Zen & The Art of Legal Networking

Week of January 30, 2012 on ILN Today - Roundup!

Lindsay Griffiths — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:17:11 -0500

Once again, we're at the end of another week and here for a content roundup! So without further ado...

PETERKA & PARTNERS Newsletter: Our colleagues in the Czech Republic bring us the latest news on the amendments to the Commercial and Labor Code, to the Act on Transformation of Companies and Cooperatives, to the Code of Administrative Justice, and to the Employment Act, along with new legislation on corporate criminal liability and increased fees for entries in the Land Register.
ILN Social Media Roundtable: This isn't legal content, but it comes straight from the marketers at ILN member firms - if you're wondering what the mid-sized firms in our Network are doing with social media, some of their challenges and triumphs, this is worth a read.
Not only is it reasonable but it is now obligatory: dilapidations from Fladgate LLP: Alison Mould of Fladgate discusses the courts recent adoption of the pre-action protocol for terminal schedules of dilapidation, thanks to ten years of efforts by the Property Litigation Association.

Connolly Bove Obtains ITC Ruling That Importation Of LIP Cigarette Wrappers Made by Julius Glatz and LIPtec Do Not Violate Any Valid Claims of Schweitzer-Mauduit Patents: Although this is a press release, it details the recent International Trade Commission's decision to reject Schweitzer-Mauduit International's allegations of infringement by Glatz and LIPtec. Congrats on the favorable outcome for CBLH's clients!
Target Settlement from Clark Wilson: Clark Wilson's Larry Munn follows up on a previous post about Target Brands trademark battle with the Candian owner of "TARGET."
3 new state data breach notification statutes from McDonald Hopkins: Unless you're totally off the grid (in which case, you're not reading this blog!), you have concerns about data privacy. In this alert, McDonald Hopkins discuses the amendments to breach notification obligations in California, Illinois and Texas, and what companies may need to consider to comply.
Newsletter 03 – Rechtliche und steuerliche Neuigkeiten in Frankreich – Januar 2012 from Lefevre Pelletier & associes: Lefevre's latest newsletter (available in German) covers legislation regarding the French real estate fund (OPCI) and the tax implications.
Buying art and avoiding disputes from Fladgate: Paul Howcroft: In his latest post, Fladgate's Paul Howcroft answers the question of how to avoid disputes when buying art.
Massachusetts judge says zip code is personal identification information from McDonald Hopkins: We saw another data privacy alert (one of three this week!) from McDonald Hopkins, this one discussing the recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that held that a zip code is a personal identification number.
ACQUISITIONS IN CHINA : ASSET OR SHARE DEAL? from Lefevre Pelletier & associes: Lefevre Pelletier details how to obtain a foothold in China through acquisitions, either via a capital interest or the purchase of assets.

Happy Friday!

ILN-terviews: Dimpy Mohanty, LexCounsel Law Offices

Lindsay Griffiths — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:36:59 -0500

Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network. For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Dimpy Mohanty of our member firm LexCounsel Law Offices in New Delhi, India.

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
Responsive and business-oriented.

Who would be your typical client?
One looking for advice which is well-rounded and covers diverse practice areas.

What would you like clients and potential clients to know about you?
That we at LexCounsel offer practical solutions based on, but not bogged down by a narrow reading of, law.

What has been your most challenging case? Why?
A transaction involving the transfer of an educational institution to a client. Other than the complexity of the matter stemming from the education sector being a highly regulated sector, the matter required bringing in the skills of a UN diplomat! The older generation of the transferring family was (i) sentimentally attached to the institution which they had founded and hence prone to heart stopping frequent doubts, and (ii) being ignorant of the due diligence process, regarded every request for information and documents as an act of distrust and invasion of privacy.

What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer?
There has been so much joy, but the proudest I believe it is still to come.

What do you do when you’re not practicing law?
Read, travel, watch the world.

What would surprise people most about you?
Initially, that I am a woman - since my name is not suggestive of my gender. Later, that I have an inordinate capacity for and store of trivia.

What has been your most memorable ILN experience?
It’s the fellowship which ensures that you seek out fellow ILN members even at non-ILN events – the most recent being chasing down a fellow member through five days, multiple venues and over 3000 delegates at the IBA conference to meet finally on the last day.

