On Tuesday, May 22, the South Florida City Group of the Legal Marketing Association, Southeast Chapter will be hosting a meeting on an important topic affecting law firms and legal marketers, 11 ways to improve business development. The meeting, graciously hosted by Hunton & Williams, is being held at 1111 Brickell Avenue, Suite 2500.

William J. Flannery, J.D. with The WJF Institute,  will cover topics ranging from face-to-face business development to the implementation of worldwide global client-focused teams. This presentation is unique and focuses on best practices  from corporate sales, marketing and global account management to show what law firms can learn from their clients.

Bill’s presentation is the collective knowledge of 40 years in business development, sales, marketing and global account management. This presentation is designed for firms of all sizes, geographic locations and  practice areas. Bill has worked with 136 of the AMLAW 200 and law practices ranging from boutiques to sole practitioners to the very largest.

For more information on the event or to RSVP, please contact Jennifer Clarin at jclarin@boardroompr.com or (954) 370-8999, via SurveyMonkey, http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BMD3826. The event is $20 for LMA members and $40 for non-members.

We look forward to seeing you on May 22!

Handling negative online reviews may seem daunting—especially if you are a small business that relies on word-of-mouth referrals. Fortunately there are ways to mitigate the damage, even if you cannot get the misleading information removed.

Below are three tips we found helpful to defend your business’s reputation  from the American Express Open Forum. For the full article and all six tips click here.

Join the conversation
Get your side of the story out by responding to a negative review publicly, keeping in mind, maintain a professional tone.

Highlight the positive
Review sites, like Yelp, run submissions through an algorithm designed to determine their legitimacy. Suspect reviews—negative or positive—are hidden in the “Filter” section at the bottom of each page. Unfortunately, it is possible for legitimate, positive reviews to not make it past the filter. In your public response make sure to draw attention to all positive feedback that is currently hidden.

Develop a strategy for responding to threats
It is not too far-fetched to come up against a customer threatening to post damaging reviews if free work isn’t provided to them. It is important to plan for this. Sometimes it may make more sense to acquiesce to the customer’s demands than take legal action.

As a recent Miami Herald article explains: need a job? Clean up your Facebook.

The article, posted Tuesday notes, “In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.”  Now more than ever, it’s become increasingly important to keep your online persona squeaky clean— your job could literally depend on it.

And to even further drive the point home, the article explains that some companies such as Sears are using third party applications to get this access if you won’t hand it over yourself.

Here’s a quick check-list to remember how to be appropriate and properly brand yourself online:

1. If someone at work, notably a superior, “friends” you, they are probably not looking to actually be friends with you. Don’t feel shy about taking precautions and limiting your Facebook friendship. Don’t give your co-worker reason to have dirt on you.
2. Never have a picture of yourself drinking online. Even if you’re of age, it sends a poor message across.
3. Set a Google Alert for yourself so you can maintain control over your online image.
4. Remember that online tools can be your friend (as well as your foe). Use them as resources to enhance your knowledge and relationships.

Though the online sphere may be scary, if you know how to protect yourself, it can serve as a marketable skill that may just land you that job after all.

In the March issue of Estate, Parkland, and Weston Lifestyle Magazines, Boardroom Communications‘ Vice President Jennifer Clarin offers advice on how to select marketing companies to fit your needs.

“The process needs to be thorough and detailed. A team of executives draft a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a list of requirements, then pore over the responses.”

Jennifer explains that culture is often overlooked and it can be a key difference-maker in how a relationship bodes for the long haul. Whether they’ll get along often can be determined in the review process.

Check out Jennifer’s article for more tips.

With the New Year many companies are trying to enhance their business and create a stronger presence online.  You should too! According to a recent article in Open Forum, there are eight easy steps to boost your website on a budget.

The following are our top 5.

1. Maintaining a blog can do a lot for your business. They bring traffic to your website, stir discussion and keep the public interested.  Blogging is as easy as creating a free account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. If you already have a Website, your Webmaster or marketing firm can create a blog as part of your site.  Once the blogging tool is installed, just log in and start writing.

1. Don’t hesitate to register with a business-listing site.  Websites like Bing, Yahoo, Yelp and Google can help your business with website traffic through search engine optimization (SEO), and help increase the amount of times you are seen online.

1. Paying attention to key words helps with SEO.  The more precise your wording, the higher the probability of increasing traffic to your website, and prospectively more clients.  You can also use the Google Keywords Tool which allows you to check for searches that describe your business and will notify you with successful and unsuccessful keywords that resulted from the search.

1. Watching your analytics also helps with your online presence.  You can register with Google Analytics and search your blog posts to see which are faring well on your site and what specific keywords were used to accomplish it. This helps see which keywords work best and what types of information are read frequently on your website.

1. Adding social media tools should be a priority in today’s society.  Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Linked in are just a few of the names we hear on a daily basis in public relations.  These social media sites are very popular and effective tools in creating website presence.

To read more helpful tips, visit Open Forum’s website.

The holidays are here! Not only does that mean ’tis the season to be jolly with family and friends, but in the workplace as well.

By peppering your business with a little holiday spirit, you can revamp your brand image and inspire some holiday cheer in your customers.

Take Starbucks.

Its holiday marketing campaign, which debuted in November, features seasonal beverages like the “Peppermint Mocha” and “Gingerbread Latte” served up in special edition holiday cups.  This year, Starbucks has gone one step further with the Starbucks Cup Magic App, which allows coffee-drinkers to animate the action on their coffee cups on their smartphone screens.  The object, says VP-Global Digital Marketing for Starbucks, Alexandra Wheeler, is to both “surprise and delight” customers during this holiday season.

