3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Seems there are a lot of "First To Market" believers running news aggregators. That became apparent when not one, not two, but three different news aggregators launched "beta" versions of their products to the public this week. I've been playing with two of the aggregators - Google News Timeline and NewsSift. The third product, SkyGrid, launched a media blitz (Scobleizer, Washington Post, and TechCrunch) about how they were opening up their product, but in my opinion fell flat on their face when you later learned that it was a private invite only, and apparently I couldn't get my invite in fast enough. If anyone at SkyGrid wants me to do a review of the aggregator, then send me one of those valuable private invites!!

Most presidents of this country have tons of media exposure, of course, around election time, at the inauguration and State of the Union Address. Usually it trails off afterwards except for sporadic events in history, exciting legislation or regularly scheduled press conferences. Not with Obama—he seems to be on television many times a day along with a spattering of talk shows form Jay Leno’s Tonight Show to 60 Minutes. Haven’t found stats on the number of press conferences he has held but it is probably staggering and more than any other President, to date. Plus, he has a weekly White House video address, a White House blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Let’s not forget the merchandise. John F. Kennedy has a watch, coin, bookmark, etc. And all presidents have books and videos. But President Obama has more merchandise than any other president we have seen: An Obama Chia planter, bobbleheads, iPhone case, shirts, stickers, posters, watches—the list goes on to even a collector series Obama Hot Sauce. Obama mania! While I understand the allure of the new President of change, one can’t help but wonder is he over exposed? With only a few months under his belt, it is hard to say where this exposure will lead. Will the media and merchandising mania continue over his term? Is this a tactic of his White House staff? Unfortunately, with all this marketing and public relations, he is being analyzed and scrutinized more than ever at every turn. When you put yourself in the media spotlight, you are open to everyone’s opinion&emdash;president or not. K. DeLia is responsible for the marketing and public relations activities for professional services firm to the energy industry. With 15 years of strategic marketing and business development execution, she has successfully marketed both small and large businesses in a variety of industries. Follow her: www.twitter.com/katdelia.

While monitoring Canada's LegalIT 3.0 conference, I noticed something -- I've seen all of this before.

Online marketing for professional services, and in particular law firms, is a difficult proposition. Not only do legal online marketers have the challenge of overcoming lawyers' sensibilities about legal advertising, we have to contend with 50 states bar's advertising rules. Then after dodging these two bullets, we are called to measure what may, at first blush, seem to be immeasurable: reputation, influence and persuasiveness. Neil Mason's ClickZ article, "Metrics for Non-Transactional Web Sites" brought me back to the early days of my web's development when I would ask lawyers, "why do you want a web site?" In those days of yore (!), law firm web sites appeared to be knee-jerk reaction to what their peers were doing. But, if lawyers wanted a successful web site (or in this day and age, a successful blog), we had to decide where we were going. If there is no end-game in mind, we will just be wandering around. This is even more true in the vast wasteland of the web. Many law firms and lawyers struggle with this question: why do we have a web site? In a nutshell, the answer is one, or a combination, of the following:

1. Sell a product
2. Display an online brochure
3. Generate leads

Once the decision, it will color a site's lay-out, design and content. And it will determine how we measure a site's success.

I am in awe of Ashton Kutcher.

Ok, yeah, he's cute. I admit it; I was charmed by his dopey good looks in That '70s Show.

But after watching the 31-year old Ashton Kutcher on Twitter and the sway he has, I now believe that man is a marketing genius.

Yet another very successful college drop-out, Ashton Kutcher has managed to leverage his own cult of personality into a social media sensation. Right now, Ashton (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk) are in a race to reach one million Twitter followers.

Followers are basically Twitter subscribers who are tracking Kutcher's own Twitter entries. In the first place, both Ashton and his wife Demi Moore are both on Twitter. Ashton, going by user id @aplusk, and Demi, going by user id @mrskutcher, have made their own little reality show on Twitter.

Every day, Twitter followers watch them interact with each other, their family, friends and, if you are lucky, a Twitter follower. Ashton and Demi are, as @glambert once said, their own paparazzi. But it gets better: Every Twitter profile has the opportunity to link to your web site of choice.

