  Should she include that in her profiles?  If her target audience (the firms she wants to work for) can appreciate the discipline and dedication that go into marathon training, then she should add it.

On the other hand, if her target audience is more apt to interpret this activity as something that will prevent her from working 80 hours a week – and work weeks like that are prized by the firm – she better keep that activity to herself.  Analyze every piece of information you add to your profiles in a similar manner (i.e., with your target audience in mind).

Why do I recommend the particular profile sites above?  All of them rank well in the search engines and will help push your name to the top of the SERPs when somebody searches your name.  LinkedIn has the added importance of being the platform where most social recruiting takes place at this point in time.

If you want to put your digital reputation on steroids, I advise using the domain name you registered to create a social media resume.  For more information on building social media resumes for lawyers, see Digital Resumes For Lawyers.

What about all your hard work building and influencing your digital reputation after you land the job you’re seeking?  Your efforts now are a smart investment in your future.  Your keywords might change as you evolve your focus to demonstrating thought leadership and start marketing to potential clients, but the formula remains the same – laser focus on your name and mindfully chosen keywords for a well-defined audience.

Summarizing Influence

If you’ve followed my advice to this point, you’ve defined your digital reputation goals, you’ve assessed your “today” picture and you’ve started to influence your existing reputation.  It won’t take long before you can google your name and start to see the seeds of your chosen digital reputation taking root.  And because you’ve been so diligent in your use of keywords, you’ll see a consistent message presented.

As time goes by, you’ll want to add more and more digital content to the web aligned with your evolving marketing statement and audience.  You’ll start writing articles, blogging, micro-blogging, joining social conversations and otherwise developing your role as a thought leader in your niche.

This might sounds like a lot of work, but this is occurring over the course of your entire career.

Besides, it’s kind of fun to be master of your own message. 

Tomorrow, monitoring and maintaining the online reputation that you’ve worked so hard to establish.

To see Part 2 of this series, click this link

To see Part 1 of this series, click this link

In Part 1 of this series, we covered reasons why digital reputation is becoming increasingly important for attorney job seekers and I advocated the AIM Model for growing a targeted online reputation.  Today, we discuss “assessment” strategies under that model.

Assessing Your Digital Reputation

The first assessment step is defining your endgame.  Who is your audience and what do you want them to know?  In the case of junior attorneys looking for jobs, the audience is who you see yourself working for, whether that’s a small firm, large firm, in-house law department, non-profit entity, governmental agency or the like.

What do you want your audience to know?  You want them to know that you’re a new, ambitious, hardworking attorney with x, y and z special talents.  As you work to define your audience, what that audience is looking for (based on research, not wishful thinking), and what you offer that is attractive to your audience, you are developing your “marketing statement.”

The idea of “marketing” might be a foreign concept to junior lawyers, but trust me as a longtime attorney and legal recruiter when I tell you that marketing and mindful self-promotion are skills critical to your ultimate success as an attorney.  At some point, law schools will wake up and start teaching these concepts.

In the perfect world, you’ll be able to articulate your marketing message in one or two sentences, commonly referred to as an “elevator pitch.”  If you haven’t heard this expression before, it refers to having the length of time it takes to ride an elevator to introduce yourself to somebody important to you, including your value proposition (i.e., what makes you valuable to your audience).

Here is an example:  “My name is Jane Doe, and I’m a recent UCLA law school grad interested in using my background as a software engineer to join a small, busy IP practice.”

What does this say about Jane and her value proposition?  It says that she is disciplined enough to get into and obtain a law degree from a highly respected law school, and that she has special skills that IP attorneys desire in associates.

Her “key” words are “Jane Doe” (because Jane is marketing herself as the “product”), “UCLA law school grad” (descriptive of Jane and particularly important if she is addressing a fellow member of that community or another audience that values UCLA’s law school), “software engineer” (because this is a valuable skill set to IP practitioners) and “small, busy IP practice” (members of this audience are Jane’s primary targets for her message).

Write your own pitch down and circle words that are “key” to your pitch.  If what you articulate doesn’t seem quite right, don’t worry about it.  “Sit” with it for a few days and try again.  Try to keep your finished product very simple and, whatever you do, don’t let striving for perfection prevent you from moving forward.

