Of all forms of punctuation, perhaps none is more ignored, and perhaps maligned, than the semicolon.
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How hard is my blog writing to understand? Turns out, not very. I’m just barely smarter than a 5th grader.
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We all make silly mistakes. We’re human, so we can be forgiven for them. But sometimes silly mistakes make us look, well, silly. And nowhere are little boo-boos more apparent than when it comes to social media.
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No study that I could find yet points to causation, but there are a lot of theories, most of which come back to technology. It’s now so easy to do work pretty much anywhere, especially from home, that we find ourselves not only tempted to squeeze in some work (even checking email counts) but also planning to do work on the weekends.
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I figured I would test out my new polling/surveying on you to see where you stand on any number of social media-related issues. It’s not like Scottish independence or anything truly relevant, though.
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One of the most basic keys to leadership, in any business or organization, is having a vision. For yourself. For your staff. For your clients.
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I thought I would share my top excuses for not posting to my blog. Feel free to use or share these as you feel appropriate. Hope some work for you next time you miss posting.
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Ignoring social media on your website homepage is a pretty clear indication of how you think digital marketing is a one-way street.
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We certainly live in an age where technology has once again vaulted us forward into a somewhat uncertain future. But let’s not forget that we’ve been around these parts before.
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For better or worse, our language and our use of it continues to evolve at an astounding rate. I find myself feeling inexplicably sanguine about the whole thing.
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Is this another sign of the coming apocalypse?  Hands, please.  How many people knew that the New York Times was publishing a haiku blog on Tumblr, and that the snippets of Japanese-style poetry are generated by a robot? Yep, that’s what I thought.  Me neither.  But more terrifying is that it’s been doing this for more than a year!  How could
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As far as names go, “Information Superhighway” was beyond awful. But as far as metaphors go, it was pretty darn good.
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You’ve got subject matter for the first couple of weeks, but then what? Coming up with additional interesting and relevant ideas to write about can really be a challenge.
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Good writing transcends nit-picking. Always has, always will. Hacks use grammar hammers as a way to scare the timid and insecure from writing, and it’s a shame.
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It’s simple: Content marketing builds trust. Trust builds relationships. Relationships drive revenue.
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Admit it: have you felt any enthusiasm for updating your About page lately? Or how about just making it better? Have you focused instead on content everywhere else but your About page? Yep. Me, too.
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Marketers like to network. And talk. And network some more… See, we’re the people who bring you all those programs on “How to Network” in the first place, right?
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For the sake of all of our futures in the legal marketing biz, it’s long overdue for us to focus much less on differences and much more on our vast similarities to B2C marketing so that we can do a better job than we’re currently doing.
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Linkbait, and LinkedIn, and Twitter! Oh my!
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What are you supposed to do when a famous person shares your name, and more importantly, cleans your clock on Google search results?
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Like an pro athlete, actor or musician, a professional writer has to practice the craft. A lot. What better way to keep in top writing form than to take up a challenge to produce good content for 30 days straight?
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I like to think that since I’m a writer, editor and communications consultant, that this hoarding just comes with the territory.
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Being in the creative biz (writing and marketing and communications, that is), I have found that silence is deadly. To creativity — and a lot of other things.
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What we’ve gone and done is turned August into what it was never intended to be: September.
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“It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything.”
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We celebrate time passing as if it’s a judgment on our relative worth instead of a simple measurement.
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Nobody’s perfect, right? Tell that to the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.  This past weekend, the hallowed home to some of the world’s best media minds — and my alma mater — handed out some diplomas with a typo in the school’s name! It was a big boo-boo. A huge oopsie. A face-palm-combined-with-a-sad-sigh-and-slumped-shoulders kinda mistake.
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This has to be an unbelievable opportunity to reinvigorate what has been to all eyes, a struggling media empire in the American legal profession, right?
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Work/Life balance isn’t dead, nor is it dying. As times and technology change, so does our relationship with work, and with our lives outside work.
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Perhaps us legal marketers just need to get out more. It would seem that we’re not as far behind other industries or companies as we think.
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As I was roaming around LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago, looking for people to connect with, I noticed how absolutely terrible some people’s profile photos are.
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My words should always be good enough, standing alone, to paint the perfect picture in a reader’s mind. We writers don’t need no stinkin’ “art” or infographics if we do our jobs well.

Except, maybe we do.
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Change is opportunity and loss, inexorably tied.