What career would you have chosen if you weren’t a lawyer?
Public Relations, Writing, Mystery Shopping or a combination of all three.

If a movie were made of your life, who would you want to play you?
Sandra Bullock.

How would you like to be remembered?
As someone who could be counted on.

Rainmaking Recommendation from Jaimie Field: I didn't know you did that

Lindsay Griffiths — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:11:16 -0500

Today, I'm bringing you another excellent rainmaking recommendation from expert Jaimie Field - "I didn't know you did that."

“Why don’t clients come back?”

Recently, I received an email from a litigation attorney from Connecticut who asked the question above. It seems that some clients of the firm who seemed happy with the work the attorneys of the firm were doing were going elsewhere for subsequent representation.

So I dedicate this and the next few Rainmaking Recommendations to this attorney with thanks.

Over the next few emails we will cover the reasons why clients don’t come back and how to ensure they do:

Rainmaking Recommendation # 51: “I didn’t know you did that”

Reason #1 Why Client’s don’t Come Back: “I didn’t know you did that”

One of the most frequently heard reason that clients don’t come back is that they don’t know all of your (and your firms) legal capabilities. If you have ever heard a client subsequently say: “I didn’t know your firm did that,” you have experienced this problem.

However, one of the objections that I hear is that from the attorney is that they told them in the initial consultation that they (or their firm) could represent the client in many different matters.

You need to understand, when a client comes in to your office, they are usually focused on one issue; the one problem they are currently experiencing. This causes them to truly not hear anything else but what applies to this situation. I mean literally. The only thing they want to hear is how you can help them with this problem; what is going to stop their pain. Anything else you tell them will go in one ear and out the other.

Then you, the attorney, become “tunnel-visioned” - busy schedules, other matters and clients, court, briefs, yada yada yada - which causes you to neglect to remind them of all of your other abilities.

This is why you need to consistently and constantly tell them over the course of the representation all of your (and your firm’s) capabilities. After you have met them, during the course of your representation, and following the conclusion of your matter, you need to keep reminding them how you can assist them with the other matters that may come up in their lives in the future.

Use newsletters, connect with them on Social Media sites, send personal messages, ask for feedback. Each time you contact a current client using Rainmaking and Marketing tactics to remind them of all that you can help them with to make their lives better, you ensure that if something comes up with which you can assist, they will remember to contact you.

Rainmaking Recommendations are sent the first and third Wednesdays of the month. They are bite size tips that when implemented will cause you to make rain. To learn more about Rainmaking, Goal Setting and Achieving the Life you want as an Attorney please contact Jaimie B. Field, Esq. If you have missed any of the previous Rainmaking Recommendations you can find them at www.jaimiefield.com The Enlightened Rainmaker Blog

ILN Marketing Roundtable: What has been your greatest social media success?

Lindsay Griffiths — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:54:26 -0500

This afternoon, we released the publication of our ILN Marketing Specialty Group's Social Media Roundtable. If you'd like to read the roundtable in full, you can find it here. However, I thought it might be interesting to examine each of the questions and their responses through Zen, and invite our readers to contribute their own thoughts to the discussion!

The first question we posed was "What has been your greatest social media success?"

Simone Fell: Our lawyers operate Megawatt (a Renewable Energy blog), The Legalist (a blog hosted on BC Business’s site and focused on employment issues), the Canadian Trademark law blog (IP issues) and BCBlawg (business and IP litigation, run by one of our associates). We are also starting up an Estates & Trusts blog within the next few weeks. The firm has LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus accounts. We still have a long way to go in building our social media presence, but a number of bloggers and journalists are connected to us through these vehicles and have approached us for commentary or republished our posts/tweets. Links to some of our blogs are featured as ‘resources’ on different industry sites. This has definitely raised the profile of certain individuals, increased the number of subscribers to our newsletters and improved SEO by driving traffic to our main website.

John Buchanan: Probably blogs. Even though we only have one blog currently (a former associate started a blog that was so successful that he left the firm to be a consultant to the mortgage insurance industry), blogs, I think, can be a great way to provide useful content to current clients and todemonstrate depth of knowledge and experience in a way that’s different from your typical marketing materials. We’ve also found that reporters are using bloggers more and more as sources for stories – so blogs can be an important component of your strategic media relations program.