The reason for articulating a marketing message and identifying key words or “keywords” will become clearer when we discuss the “Influence” aspect of the AIM Model, but this part of the process is critical for focused marketing.  The less focused your marketing, the more effort you have to put out to obtain a similar result.  “Focused and efficient” should be your marketing mantra.

The second step in assessing your digital reputation is to get a snapshot of your “today” footprint.  Do this by putting different variations of your name in quotation marks into one or two of the search engines.   At a minimum, use Google.  To be extra conservative, try Bing and Yahoo! as well.

What do you see?  Nothing?  That’s easy to address.  Unflattering photos?  That’s usually easy to fix.  Somebody with a similar name?  That might require a more aggressive strategy to distinguish yourself from that person, but it can be done without too much heavy lifting.  The goal is to influence and develop whatever you see into something that supports your focused marketing message.

Now that we’ve defined our endgame and reviewed our “today” picture of our online digital footprint, we turn out attention to the “Influence” portion of the AIM Model.  Tomorrow, we look at simple strategies to grow and influence your online reputation.

To see Part 3 of this series, click this link

To see Part 1 of this series, click this link

There is no question that Web 2.0, with its inexpensive tools and exponential reach has changed much of the way business is conducted these days.  Recruiting is no exception.

Today’s graduating law students may not even remember Web 1.0, but in early web days, web information was a one-way flow of information that website owners published, and then sat back and hoped visitors would find.

The next iteration of the web – “Web 2.0” – was much more interactive, and invited conversation and development of community.  Early sites like MySpace (known as a gathering place for entertainment-minded people) and Facebook (known as a gathering place for friends and family to have digital conversations and share photos) contributed to the social revolution.

Flash forward to today and “social media” is ubiquitous.  Recruiting is a natural context for encouraging inexpensive social conversation – hiring entities can showcase their companies and advertise their jobs.  Employee candidates can shop opportunities in great detail.

Lawyers and law firms, with their heavy emphasis on historic precedent and conservative natures, have been slower to adopt social recruiting to the same extent as their corporate cousins, but they are increasingly making their way to the social media party.

What does this mean for attorney job seekers?  It means that you must, must, must (did I mention “must?”) pay attention to your digital footprint and take affirmative steps to grow and manage that footprint.  Employers are either looking for you, or where they already know you, they are checking you out with a “social media background check” prior to extending an offer.

Taking Aim

Some of us already have a footprint that we’re either unaware of or ignoring.  Take the case of Justin P. (not his real name), a late 20-something patent agent that I presented to an AmLaw 30 firm.

I hadn’t yet started digitally vetting candidates at the time, but when I put his name and email address into my Google contacts list, Google diligently fetched a matching profile picture for me from the web.  I’d never seen the system do this, and I nearly fell out of my chair when the contact record auto-populated with a photo of a shirtless guy waiving a beer.  Amusing picture, but surely not one that my stuffy AmLaw 30 client was going to like.

When I mentioned the photo, Justin immediately knew the one and sheepishly told me he’d “forgotten” of its existence.  That photo would likely have surfaced during a later social media back-ground check.

Jobs are hard enough to come by these days with-out putting yourself through the whole process on a particular job, and then finding yourself rejected because a past indiscretion surfaces on the web.

What if you know for a fact that you spent the first 25 years of your life in the library and there can’t possibly be a digital skeleton in your closet?  Do you need to pay attention to the advice in this article?  Let’s just say this – if the job comes down to two equal candidates, and one has demonstrated marketing savvy by building a positive digital footprint, the job goes to the marketer.

Why?  At the end of the day, law is still a business and lawyers are starting to recognize the importance of web marketing savvy in client acquisition and retention.  If two candidates are equal or “equal-ish,” online marketing savvy and experience are premium tools for you to bring to the party.

Is digital reputation building expensive or time consuming?  It is definitely not expensive and it’s scaleable, meaning that you can start small and grow your reputation over time by adding more tools and strategies.  Junior attorneys already have written resumes and that’s half the battle in starting the process.

Where to start with building your digital reputation?  I advocate the “AIM Model” for digital reputations – Assess, Influence & Monitor.  Tomorrow, we dive into Assessment strategies.

I believe there is still a lot of value on that platform for lawyers and I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks making that case.

For today, here is a simple video reminding you about the basic power of LinkedIn.