Most people choose to link to their blog or company. Actors will often link to their filmography.

But Ashton, who I believe is at heart an entrepreneur, links to BlahGirls.com. What's Blah Girls? A portal to "an interactive, animated web video series and celebrity gossip blog." Blah Girls is owned by Blah KL-DG, LLC, which is co-owned by Katalyst Media and David & Goliath, Inc. Katalyst, founded by Kutcher and his production partner Jason Goldberg, create original content for digital media, tv and films.

The company has produced the FaceBook Video series "(Kat)al+yst HQ", tv shows "Punk'd", "Beauty and The Geek", "True Beauty" (a co-production with Tyra Banks), as well as the movies "The Butterfly Effect" and "Guess Who." David & Goliath, Inc. founded by artist-entrepreneur Todd Goldman, is a $90+ million teen apparel line.

Kutcher spotted his Twitter opportunity when he noticed that: 1) he was fast approaching on one million followers, and 2) he and CNN were neck and neck. In the fashion of his personna of slacker/football player, Kutcher looked us straight in the eye and promised that if he beat CNN to the race, he would "ding dong ditch" Ted Turner.

Last night I watched as Ashton gained 1,000 followers in 15 minutes, then 10,000 in an hour. So what does one million Twitter followers mean to Ashton and CNN? Two million sets of eyes. Both "entities"--because Ashton is but a brand--are in the media business.

Both Ashton and CNN want you to watch them. Because, as all of Hollywood knows, eyeballs equal dollars. So what can we as legal marketers learn from Krutcher's social media wizardry?

First, social media is about interaction: Twitter is much more interesting when watching two people interact online than a lone person shouting out into the vast TwitterSea.

Second, personality matters.

Third, we, as individuals, make the web interesting. And, as Ashton suggests, in the arena of social marketing, "we actually become the source of the news, and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news."

NOTE: (from @glambert): At 10:42 I checked the stats, and was temporarily amazed that Kutcher had not only passed the 1 million mark, but was actually approaching the 2 million mark.

 

Last night, at 10:17 PM EDT, the AP made formal its previously stated public announcement: they are going to start monetizing content by into a subscription package. New Venture Aims to Introduce Fees for Online News, AP press release. This morning, at 12:07 AM, News Corp announced that they are building a global content portal to join all of Murdoch's media together. News Corp to Launch Global Content Portal, FT.com. News Corp is stating it is collecting their massive group of reporters to streamline content sharing, it will also put them in a position to begin controling access to their content. Coupled with AP's announcement to create a subscriber-based news portal, it looks like both Rupert Murdoch and Tom Curley are making good on their promises. UPDATE: According to press release put out yesterday by Journalism Online, Steven Brill--media founder of Court TV, American Lawyer and Brill's Content--has joined up with former WSJ exec and former cable exec to create a news portal to facilitate content flow from newspapers to online mediums via licensing agreements. Did I call it or did I call it?

"Social" - (adjective) seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.

Scott Karp, co-founder & CEO of Publish2, Inc, recently published a blog on How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links. In the war between print and online content, he makes a valid point: Google's role is to not steal content but to promote links. Taking this point one step further, then, Twitter brings even more value to online search than Google. On Twitter, individuals--and more likely than not, experts in their fields--vet and identify relevant links. FOR FREE. For instance, I would more rely on my friend @Glambert’s recommendation to Karp's article than Google’s top search results for "Google stole links." Because I value @Glambert’s opinion, I believe his endorsement. On Twitter, those that I follow are my influencers. I have self-selected my own personal panel of experts that I choose to trust. They tell me a link is good and they prove it over and over again by continuously recommending good content, they are golden to me. This, in a nutshell, is the beauty of Twitter and the threat to Google.