Jeffrey Hild: I believe our General Counselor blog has been an excellent first blog for our firm. General Counselor is an employment law blog for in-house attorneys, business owners and executives with special attention to Illinois employment law. The blog is maintained by attorneys within our Labor & Employment Law practice group. We have also been quite pleased with the RSS feed submission techniques we have employed to optimize our Web site with search engines and drive traffic to our site.

Miriam Hackmey & Kobie Refaeli: Our Labor Law department owns and operates a very active

Linkedin group under the title "Labor Law Israel". The group was created about a year ago and now has 368 members. The platform is being used to promote the Firm's expertise in this field and enables the department to circulate news and updates to targeted audience without having to

overcome anti-spam restrictions. Additionally, we already held two professional meetings to which we invited the group members. These meeting were a great success. Based on the success of the Labor Law group, our Firm recently created another group in the field of Internet and Computer Law. Another use of social media is the Events platform available through Linkedin by which we can circulate various events held by the Firm.

McDonald Hopkins: Launching and managing all of our social media channels would be considered our greatest success. We actively participate and post on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and we have just launched a Labor and Employment blog. With so many different channels, we have been able to keep our messaging consistent as well as post useful information to our followers, fans, clients, and groups.

Thanks so much to all of our respondents for their valuable comments. What has been your firm's greatest social media success?

LMA Attendees - the Twitter Edition!

Lindsay Griffiths — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:19:23 -0500

It's that time of year again - the LMA Annual Conference is coming up in March! It's a great opportunity to make new friends and renew relationships, so I thought I'd keep a list of those attending as I'm advised, as well as their Twitter names (so anyone interested in the conference who can't attend can follow along). Also, don't forget to follow #LMA12 for more information on the conference and during the sessions.

If you'd like to follow along with a twitter list, check out my list of LMA attendees!

Lindsay Griffiths (@lindsaygriffith)
Kate Lutes (@kklutes)
Laura Gutierrez (@lalaland999)
Jill Clark Rako (@JillRako)
Gina Rubel (@GinaRubel)
Laura Powers (@lppowers)
Gail Lamarche (@gaillamarche)
Heather Morse (@heather_morse)
Megan McKeon (@meganmckeon)
Stacey McGuire (@smcguire13)
Jonathan Groner (@jgronerpr)
Kathryn Whitaker (@KBWhit)

Sue Sassmann (@SueSassmann)
Sonny Cohen (@sonnycohen)
Jennifer Simpson (@jenniferlinn)
Jenna O'Connor (@JennaKate413)
Nancy Myrland (@nancymyrland)
Marcy Salo (@marcysalo)
Jennifer Johnson (@jjohnsonNYC)

Week of January 23, 2012 on ILN Today - Roundup!

Lindsay Griffiths — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:38:29 -0500

It's time for another roundup here on a rainy Friday morning in New Jersey!

Once again we're seeing some excellent content coming out of our member firms from around the world - I highly recommend checking out these articles and blog posts. I'm switching over entirely to a top 10 each week, so without further ado, here's your roundup for this week!

Digital IP and the Supreme Court of Canada Crookes v. Newton from Fogler Rubinoff: In this article, IP expert, Colleen Spring Zimmerman examines the sticky issue of hyperlinks with respect to libel in the case of Crookes v Newton, and the potential ramifications for copyright issues.
Trends 2012: Employment tribunals from Fladgate LLP: Lou Marshall of Fladgate LLP discusses an employment tribunal's recent award to Dr. Eva Michalak, the measures being implemented by the government in April as part of a tribunal review, and things to be aware of.