So get in the spirit! Here are some things you can do to make the holiday season a catalyst for your business:

-Deck the halls with boughs of holly! But seriously, some easy, simple decorations can go a long way.  By creating a fun, holiday atmosphere, your employees and customers alike will relish in the spirit of the season.

-Learn the holiday news cycle. To avoid missing out on an opportunity for your product or service in a publication, make sure you’re up to date on the editorial calendars well in advance to see what specific topics the media outlets will focus on during this holiday cycle.

-Wish your social media following a happy holidays. A simple tweet or Facebook post spreading the spirit will bring you back into sight and into mind.  Keeping up a rapport with those in the digital world (and continuing to maintain your online presence) is extremely important, especially now!

So enjoy this holiday season, and take advantage of the opportunity to enact some timely marketing strategies. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Our recent LMA media panel led by Boardroom COO Don Silver was a resounding success.  Panelists Julie Kay, Daily Business Review and Paul Brinkmann, South Florida Business Journal did a great job describing the best of the best and worst of the worst law firm crisis management war stories to an audience of mostly senior legal marketing pros at Greenberg Traurig’s Miami office.

The program was moderated by Don Silver, who led off with a brief primer on the top 10 ways that law firms can prepare themselves for and manage through a crisis.  The plan was to have Julie and Paul share a couple of examples of law firm crises they had covered in the past, but the discussion quickly turned into a roundtable with full audience participation.

Lessons learned for speakers and moderators:  Always be aware of what your audience wants.  That’s why the program was almost immediately opened up for member participation and the planned case study exorcise was set aside.

Those wishing to become involved in LMA’s South Florida CityGroup can contact Co-Chairs Jennifer Clarin of Boardroom Communications (954) 370-8999 or Susan Greene of  Becker & Poliakoff (954)985-4124.

Looking to better brand your business and generate more buzz? Public relations, social media and advertising may work. But in the busy South Florida and national product marketing landscape, a brand ambassador has your back.

A “brand ambassador” is an advocate who represents a brand in a positive way, says GC Marketing services. The ambassador is charged with expressing the message of a company to consumers – or to anyone who would benefit from learning about the brand being promoted. This could be done via on-air messaging or print advertising, or by using “street teams” of people who spread the word – and possibly product samples – into the community of targeted prospects. Think of the brand ambassador concept as a public relations / human resources hybrid – someone who both educates consumers regarding the brand, and promotes it with traditional and new and social media.

This advocate can be an executive or employee with the firm, a paid spokesman, or – best of all – a customer or client who truly believes in the company or its products. Transforming company employees into brand ambassadors is a logical starting point. Educated in the benefits of the product or service, they’re sent into the marketplace to touch consumers and prospects. For example, if you market a product targeting young adults, a college campus is a goldmine that can expand your target audience in a big way.

Your team would scout out “popular” kids or leaders on campus. In fact, this has grown into a nation-wide trend. “Companies from Microsoft on down are increasingly seeking out the big men and women on campus to influence their peers,” notes the New York Times in “On Campus, It’s One Big Commercial.”

Tapping into the college network connects a brand with young people who know the ins-and-outs of social media and how to “be cool.” Simultaneously, they grant you access to their Facebook friends, twitter followers, Greek organizations, and other various networks on campus. Barnes and Noble has a national Campus Ambassadors campaign, as does Luna Bars, Red Bull, and Hewlett-Packard, among others.

Whether you look to your current staffers or the student union, seek out social, friendly, captivating people to spread the word about your brand. Having a great product simply isn’t enough. You need to actively educate people as to your existence and what you have to offer.

And brand ambassadors can help carry that marketing load.

Much already has been written about Steve Jobs – his marketing genius, his control of public relations, his ability to skillfully meld the products he created with a pent-up consumer demand for those products (or so we thought once his products were released).

That was the brilliance of Jobs. To paraphrase something he once said, “It isn’t up to consumers to know what they want. It’s up to us to tell them.”

Steven Jobs was one of those transformative inventors who comes along once every few generations. Perhaps it is a testament to how much he touched so many that – as President Barack Obama commented – so many learned of Jobs’ passing on a device he had invented.

He was also a public relations and marketing mastermind. His retail success came from creating powerful products backed by the buzz that made people feel they must have those devices. Apple’s iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone wowed audiences when revealed in grand on-stage debuts – with Jobs as the emcee. Journalists were awed, and their articles reflected their amazement.

And we consumers bit – hard.

Apple didn’t need “traditional” consumer electronics marketing. The company consistently avoids major announcement hubs like the Consumer Electronics Show, notes PRdaily. He launched the hype – and sustained it.

Most (dare we say All-But-Apple) cannot afford to sidestep the major events. We bend over backwards to please our patrons, and play the retail merchandising game the way the industry has created it. Yet Jobs’ prowess in product development showed us that the brand dictates the trend – and not vice versa.

By developing one-of-a-kind products with unique messages to match, marrying art and technology in a way we’ve never seen before, Jobs dominated the technology industry. As the article explains, many described Apple products as “funky” and “snazzy,” showing their appreciation for the visual appearance of the tech.

Steve Jobs was quoted once as having said, “The customer is not right, I am.” Masterfully brilliant, unabashed in his view of the world, in every essence of the word, Steve Jobs – in his jeans and black, mock-turtleneck – didn’t just sell us things. He sold us dreams.

And if you were listening, he sold us a new roadmap to successful marketing.