I was listening to a podcast by some new Twitter friends' podcast last night, called the Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show, in which they were discussing online advertising. EEL, celebrating its third year online this month, is a regular podcast series run by Dave Wallace, Kent Newsome and Mike Seyfang, and covers all things technological. From blogging to mashups, they've got it covered. So I listened with great interest when they began discussing Eric Clemons' Tech Crunch article, Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet last night. I don't disagree with several of EEL or Clemons' premises: ad revenues are down and, as a general rule, people don't trust advertising. But I think both EEL and Clemons are a little myopic in their argument. I counter that for advertising to be fully functional it must be done more holistically. Yes, I agree, online advertising is declining. But it is declining in a way that the gold rush declined. The internet was a new frontier ten years ago--it was free-for-all. Literally. Businesses would pay for ANY kind of online advertising to just be a part of the game. "Boy geniuses" were raking in adult dollars for posting hyperlinks on web sites and trading site names like baseball cards. But now the internet, and its audience, has matured and settled down. Buyers are more sophisticated and businesses are demanding more results for the dollars. Businesses are asking advertisers for metrics, measuring ROI and reading the analytics. Marketers, like me, are analyzing the productivity and effectiveness of their online marketing efforts and asking hard questions about how advertisers are measuring results. Marketers are seeing, with a mixture of amusement and weariness, that no one online advertiser measures online traffic the same way. Businesses have become more sophisticated and demanding better answers and advertisers are not able to coherently and intelligently respond. In fact, in true "Dan Draper" fashion, some of our online advertising channels are walking away from the sale because they cannot justify the ad spend to us. Business's naivete and wonderment at the internet is over. We still love the vibrancy of online art and flashy flash pages but know that when we started examining our own numbers these ads did not deliver the results we needed. So, now with 10 years of legal marketing under my belt, which thankfully has corresponded with the 10 years of internet pandemonium, the dust has cleared and I have a clearer vision of just what does online advertising mean. Online advertising is a channel. It is just another medium that exists alongside TV, radio, print and good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth. Any marketer worth their salt will never rely upon any one advertising medium. Because, think about it, marketing is war. Why do you think they call it a "marketing campaign"? To properly execute any campaign, there must be a a goal, a strategy, a task force, a plan, soldiers and ammunition. In a marketing plan, we will spend months developing and refining prior to execution, lining up our ads and educating our campaigners. And, marketing professional services and law firms is even more difficult: we don't even have a product to sell (by the way, this was an online business type that Clemons failed to cover). As legal advertisers, we have the unique challenge of marketing services that, prior to the 1980 Bates case, we couldn't, by law, even advertise. As it is, we still run the risk of violating ethics rules that are unique in 50 different states--let's not even mention the international legalities. And don't forget that we still, in this day and age, must persuade lawyers who still believe that any form of advertising or marketing is crass. So how do legal marketers promote our lawyers in today's marketplace? How do legal services fit into the online community? How do law firms position themselves online to maximize their exposure with out violating the market and their own sensibilities? For, remember, at the end of the day, the only thing that is of real value to a lawyer is his reputation. And the service that lawyers sell is that reputation because, potentially, his reputation can stop a case in its tracks. A lawyer's reputation, intelligence, personality and persuasiveness is what wins a negotiation, a trial and closes a deal. Try marketing THAT online. We, as legal marketers, learned very quickly that it "takes a village" to market a law firm. There is no one channel that will make a person think when trouble hits the door, "Oh, I better call Firm XYZ." Instead, legal marketing demands a consistent stream of a sophisticated blend of print, television, radio, online and face-to-face encounters. The ratio in that blend may change over time as measurements become more sophisticated and new ingredients, like Second Life or XML radio, may be added. But marketers will never stop using any one of these channels. Print is still viable; maybe not in the manner we are used to using it, but print will always have its place. Online is still viable. It is no longer the "free-for-all" it once was but it, too, has its place if an ad company has accurate metrics. Because, in the end, that is what is needed: consistent metrics for measuring ad traffic. Until all the web analytics tools and advertisers develop a consistent way to measure their ad rate, buying businesses will not trust them nor wish to invest ad dollars for services that don't deliver. So to turn a phrase, caveat vendor.