NLRB Increases Scrutiny of Employer Restrictions on Employee Social Media Usage from Epstein Becker & Green: Ana Salper looks at the NLRB's second report, which describes cases reviewed by the office of its acting General Counsel. She identifies the two main points that the report underscores for employers, as well as the line between which employee communications via social media are protected, and which are not.
Beware potential liabilities of multiemployer pension plans from McDonald Hopkins: McDonald Hopkins' John M. Wirtshafter discusses the potential liabilities of multiemployer pension plans, and what employers can do to protect their companies.
Putting The Accent On .CA Domains from Clark Wilson: Clark Wilson discusses the Canadian Internet Registration Authority's recent report on the results of their consultation on the proposed implementation of .CA domains with French characters.
PPS ready or PPS worried? from Gadens Lawyers: Jon Denovan discusses Australia's new Personal Property Security regime, which comes into force on January 30, 2012. He details what types of companies will be affected, what is required, and how important the new legislation will be.
Business Outlook Survey from McDonald Hopkins: Carl Grassi shares the results of the firm's 2012 business outlook survey, with the headline that "Modest improvements in business conditions expected in 2012 despite growing frustrations with Congress." The ten-question survey is emailed to the firm's clients during the first weeks of the year, and offers some fascinating insights.
A Closer Look At Environmental Regulations & Health Care Facilities from Epstein Becker & Green: Sheila Woolson guests posts at the Toxic Tort Litigation Blog, where she "analyzes the potential CERLCA liability of medical facilities for the disposal of non-medical solid waste and makes practical recommendations concerning how medical facilites can limit their CERCLA exposure."
STAMP DUTY AND ITS EFFECT ON TRANSACTIONS from Halsbury Chambers: Halsbury Chambers' Colin Thompson discusses the stamp duty in the Bahamas, its effects on land and business transactions, which transactions are subject, and exemptions.
NLRB forces employers to review arbitration agreements from McDonald Hopkins: Brendan Fitzgerald authors another post on the NLRB, who have turned their attention to employer-employee arbitration agreements.

Happy reading, and happy Friday!

Week of January 16, 2012 on ILN Today - Roundup!

Lindsay Griffiths — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:33:13 -0500

Happy Friday everyone, and happy Chinese New Year to our colleagues in Asia!

It's that time again - time for a weekly roundup of some of the great content we're seeing over on ILNToday. And even though it was a short week for some, there is no shortage of material coming from our attorneys!

Since we did have so many interesting pieces come out this week, I'm going to give you a top ten instead of a top five (aren't you lucky?).

An Olympic Headache for employers? from Fladgate LLP: While Londerners are excited for the Olympic games to start this summer, there are some legitimate concerns that employers need to be aware of. Fladgate investigates some of those here.
Vodafone Triumphs – SC Holds Tax Authority Has No Jurisdiction Over Overseas Transaction from LexCounsel: LexCounsel discusses the Supreme Court of India's landmark judgment, which set aside the Bombay High Court's decision that Indian tax authorities were right to assess Vodafone for Indian tax liabilities in their $11 billion acquisition of Hutchinson's 67% equity share in the Cayman Islands.
Gaga about the FLSA from McDonald Hopkins: Who can resist a post that references Lady Gaga? Here, Miriam Rosen of McDonald Hopkins examines the lawsuit filed by Lady Gaga's personal assistant, Jennifer O'Neill, in the light of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

New rules on licensing of the pharmaceutical activity in Russia from Lidings Law Firm: In this article, Lidings discusses the key issues surrounding the new rules on licensing of pharmaceutical activity in Russia, particularly what constitutes pharmaceutical activity, the governing authorities, the requirements, and how to obtain a pharmacy license.
OIG Publishes Solicitation for Comments on New and Modified Safe Harbors Under the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute and New OIG Special Fraud Alerts; Proposals Due by 2/27/12 from Epstein Becker & Green: Epstein Becker & Green's Leah A. Roffman talks about the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services' annual notice, which solicits recommendations and proposals for developing new and modifying existing safe harbors under the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute and developing new OIG Special Fraud Alerts. She discusses the Anti-Kickback Statute's Safe Harbor provisions, OIG Special Fraud Alerts, and the considerations for all participants in the healthcare community.
Occupy the web? from Fladgate: Surprisingly, the only post from our attorneys this week about SOPA and PIPA comes from across the pond. Our colleagues at Fladgate give an overview of the US bills, which leads into a discussion of recent legislation and decisions in Europe affecting the issue of piracy.
More social media worries for employers from McDonald Hopkins: Brendan Fitzgerald examines the recent decision in the case Maremont v. Susan Fredman Design Group, LTD, which sheds light on a possible new avenue of concern for employers regarding social media - whether employers can and should use employees' personal social media accounts to promote their company if that employee is unable to do so.
Indian Courts Act Tough on Social Networking Sites from LexCounsel Law Offices: LexCounsel also looks at social media issues, discussing recent strong stance by a Delhi court judge, who has ordered twenty-one social networking sites to remove "anti-religious" and "anti-social" content by February 6, 2012. They have threatened to go so far as China in blocking sites, so this will be a situation to watch.
Business Law Communiqué from Robinson Sheppard Shapiro: In this edition of their business law newsletter, Robinson Sheppard Shapiro covers topics including the impact of the new Québec Business Corporations Act and Legal Publicity Act, notice of termination of employment in Québec, the latest pronouncements from the Court of Appeal, Demand Loans and other RSS Business News.
Be it snake oil or social media, transparency is recommended from Davis & Gilbert: To confirm that I'm not the only one talking about social media, here is yet another piece on the subject from the ILN's Davis & Gilbert. In his article for PR Week, Gary Kibel talks about the fine line between creative publicity tactics and deceptive practices with regard to social media.