And this video comically demonstrates everybody’s fear about wasting their time on that platform.  If you like this video, here’s a companion video for Twitter.

Stick with me.  I’m going out on a limb here, promising something ahead of having all the content written, but I’ve done the research and I believe I can convince you that LinkedIn is a happening place for lawyers.

Why brilliant?  Because his take is fresh and out of the box.

Instead of telling you that you need to spend X hours on this piece and Y hours on that piece, he gives you a simple formula like this:

1. 1/4 of your available time should be spent listening
2. 1/2 of your available time should be spent commenting/communicating/engaging
3. 1/4 of your available time should be spent creating original content

You’re the only one who knows how many hours you have in a day to devote to your online marketing strategy and it doesn’t matter who is doing the telling, you’re not going to find four hours in your day that don’t exist, just because some guru told you four hours is the magic amount of time to devote to your social media efforts.

Other than the fact that he doesn’t dictate some magic number of hours per day to you, I also think Chris’ formula for how you divide up your time is right on the money.

Listening To Your Network

To start, you can’t authentically engage and provide value to your network, if you don’t know what is being said out there in your network.  This is where the listening aspect come in.  You have to listen to figure out where you can add value.  Once you understand the context within which your network is operating, you can safely proceed to sharing your opinion and adding value to your community.

Engaging With Your Network

At first glance, it might seem a little out of whack to spend half your total time engaging, but I think the point that Chris is making is that Twitter and Facebook have become a huge part of the social networking landscape and both of these platforms are more about sharing information than about pushing your own content.

You can’t share, however, without researching and reading materials to share. By the time you factor in reading the news in your space and discovering other nuggets to share, the engagement segment of the formula really does take the lion’s share of your available social media time.

And I agree that it’s a good use of your precious time to share lots of soundbites on Twitter and Facebook, using other people’s information. You can write a great blog post, but at the end of the day, it’s just one piece of information with your name on it.  Leverage other people’s information and share many soundbites during the commenting/communicating/engaging portion of your time.  Remember OPM?  Leverage, baby!

Creating Original Content For Your Network

Content creation can take a chunk of time — or not.  Great pillar content for a blog or a new white paper requires research and drafting and editing, but who says you need pillar content?  While I personally happen to think that a little pillar content is good for demonstrating expertise, you can probably also demonstrate expertise by banging out short blog posts commenting on events and other people’s material.

No matter what your opinion is on pillar content, it is good to be reminded that blog posts are just one part of a bigger formula.  Blog accordingly.

Take Aways

Finding success with this new thing we call “social networking” requires more than broadcasting your expertise in a one-way blog post.  True, authentic success in social networking requires you to engage in what is going on, and engaging is about community and the back and forth of multi-party dialoguing — the cocktail party.

Want more evidence that engagement is where it’s at on the web?  Check out An Insider’s Secret To Twitter Success.

Do yourself a favor and put a note on the wall next to your computer with Chris Brogan’s formula.  If you stick to its rough proportions, you’ll be hitting all your engagement bases.  To your unlimited social networking success!

1. Listening
2. Learning
3. Caring
4. Serving

If you listen, you will learn.  If you care enough to serve, you will find success.

Get it straight from the woman who “wrote the book” in her recent interview with WebProNews.

Jump in with an intention to make a contribution and add value.  In Laura shorthand, “be useful.”  And a word to the wise — there is a reason that “listen” is first on the list.

The cornerstone to a successful social media campaign is your blog, which I fondly call “base camp.”  That is the place where you can strut your expertise and organize it in a way that interested people can easily access.

So how do you come up with content ideas for your blog?  How do you keep those ideas interesting to your readers?  You’ve got all this great information in your head, but where do you start and how do you keep the content flowing in a way that is interesting?  And what the heck do you do when your brain freezes and not one idea surfaces for a post?

Chris Brogan answered these questions yesterday in his post How To Think Of Blog Posts.  Using Chris’ roadmap for ideas will not only give you great ideas for your posts, but if you use a cross-section of his list, your blog will showcase your expertise from several different angles.  I know from personal experience that it’s all too easy to get busy and end up with a series of one-dimensional posts.