In the last segment on How To Alternative Bill - I focused on budgets and understanding your costs as they relate to alternative fees. Although related to pricing, that discussion was more about the ability to drive profitability. The market sets prices, but the costs of delivering your services under those prices determines your profits. So let's talk about pricing. Markets set prices through the interaction of buyers and sellers. But how does the market set prices for legal services? Last week I was researching two different subjects that brought this idea into focus for me. On one hand was a post about how law firms have just kept raising rates (a.k.a prices) each year and the other hand was an article talking about the controversy involved in "mark-to-market" practices. Mark-to-market is the practice of setting price by occasionally reaching out to a market and asking for buyer/seller interaction. Many markets set price continuously (beer and pretzels are two examples). Some markets need to take a more manual approach and set them when deals occur - thus the mark-to-market concept. So how are legal fee prices set in the market? The answer: they aren't. Billing rates are set in the market, but for the most part there is not a market mechanism for setting fees for most types of legal matters. The closest thing we have is the "gut" feeling mentioned in my prior post on budgets. So when you go to a client and ask them what they think is a fair market price, they generally shift the conversation to rates and hours. Because that is what the market has valued and priced. So what the legal market could use is some mark-to-market like benchmarks when it comes to pricing. First thought - I will be rich if I figure this out. Second thought - where does this market information exist? What would be nice is market information about the price of a trial or the price of discovery in a category of litigation. I know - most lawyers will say there are too many variables involved. More accurately there are a range of variables and thus a range of prices. This 'range' concept is not unique to law practice and as such is not an insurmountable problem. Ultimately we would benefit from some form of market to set prices on fees (versus rates). The old fashion method is offering up a sell price and seeing how buyers respond. There are some emerging examples of this. But until law firms offer up pricing by fees and clients can respond within some defined market (even a mark-to-market styled one), we will not have a pricing function. OK - so this post hasn't really solved the pricing problem since there isn't a market to set prices against. Hopefully it has provided a better definition of why the problem exists and one idea for addressing it.

According to a 2009 Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns Report by the online marketing company eROI, 20% of the 500 e-mail marketers they surveyed do not track the results of their e-mail campaigns. I was struck by eROI's analysis of their survey results because they are the only e-mail metrics company that have said: Open rate, as mentioned earlier, is not a reliable metric. Click rate is better, but unless you can tie those clicks to dollars, campaign ROI can still be a little tough to prove. However, the ‘‘brand engagement value’’ of a click is extremely important and often discounted. Another major opportunity missed is conversion tracking (emphasis added). eROI suggests that companies should focus on conversion rates but, according to their survey resulsts, 1/8th of all companies engaging in online marketing don't even measure it. eROI got it right and it is something that we, as online marketers, need to drive home daily: did your e-mail cause the recipient to act upon the e-mail and respond to a call-to-action? When designing an e-mail campaign, ask yourself three questions:

1. What is this e-mail's business goal?
2. What activity do I want the reader to perform after they read my e-mail?
3. How can I measure whether they performed this activity?

As my team knows that I am fond of saying, "all roads lead back to the web." Web traffic is the most measurable metric available. In my mind, every e-mail should push people to your web site. Whether you are establishing your brand, developing leads or selling a product, every online marketer's goal is to get e-mail readers to their web site.

Once on your site, depending upon the depth of your analytics tool, you can track their activity by looking at your web logs.

By the end of an e-mail campaign, we online marketers should be able to report, "we sent XXX number of e-mails. Of those, XX visited our web site."

That is the true measure of e-mail success.

Download eROI's full report.

The AP announced yesterday that it was going to take "all actions necessary" to stop ISPs from pirating news content and streaming it across their sites, raising copyright concerns about the terms of "fair use". In an attempt to save their tumbling profits, hold off bankruptcies and defend their current business models, the newspapers are going for the big guns/deep pockets. Its like watching dinosaurs fight with cockroaches. Did I just say that? This is the worst kind of defense in the war of survival of the fittest. Don't these newspapers realize that they are fighting for their existence? Its like the captain of the Titanic trying to use his compass to gain his bearings as his ship sinks down into the deep, icy waters. The AP is now reversing a decision they made 10 years ago that allowed ISPs to use their content for free. Now AP claims to be developing a rights-managed system that will rival Google and Yahoo's news channels. I think it is all too much a little too late. More than 14,000 journalists have been laid off over the last 2 years. Just where do the newspapers think these journalists went--perhaps online to write news content? The AP just announced war. Brave, perhaps, but misguided. Because someone is going offend them and then the AP is going to sue an ISP and waste what precious money they have left paying for lawyers, law firms, discovery, trial time and appeals. If all those laid off journalists were smart, they'd start their own, independent news source and sell their services to Google and Yahoo. Now there's using your noggin! Because you know that this war isn't going to end well.

Professor Benjamin Akande, Webster University Dean of Business and Technology, describes the latest generation as "internet-savvy, phone-addicted, opportunistic and digitally conscious." Calling them iPoders, Akande says they number over 115 million and are the first generation to be raised exclusively on computers. They have never had to manually turn on a t.v. They have never had to wonder who was on the other end of a ringing phone. And they all know how to type. I work with this generation every day. They make up my staff. They are my nephews. And they are just now beginning to enter the work force. I have to agree with Akande's conclusions: the biggest lesson these kids have to learn is patience. Although I exist in a world where I have to know and do all things web, my approach to my work is markedly different: I know that some times things are best left for a better time, some decisions need more input to gain concensus. These work habits were learned from experience. Yes, some of the iPoders just need time to develop experience. But other generational differences exist purely based upon cultural shifts. My nephew and his one-time girlfriend spent an entire drive back from the movies in the back seat TEXTING (I bet you thought I was going to say something else). They didn't talk to each other, they texted each other. These kids have, literally, thousands of friends on FaceBook. Their whole idea of "friendship" is different from yours or mine. My idea of friendship is based upon shared time, experience and values. Instead, for iPoders, friendship is almost a tag game of, "I see you! You're my friend now." There is little sense of loyalty. If there is a disagreement, they just un-friend you. Which brings up the issue of trust: most iPoders seeing nothing unusual about developing meaningful relationships online. Face-to-face encounters aren't necessary. But what happens when trust crosses paths with cultural differences? Can we truly trust someone who does not share the same community-based beliefs? Or will we see new communities, and therefore, new beliefs, develop? My latest best example of the development of online community values is David Pogue's recent gaff. A NYTimes Technology columnist, he was a new twitter convert. One night, in all of his fumblings, he accidently twittered his mobile phone number to his 21,000 followers. Fearing mischief and mayhem, he sent out a "Please don't re-tweet!" Fearing the worst, he went to bed. Upon waking, he checked his phone. Not one person had called. So maybe this iPod generation knows a thing or two. Maybe my nephews will grow up to change the world. Maybe they will use their digital prowess for good, not evil.

Breaking News: All 800 attorneys and 200 Paralegals at an undisclosed BigLaw firm are to receive Kindle 2's. The Kindles will all come preloaded with the entire National Reporter Sets, US Code, CFR and Federal Register.

One of my favorite things to do is to test out new products.  And, last week, I gave a try at the Twitter tool "HootSuite".  At first glance, I thought this was one of the better Twitter tools out there because there were lots of value added resources available through the product.  But, once I jumped in and started testing it (on an unsuspecting group of followers), well, there were problems that were quickly pointed out to me.

I spotted a James Carville article in the FT.com op/ed (Daddy, tell me, what exactly is a derivative?) this morning that reminded me of how difficult it is to write for the web.

Carville was writing about Obama's "supposed communication breakdown during the financial crisis." Carville says the failure is not in Obama's ability to communicate but in the complexity of what he is trying to explain.

I can definitely relate.

I will never forget what my grizzly, old editor told me when I was interning for a small newspaper in Orange County, "Honey, you gotta write dumber. Most people can't read above a 4th grade level."

Writing dumb may sound easy, but it is not, especially if you are writing about a complex topic.

Granted, in the legal field, I am generally writing to a more sophisticated audience. But I run into another challenge: time.

My readers do not want to pour over paragraphs of analysis. They want to be able to read my story in less than 30 seconds.

So I have to be able to tell my story in a paragraph. And, no, that does not mean a 10-line paragraph. If you look at my writing, most of my paragraphs are only 1-2 sentences long. And my sentences are very short.

Here's another lesson that I learned from another grizzly old guy: look at your sentence and eliminate every fifth word.

Yeah, it is hard to write small. And just like I pointed out in my SEO post: you have 3-4 seconds to get their attention on the web.