Happy Friday!

Rainmaking Recommendation from Jaimie Field: Put the Social in Social Media

Lindsay Griffiths — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:01:26 -0500

Today, I'm bringing you another excellent rainmaking recommendation from expert Jaimie Field - put the social in social media.

Are you using Twitter? Facebook? Linked In? Google +? Or any of the hundreds of websites that are considered “social media?”

Great!

If you haven’t gotten on board yet with Social Media sites, understand this – Social media is not a fad. It is not going away. It continues to evolve as a method of meeting new people whom you may have never gotten a chance to meet any other way. I have personally become friendly with people from all over the world because of social media. I have also gotten new clients because of this medium.

Social Media can be very only useful when you learn these two basic rules first:

People do business with people they know like and trust: This means that you must be authentic and real even when you are behind a computer screen.
You must learn to interact with people while on Social Media: it’s not about just
pushing your agenda and information out for the masses. That is called advertising.
Use social media to engage with the people whom you follow/friend/”link-in”. You
have the opportunity to get advice, information and leads from people who may
know more than you. Additionally, you have the chance to show what you know.

Finally, getting “social on social media” also means taking it offline. Believe it or not, a lot of people pretend to be something they are not online (please read that last line with heavy sarcasm). Once you think you have a connection with someone online ask them to meet
for a cup of coffee (if they are local) or call them on the phone to hear their voice. Use social
media to invite others to events to meet you. Only then will you have the opportunity to
turn these people into prospects, referral sources or clients because only then you will
have the opportunity to find out if they really are who they say they are.

While there is much more to using social media effectively to obtain new clients, referral
sources or prospects, following these first two rules will help you get started with using social media
as a Rainmaking Method.

__________

Rainmaking Recommendations are sent the first and third Wednesdays of the month. They are bite size tips that when implemented will cause you to make rain. To learn more about Rainmaking, Goal Setting and Achieving the Life you want as an Attorney please contact Jaimie B. Field, Esq. If you have missed any of the previous Rainmaking Recommendations you can find them at www.jaimiefield.com The Enlightened Rainmaker Blog

Tips for Tuesday - LinkedIn

Lindsay Griffiths — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:19:00 -0500

This afternoon, I had the pleasure of sitting in on the Legal Marketing Association's Social Media Special Interest Group's (a long name, so we shorten it to LMA Social Media SIG) first webinar. Our presenters today were my friends Gail Lamarche, the Director of Marketing for Henderson Franklin and Laura Gutierrez, Marketing Multimedia Communications Coordinator with Winthrop & Weinstine.

Their focus? One of my favorite social media topics - LinkedIn!

I won't recap the entire webinar, since participation in the SIG, and as a result, access to the webinars, is a benefit of membership in the Legal Marketing Association. But I did learn some great tips from Laura and Gail, which I wanted to share with you.