These are Chris’ 9 recommendations for blogging brilliance (with a few interpretive comments thrown in by me):

1. Answer questions. What do you think or know for a fact (from email or past requests) that your clients or potential clients want to know.  This isn’t about a big “topic.”  It’s a specific question that needs to be answered.  For PluggedInLawyer, it might be “5 Steps To Setting Up A Twitter Account,” rather than the broader topic of “Why You Should Twitter.”
2. Take pictures of strange things when you’re out and about. The subjects of your photos might seem random at the time, but they struck your fancy and presumably your readers are your “peeps.”  These photos might be interesting to your readers for reasons you haven’t figured out yet.  Take the picture and figure it out later.  Or not.  Worse case scenario, you end up with a collection of photos that amuse you.
3. Read blogs way outside the scope of what you write about. Chris, a social media thought leader, cites the utility of the occasional fishing blog for his own writing.  Your readers read your material because of your take on the subject.  If you are clever enough to create an analogy between fishing and social media, you end up demonstrating your personality and what makes you different and interesting.
4. Think about what’s next and work backward.
5. Mash two ideas together and explain them in your own words.
6. Write about ways to improve your industry or space.
7. Write speeches that you haven’t yet given. Your blog can be a great place to “try on” your topics “for size” and get reader feedback.
8. Rant. This is a touchy way to write, but controversy can bring new readers and spark them to comment and interact.  Chris recommends Justin Kownacki as a master to study for ranting-style posts.
9. Point out people doing good stuff.

Keep this list handy and refer to it often.  Make sure that you’re mixing it up with your posts.  I personally am a big fan of the #9 style post, but how many of those do my readers really want to see?  Hat tip posts are interesting, but only as part of a bigger mix of information.  Get out there and be multi-dimensional!

The articles are presented with the most recent first, and the collection is excellent.  My personal fave is #18.

1. Indiana High Court Allows MySpace Entry As Evidence In Murder Trial
2. Criminal Court Judge To Be Transferred After Facebook Postings
3. U.S. Seeks To Restrict Gift Giving To Bloggers
4. DOJ Is On Twitter & Tweeting For AG Eric Holder, Too
5. Pretexting, Legal Ethics and Social Networking Sites
6. More On The Legal Ethics Of Social Networking:  Investigating Opponents
7. Social Networks May “Leak” Personally Identifiable Information
8. Social Networks and Personal Injury Suits
9. Attorneys Say Companies Can Monitor Employee Use Of Sites, But…
10. Too Much Information: Blogging Lawyers Face Ethical and Legal Problems
11. A Legal Battle:  Online Attitude vs. Rules Of The Bar
12. Social Networking Sites & Litigation
13. Ethical Issues To Consider When “Friending” Witnesses Online
14. May An Illinois Lawyer Ethically List His or Her “Specialties” on LinkedIn?
15. Our Linked-In Judiciary
16. Facebooking Judge Catches Lawyer In Lie, Sees Ethical Breaches
17. ACLU Fights Judge’s Facebook Comments Ban
18. Legal Marketing Ethics In A Web 2.0 World
19. A Friend In Deed
20. Mind The Ethics Of Online Networking

Update on 11.03.2009: Gina has added a bonus article by one of my favorite legal industry commentators, Debra Cassens Weiss (article dated 10.28.2009):  Want To Update Your Avvo Listing?  Is So, Start Policing Client Comments, Opinion Says.

In her paper, Cari lays out a beautiful roadmap for any attorney to follow in establishing an effective social media strategy.  More importantly, she does an excellent job of demonstrating how and why she is connecting with her desired audience with her efforts.  As she points out, connecting with your desired audience starts with defining that audience and making sure that you’re writing to them, not somebody else.

Success with Cari’s strategy is self-evident in the post.  She lays out the facts like a skilled advocate and a reader can’t help but come to her intended conclusion.

I’m used to reading slick marketing white papers on the web, so it still cracks me up to see something less flashy that screams “lawyer” like Cari’s piece, but she did a beautiful job of blending the two worlds of law and social media.

For the traditionalists out there, you’ll really appreciate the style in which she writes the paper.  If you know me from prior posts, you know that I tend toward the flashier web 2.0 marketing style, but as a lawyer, I can still appreciate a good footnote or two.

Job well done, Cari!  I’m in total awe that you dropped everything to follow your passion.  You, in my humble opinion, are the new face of law.  You go, girl!