So you better engage them fast!

Although I see the appeal of the Just Do It crowd, there needs to be some performance metrics when it comes to Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs). And all paths on this subject point to The Budget. So for our next "How To" step towards AFAs, we need to dive in deeper on this subject. The Bottomless Budget The lawyer personality tends to want to eliminate risk (we have mentioned that before here on 3 Geeks). From this perspective, the best budget is the one that takes into account every possible task, the people who will work on it and the number of 6 minute increments each person will apply to these tasks. In a perfect world, this type of budget would be tremendously valuable. Unfortunately, we live here on earth. Besides - this type of budgeting approach allows lawyers to spend all their time analyzing instead of pricing and engaging with clients. In my experience, even when the effort is made to produce a budget like this - it is not a final product. Lawyers will step back (to yet again analyze instead of act) and consider how much resource is going to each task, phase or budget line item. From this larger perspective, it becomes apparent that adjustments must be made. The lawyer knows in his gut that too much resource or not enough is committed to different portions of the budget. So even this "get-down-in-the-weeds" approach to determining a budget and a firm's cost of production will not produce a perfect budget. In fact, this quest for the 'perfect budget' is a journey and not a destination. Which is another way of saying it allows lawyers to do what they like (analysis) and avoid what makes them uncomfortable (talking to clients about price). The Wafer Thin Budget "My gut tells me ... $." Although likely an accurate estimation, the "feels-right-in-my-gut" budget does not give enough information to measure performance. Although at the end of the matter you will see how well you did, a firm will benefit from gaining metrics through-out the representation. Theoretically, you could use the gut measure to estimate various phases of a budget (e.g. investigation, discovery, ...), but those sorts of numbers won't give you a solid profitability measure (a.k.a. leverage). Obviously we need to find some middle ground - somewhere between the "weeds" and "my gut." The Balanced Budget I propose a reasonable, middle-ground for building a matter budget. A seasoned lawyer's instincts on estimated fees are a great resource. We just need to focus them to the right level of detail. Let's start with the UTBMS task codes. I know - these are both universally vilified and praised. I say start with them because they are an existing (and accepted) standard and they are in use in most every e-billing system around. This means even though they may not be the most directly applicable division of tasks, they provide common ground. Another advantage they bring; they provide reasonable case phase definitions (L100, L200, and so on). Now take your seasoned partner's gut and point it at this structure. Get him/her to estimate fees per task code and phase. Take it a step further and have them estimate how each task code should be leveraged - partner to associate wise. Some codes or phases will be partner intensive - some associate. I suggest the resulting budget will be a good approximation of fees, arrived at in short-order and with enough information to serve as a performance metric benchmark. The "Balanced Budget" is one possible approach. There must be others. Whatever a firm or lawyer does for AFAs, they will need to understand the cost of providing services and be able to measure how each matter stacks up in terms of profitability. The Budget will play a central role in meeting both of those needs.

A friend of mine mentioned on Twitter that she was "loving" the FeeFieFoeFirm website this morning. I've looked at that site in the past, but never really took the time to do any serious searching on it. The timing of this reminder couldn't have been better. I just happened to be thinking of a project where I wanted a way to gather data on a particular legal topic, written by lawyers, and it turns out that FeeFieFoeFirm just may help me turn that into a reality.

@AngelaJames and I just had an epiphany. A little bit of background. @AngelaJames just made friends on Twitter. She's the executive editor at Samhain Publishing, specializing in digital books. Anywhoo, she was twittering with some of her peers about a book I didn't know--Blood and Chocolate--and I know a lot of books! So I asked her to give me a review. On Twitter. In 140 characters or less. Suddenly, we both saw the possibilities of Twitter. I held my breath. In less than a minute, she twittered back a succinct plot line with her critique.

Teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn't know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

We then both realized the beauty of Twitter. It teaches you to write better faster. As one of my favorite lines by AJ Liebling goes, "I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better." Tweets refine your thinking, creativity, wit and writing. And, if done well, a twitter can be repurposed for elevator pitches, bylines, resumes and queries. Twitter: helping the cause of literacy one character at a time.