Use LinkedIn for research: During my LinkedIn series, I talked a bit about this in terms of following your clients' companies to stay up to date on what they're doing. But Laura suggested that you use LinkedIn any time you're meeting with someone new - look up their profile and see what extra information you can garner. Maybe they're runners and you have that in common, or maybe they're a photographer too - find those common bonds that show that you're really invested in that person and use them to connect when you meet face to face.
Put your summary and job experiences in the first person: I assumed this went without saying, but as soon as they pointed it out, I realized what a big pet peeve of mine this is. LinkedIn (and other social network tools) are, by definition, social. People want to talk to YOU, not to a third person - LinkedIn isn't your website biography, so be bold and write as yourself!
Lead by example: This one was particularly directed at law firm marketers, because as Laura pointed out, you can't counsel and advise your attorneys on how to use social media if you don't have an active presence yourself. It not only helps you learn the tools better, it shows you to be an expert to your attorneys.
Open is better: It is true that privacy is a valid concern for social media. However, just because you're on a social media site, doesn't mean that you have to share everything. And some sites are designed to be more private than others - for example, Facebook is often a far more personal site, so if you want to make that super private, that's fine. But LinkedIn is considered to be the most professional social network, and this is where your clients and prospects are going to look when they're doing their due diligence on you. If all they can see of your LinkedIn profile is your name, they're likely not going to go to the effort of connecting to you. So if you're going to spend all that time inputting your information into your LinkedIn profile, make sure it's accessible so the right people can see it!
LinkedIn creates a dialogue: The more you post to LinkedIn and your other social networks, the more opportunity you have to create a dialogue with your connections. Gail related the story of one of her attorneys who came to her to find out more about the Twitter hashtags and names that were included in her LinkedIn updates - it gave her an opportunity to educate that attorney and connect to him (in person). I've found the same to be true with our attorneys - because of my social media activities, I've connected to ILN attorneys who aren't attendees of our conferences or regularly involved with the group - they share articles that I can use to highlight their practices (and learn more about them in the meantime!), and it makes them feel more comfortable coming to me with questions about referring work and how to best leverage their membership. Everyone wins!
LinkedIn & RSS: The LinkedIn updates that appear on your home page can be extracted as an RSS feed - this means that you can include these updates in the reader that you're using for the blogs you read. That way, you don't have to remember to regularly visit the LinkedIn site, and you're staying up to date on what your contacts are doing, so that you can visit LinkedIn and comment only on those things that are relevant to you as they come up.
Would you say that to your grandmother?: One of the best tips was to only post things that would be suitable for your grandmother to read (across the board; yes, even on Facebook). While my grandmother may not be on Facebook, I'm friends with my college roommate's grandparents there, so that's always a good check for me - and it's good advice for you too. Laura cautioned that LinkedIn especially is closely tied to your employer - you're listed as an employee of the company and your profile includes information about your position there. So if you have even a *little* inkling of hesitation about posting something (whether in your profile, in a status update, in an answer to a question, etc), don't post it. Similarly, be VERY careful when using humor or talking about politics or religion - without the benefit of tone of voice and facial expressions, things can very easily be misconstrued online.

Laura and Gail offered some excellent advice to the attendees - I invite all LMA members with an interest in social media to check out the group and join in the conversations on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages!

Week of January 9, 2012 on ILNToday - A Roundup

Lindsay Griffiths — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:29:17 -0500

It has been one busy week on ILNToday, with some excellent contributions from our members around the world! My top five posts for this week are:

Intellectual Property Bulletin of Kochanski Zieba Rapala & Partners: Our Polish experts at Kochanski Zieba Rapala & Partners delve into IP issues covering the question of whether opposition proceedings in a European patent case would have an impact on the Polish equivalent patent, and single color protection as trademark protection, which considers the details of the Louboutin case in the US.
International Litigation in London: Paul Howcroft of Fladgate is best known for his commentary on art law, but here, he gives us his litigation roundup for 2011 in London.
The Government of India has on January 10, 2012 relaxed the Foreign Direct Investment ("FDI") policy to allow 100% FDI in single brand retail trading activities: An excellent update from LexCounsel in New Delhi, India on the latest news in Foreign Direct Investment in India.
Here we go again: IRS reopens voluntary disclosure program for offshore accounts and assets: McDonald Hopkins addresses the details of the IRS' latest voluntary disclosure program, including the requirements and penalties.
The So-Called "Rule of 10": A Myth about OSHA's Lack of Jurisdiction Over Small Employers: Epstein Becker & Green's Eric J. Conn and Amanda R. Strainis-Walker dispel the myth that OSHA does not have jurisdiction over employers or workplaces with fewer than 10 employees and goes through the list of partial exemptions.

It was difficult to choose only five posts this week, so I highly recommend that you take a look at ilntoday.com to see what else might be of interest to you - our attorneys have authored content on everything from employment law, to intellectual property to health law, and more!

