Legal and Business Writing Consultant : Lori Herz : Write For Clients : Professional Writing and Online Content Consulting

When I started out as a lawyer 16 or so years ago, service professionals who wanted to use their business writing to gain visibility and grow their reputation had a choice of several print platforms, including:

• Trade journals

• Newspapers

• Newsletters

• Books

Among other common features, this traditional media group boasts:

• Static content

• One-way communication

• Space restrictions

• Limited distribution

• Gatekeepers

Fast forward to 2008. Traditional media is now keeping company with, and losing ground to, a host of new media (also called social media or Internet media) outlets such as:

• Blogs 
  

• Vlogs 
  

• Podcasts 
  

• Social Networks 
  

Real-time community, dialog and interactivity are key markers of this growing media space.

Service professionals looking to (1) build business relationships and (2) direct their marketing communications through new media channels will find solid guidance and practical tips via:

• Edith Yeung’s 50 Habits of a Highly Effective Blogger
  

• P.J. Fusco’s Five Getting-Started Blog Questions
  

• Kevin O’Keefe’s post on Why Every Client Should Want an Attorney Who Blogs
  

• Pam Slim’s inquiry into What the heck is a vlog? 
  

• Darren Rowse’s vlog post on how to Differentiate Your Blog

• Openculture's Podcast Primer

• Dennis Kennedy’s Podcasting for Lawyers

• Jessica E Vascellaro's WSJ article on Social Networking Goes Professional

• Business Week’s Social Networking 101
  

• Denise Howell’s and Ernest Svenson’s exchange on Social Networking for Lawyers
  

Although a few of these posts target a lawyer audience, service providers working outside the legal profession will also find them relevant and helpful.

• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

In an earlier post, I discussed the concept of Client Experience Management. As a business writer for service professionals, I’m also very interested in the related concept of Client Evangelism.

Client evangelists are people who are so pleased with, and passionate about, services they receive that they voluntarily shout the provider’s praises until the rafters ring. I first learned about this kind of consumer zeal through Ben McConnell’s and Jackie Huba’s terrific book, Creating Customer Evangelists, and now continue my education at their Church of the Customer Blog.

Always on the hunt for practical input on this front, I was pleased to run across a McConnell-Huba article titled Customer Evangelists: Spreading the Word. In it, the authors list some telltale signs of client evangelism, including:

• Clients passionately recommend you to others

• Clients give you unsolicited praise and feedback

• Clients forgive your occasional services lapses, but tell you about them

McConnell and Huba also identify avenues for fostering client evangelists, such as:

• Planning a social media strategy that incorporates blogs, e-mails and podcasts

• Soliciting client feedback

• Creating an open, two-way line of communication

Providing another take on this topic is an article called Capturing the Voice of the Client culled from the Originate! Business Development Newsletter (the article is part of a free preview issue of a newsletter that's available by paid subscription). Documenting an initiative undertaken by the law firm Patton Boggs, the piece highlights how the firm has built a strong service culture around creating opportunities to listen to, and hear, its clients.

One way the firm accomplishes this goal is by publishing a biannual magazine. The publication gives its “key clients” a chance to “talk about issues relating to their businesses.” Likewise, it offers the firm an invaluable opportunity to showcase its “intimate knowledge of the client’s business, organization, culture, industry and financial metrics.”

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Many service professionals dread the thought of networking. They would love to find a philosopher’s stone for converting their loose business contacts into a golden network of prospects, clients and referral sources. But, fantasy aside, successful networking requires action and persistence. Like any relationship-building endeavor, it also requires mutuality - a healthy combination of giving and receiving that’s organic and not contrived.

As it’s taken root in the service professions, blogging has become a channel for creating and fortifying natural webs of business connections. (If you need an introduction to business blogging, take a look at Kevin O’Keefe’s excellent collection of tips and thoughts on Blog Basics and the Art of Blogging) These networks typically build around useful and relevant information bloggers offer to address their readers’ business needs, challenges and concerns.

However, as Susan Cartier Liebel recently detailed, service providers can also cultivate business contacts by blogging about personal interests. Liebel’s post introduces us to lawyer Michael Keenan. After starting The Connecticut Elder Law Blog, Keenan launched Glastonbury Running to share insights and news with other local runners. Keenan’s blogs link to one another and to his conventional website. As Liebel reports: “Little did he realize [ ] his running blog would get more hits then his professional blog. Because they are linked he gets a tremendous amount of business from people who, first, find him and then relate to him as a runner.”

Keenan’s blogging experience highlights how we can make valuable business connections when we share our knowledge and ideas with people who can benefit from them. The connecting points forged through this kind of exchange are the sturdiest building blocks of present and future business associations.

• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

My daughter came home from school last week and enthusiastically told me how her middle school science teacher brings class lessons to life by sharing anecdotes that relate to the curriculum. I wasn't surprised by her enthusiasm.

In my post on sticky business writing, I cited a list of attributes that make our communications durable and memorable. Among those attributes are stories.

Most of us have experienced first-hand how facts and ideas conveyed through engaging stories come alive and linger in our thoughts and memories. Media producers, public relations professionals and marketers routinely harness the power of story to channel their messages to audiences.

The importance of storytelling is also gaining a foothold in other business sectors. In his Forbes.com article on The Power of Stories, John Kotter notes that some business leaders are coming to recognize that “we learn best--and change--from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.” They understand that the stories a firm broadcasts --deliberately or inadvertently -- about itself, its employees or its clients can have a big impact on its business culture and bottom line.

To evaluate how stories infuse our business, Kotter suggests that we consider these questions:

• What are the stories that define us in light of our customers, employees and shareholders?

• Are these the stories we want to tell--and have others tell about us?

If the answer to these questions is "No," he recommends that we take steps “to replace the old stories” with ones that genuinely support our business values and success.

Seth Godin adds to this point in a post on how to tell a great story. Drawing from an Ode Magazine article he wrote on the same topic, Godin sets out the underpinnings of all great stories. Among other common denominators, he says, all great stories:

• Capture the imagination

• Are consistent and authentic

• Don’t contradict themselves

• Agree with what the audience already believes

• Make people feel smart and secure

Many of us are comfortable with the idea of incorporating stories into conventional business writing and communications. At the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog, Jennifer Jones shares that storytelling is also the key to making social media work for us. Jones recognizes that, even in the new media universe, information delivered via stories is much more vibrant and indelible than dry presentations of fact.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks