3 Geeks and a Law Blog

TIP: Provide Content Rarely and Irregularly Blogs are HOT and in demand, so this best practice will take some effort … Not. Since people prefer blogs that are regularly updated with fresh, compelling content, this is another easy best practice: You should only post up information on your legal topic blog when you feel like it. This will likely coincide with when your work slows down, and you have time and really need more clients. This has the added advantage of impacting your writing style, so it comes across as desperate. Oh – and think about all the Web 2.0 tools you can use, especially those social networking sites like LinkedIn. This social networking, where people participate in online communities, can be powerful. Best Practice: Join, but don’t add anything to the group. Or if you have an urge to contribute, send out connection invitations to people you don’t really know. A potential downside to joining these sites is that you may end up connecting with old contacts who could send you work.

TIP: Share Useless Content

A lawyer once said: “It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt.”  Following Abe Lincoln’s advice, send clients e-mail announcements on major changes regarding a government regulation, but only send the title of the regulation and a link to the Code of Federal Regulations to let them figure out the change for themselves.  Or, even better, cut and paste the entire regulation and put it in the body of your email.

Taking this approach tells your clients that they are savvy enough to understand the issues all on their own.  We’ve actually seen some lawyers accidentally give clients a one or two paragraph overview of major legal changes and how that may affect their business.  Remember, useful is not annoying.

Greg and I put together a fun article on how to annoy clients with technology. It was on track to be published, but at the 11th hour was rejected. Apparently our writing style lacks a certain diplomacy. But then we had our "duh" moment and wonder why the heck we were trying to publish something in paper. The obvious response was publishing on our own blog. So over the next days we will be posting up the various tips from that article. Here's the intro and first tip: Using Technology to Annoy Clients Given the ever-expanding universe of technology, there is truly no end to the ways you can annoy your clients. To help you along in this process, we want to arm you with some ‘best practices’ for aggravating and just plain bothering your clients. Remember the old adage: “If one cookie tastes good, make them eat the whole bag.” TIP: Share the Wrong Content Spam presents a great opportunity to annoy since it already has people annoyed. So this is an easy best practice. Every time you e-mail out an e-newsletter or event notice, send it to all of your clients. This will ensure that each client will get at least one e-mail on a topic that is of no concern to them. Less-worthy lawyers waste valuable time developing targeted lists so that bankruptcy clients only get bankruptcy content. If you want to move up the ladder another notch on this tip, make sure you send these e-mails often.

I'd been saying this all along . . . (see my post: Online Social Networking: A Fancy Word for Friendship ). --------------------------- @ Mixx: Social Networking: From Shut-Ins To Political Action To Products By David Kaplan - Tue 23 Sep 2008 06:56 AM PST It’s day two of Advertising Week in New York, and to keep people in their seats at theInteractive Advertising Bureau’s Mixx conference, Charlie Rose was tapped to bring his talk show format to a morning session with new media academic Clay Shirky. In offering a primer of social networkings evolution, Shirky told Rose that it started with with people who didn’t leave the house—“people who were confined in some way”—and then spread to others who wanted to share photos and details about their lives. It then got serious as political activists started using it, which was shortly followed by the business world. -- Almost all you need is love: In seeking to understand how social networks work, Shirky says you have to understand “household economics.” Shirky: “Economists have a tough time explaining why you feed your children. Household economics is not seen as terribly important. But it is and it explains a lot about why we do what we do, especially in social networking. Non-financial motivations are getting people to do something. People create value for each other because we’re human. We’re not self-obsessed, we like to know other people. Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBaysaid the idea behind it was that people are basically good. He was proven wrong three months later when eBay nearly tanked because people were stealing from another. ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll send you a check for those Beanie Babies.’ But when the grades were added for buyers and sellers, people suddenly got good.”