This week on ILNToday - A Roundup

Lindsay Griffiths — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:40:11 -0500

In 2012, we're starting a new category of post here on Zen - the roundup! We've got a LOT of fabulous content coming in from our attorneys over at our main site, and I'll be giving you the highlights weekly. Normally, I'll be doing these on Fridays, but I took the day off last Friday to give myself a three day birthday weekend, so you're getting TWO posts this week instead!

NLRB again delays union rights posting requirement (McDonald Hopkins): McDonald Hopkins reports on the National Labor Relations Board's second delay for the posting date of the new notice that advises employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The new dates is April 30, 2012.
Ohio Supreme Court Attorney-Client Privilege Ruling (McDonald Hopkins): McDonald Hopkins discusses the Ohio Supreme Court decision in The State ex rel. Dawson v. Bloom-Carroll Local School District, which holds that attorney-client privilege extends to communications between an insurance company and the counsel for the insured. They cover the facts and reasoning underlying the case, as well as the implications of the decision.
Employment Law Trends that Will Affect Financial Companies in 2012 (Epstein Becker & Green): Epstein Becker & Green's John Fullerton III talks about five employment trends that may be hot button issues in the financial industry in 2012.
Top Legal Issues for the Hospitality Industry to Watch in 2012 (Epstein Becker & Green): Epstein Becker & Green's Matthew Sorenson breaks down five issues that may impact the hospitality industry in 2012, as well as what lessons hospitality employers can take away from these.
Labor: Developing formal orientation programs for new employees (Arnstein & Lehr): Arnstein & Lehr's E. Jason Tremblay talks about the why and how of setting up formal orientation programs for new employees.

Happy reading!

Guest Post: What Santa Claus Can Teach Us About Rainmaking

Lindsay Griffiths — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:29:15 -0500

WIth the end of the year wrap-up, and still recovering from the stitches in my finger, I'm sharing another post from my friend and rainmaking expert, Jaimie Field, esq. In 2009, she published this post, "What Santa Claus Can Teach You About Being a Great Rainmaker."

So without further ado...

That jolly ol’ white-bearded, chubby guy in the red velvet suit with the fur trim is a better Rainmaker than you. While his clients, children, may not be your target market, if you acquire his characteristics and take some on his abilities to bring in new clients and make them advocates for life, you can become the Rainmaker he is.

Santa Claus is everywhere:

Turn around after Thanksgiving and you cannot help but run into Santa or his image. He is on street corners, in malls, on TV; you just can’t help seeing the guy everywhere you go. Everyone knows who Santa is when they see or hear about him.

Take that example and start being seen by the clients you want to work with. There are so many marketing tactics which can be used which will get your name out – blogging, public speaking, social networking, in-person networking. If your potential clients do not know who you are, how are they going to hire you?

Santa knows his target market

Santa’s target market is children. This hasn’t changed in the hundreds of years that Santa has been Rainmaking. He doesn’t target adults; he knows that teenagers no longer believe in him so why even bother marketing to them, he stays within his target market year after year.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of new children reach the age when they learn about Santa. They learn that Santa gives gifts to good boys and girls, they learn that he represents the joys of the season, they learn about self-less giving and as a result, they become part of his new market.

Decide what your target market is, then join the appropriate associations, read blogs, magazines and research the members of this market; read, offer to write, speak or answer the questions your target market has.

Santa Claus always knows what his clients want.

This is not difficult for Santa; every year parents tell their children to write a letter to the big guy asking for what they want. They bring their child to the mall, seat the little one on Santa’s lap and Santa asks the all important question: “And what do YOU want for Christmas?”

The most important thing you can do is to find out what your client wants. As attorneys, we sometimes believe we know what is good for our clients and we often tell them. Instead, a great Rainmaker asks what their client is seeking and then tries to find a way to provide that to them (obviously within theframework of an ethical and legal practice of law).

Santa always gives selflessly

Santa gives presents to all the good boys and girls. He never asks for any in return. As a result, his clients come back year after year, clamoring for more of his generosity.

Begin to be generous with your clients. Find ways to give back to the people who have become loyal to you by donating to a client’s favorite charity, offering a discount or just some free advice. The good will you engender will cause this client to continue to use you as their advocate.