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One thing of value I find in blogs I follow are quick hits and/or recurring features.  So, in a blog about communications, what better regular feature than sharing new words that I’ve come across — new to me, that is.  Here are three: Hipsterical.  Found this while perusing the comments in an interview with a woman who says that the
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When it comes to writing about writing, especially on the Interwebs, there is this tendency to start giving advice, like some latter-day Dear Abby:  Do this, don’t do that.  You’ll look stupid if you don’t use “educated-sounding” words.  You’ll look dumb if you do.  Every time you use passive voice, a puppy dies.  And so on, and so on.  You’ve read
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I have a confession to make:  All this time that I have been (and have not been) blogging, I have not tagged any of my posts.  They have categories, yes.  But tags?  Not a one.  That is, until now. Why am I sharing this?  Well, first it is news, if only for this blog.  Additionally, part of communicating with others is
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How do you start writing?  For a lot of people, staring at a blank screen is terrifying, even paralyzing.  Most people would rather do just about anything but write, it seems.   This is a phenomenon that author Stephen King has noted about writing:  “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”   As a result, during my many years in the workplace I have
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Apparently, what’s new is this post — and maybe this blog.  Yes, after a four-year (!) hiatus, I’m going to take another run at blogging.  Only time will tell whether or not I have something to say.  It appears that this blog — like so many, many others — is akin to a fad diet:  you pay a lot of
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I’m very excited about the opportunity today to talk at the ACC Chicago Chapter event on “How Social Media is Changing the Way We Do Business” being held at Drinker Biddle’s conference center in Chicago.  It features three sets of panelists from both Drinker Biddle and top companies discussing a variety of topics, from how social media is transforming intellectual
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been marveling over the experience I had during and after the Legal Marketing Association’s annual national conference.  It was obviously an honor to be invited to speak about how law firms are using social media from an in-house marketing/communications perspective.  The presentation itself went very well — it was even SRO (thanks in part
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Now that I’ve returned from the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, where I spoke on the topic of social media, I can report that many, many law firms (and their lawyers) find that social media is still something to be regarded as not worth the time or effort.  As evidence, take a look at my survey of AmLaw100 firms using Facebook
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As promised, here’s the results of my survey of AmLaw100 firms who have a presence on Twitter.  As I did  my research, I was reminded how lousy the search function is on Twitter.  I also came up against a search limitation after about 25 (or so) searches… I would have to wait until the top of the hour to try searching
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At a presentation yesterday at the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, I discussed a survey I did of how many AmLaw100 firms have a Facebook presence in the form of a fan page.  For reference and posterity, I am sharing the results here on the blog, too.  I also surveyed the same firms’ presence on Twitter, results of which I
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As promised in yesterday’s session at the Legal Marketing Association conference, a sample social media policy for a law firm can be found here.
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With apologies for those readers, friends and family with absolutely no interest in legal marketing, per se, I will be using the blog in the next few days to support some of my communicating at the annual national conference of the Legal Marketing Association in Denver.  My participation on a panel, unsurprisingly enough, will include discussion of the nexus between traditional
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I came across this article in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune that nearly perfectly juxtaposed the old world that seems to be falling away quickly with the new world that has arrived.  The story is about the closing of a once-successful Chicago dairy — McDonald’s was a customer, buying supplies for its milkshakes — that fell victim to the classic economic squeeze play of
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I gave a presentation yesterday on “The Brave New World of Social Media” to folks from small and large businesses that were attending a program at my firm’s Chicago office.  Not surprisingly, my program title’s days are numbered, as more and more businesses take the plunge into social media. Note that I didn’t refer to “social networking” in my title.  In fact, during
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Every Sunday when I open my New York Times, sifting through the various sections, I have a momentary pang of guilt when I come to the Book Review.  I glance at it and feel the same as when I’m grocery shopping and fail to buy broccoli.  Mind you, the feeling is fleeting, but the aftertaste lingers for much longer.  There’s just something
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During the holidays, my wife and I got a chance to see the latest George Clooney vehicle, “Up in the Air.”  It is a fine flick with terrific acting and captivating, if not occasionally predictable, storylines and characters.  I definitely recommend seeing it, if you haven’t already.  I don’t intend to spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it,
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So, the Supreme Court has decided that the First Amendment has some teeth still left in it when it comes to political speech (the whole reason it mentions the “press” in the first place).  It may come as a surprise to some who know me, but I actually agree with the majority view, which bears a resemblence to my “marketplace
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