He knows if you’ve been bad or good.

How Santa knows this, I am not sure. The fact is that we grew up with this idea that Santa just knows.

Your clients know this too and you will lose them if you are not “Good.” “Good” to them means that you are answering their phone calls, responding to them in a timely fashion, reassuring them regarding their cases. What most clients want is to be acknowledged. (You can also be sure if one client knows you have been “bad,” many more will know as well.)

Santa has the best Word-of Mouth Marketing

Generation after generation knows about Santa. When the child becomes a parent, he or she passes down the knowledge of Santa to their children.

Rainmakers understand this as well. When you do a good job for your clients, when you go above and beyond for them, rest assured that the word will get out and others will be calling you to help them with their cases as well.

Santa Claus is the ultimate Rainmaker, emulate him and you will not only have a jolly holiday and a happy New Year, but a great practice as well.

Rainmaking Recommendation from Jaimie Field, Esq. - The Why of Goal Setting

Lindsay Griffiths — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:47:42 -0500

Never fear, Zen readers, I have not forgotten about our Twitter tutorials! However, I had a minor mishap with an exacto knife and Christmas gifts the other night, which has left me with five stitches in my left index finger, making it rather painful to type long posts! So between all of my recent travel and my latest clumsiness, you'll have to wait just a bit longer for the latest installment.

In the meantime, I'd like to bring you another tip from my friend and Rainmaking expert, Jaimie Field of Marketing Field. You can see her previous rainmaking recommendations here or you can sign up to receive them right in your email inbox on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. I highly recommend doing that - they're always excellent!

On to her recommendation!

Rainmaking Recommendation #47: The Ubiquitous Goal Setting Recommendation

Around this time of year, every person who works in the personal development business, law firm marketing and rainmaking training is writing posts on how to set goals for your next year. In fact, if you Google “Goal Setting” and just set the search parameters for this month, you will see 213,000,000 hits.

This rainmaking recommendation is not about “How” to set goals. My blog is filled with how (as is any of the sites on the web when you Google the term) using the SMARTY technique.

This is about the “Why” to set goals.

Here are my top three reasons:

Provide you with direction: Think of your life like a GPS. When you use your GPS to get directions to where you want to go, you have to input your destination. Goals are like this. They provide you with an idea of where you want to go in your legal career. When you set goals, particularly in writing, it also allows you to “recalculate” when you run into obstacles or detours to get to the end point. (Thank you to Karen Jacobson, “The GPS Girl” for this analogy).
Provides you with Motivation: When you write down the goals you really want to achieve and break them into the small steps to get to the end, every stage you accomplish gives you that extra push to get to the end. There is nothing more satisfying than literally crossing off a task on your list that will help you reach your goal.
Increase Productivity: When you know what want to accomplish – your goals - and have the steps to get there in writing – your tasks - you can increase your productivity. For the most part, when people walk into their offices, they allow the day to dictate what they do. You have the ability to increase your productivity when you know exactly what to do and when to do it.

When you can understand the “Why” to set goals, the “How” becomes easy.

_________

What are you Thankful For?

Lindsay Griffiths — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:14:09 -0500

During this holiday season, we can easily get caught up in the hustle and bustle of trying to find the right gift, baking as many cookies as possible, and saying yes to every party invitation we receive. But recently, I've seen a lot of posts about gratitude and how to spend the holiday season helping others, and that reminds me of what I like best about Christmas (which is what I celebrate; for you, it may be something else!) - slowing down and thinking about what I'm really thankful for as this year winds up.

Of course, there are many things in my personal life that I'm thankful for - the birth of my newest niece, and becoming her godmother, getting to spend so much time with my nieces that the oldest one gives me hugs for no reason, welcoming a new puppy into my home, which had the extra effect of calming my older dog's anxiety, having a roof over my head, food in my home, and a job to go to every day.

But there are also some professional blessings I'd like to take a moment to share with you today - and I'd love to hear about your gratitude lists in the comments!

I'm grateful for:

- A job that allows me to travel the world, and work with talented people in countries I never dreamed of visiting.

- Clients who welcome me into their homes as a friend when I'm in their city.

- Celebrating the wedding of two of my clients, and being invited to the wedding of another.

- Receiving a hand-written thank you note from a client for sending him some photos from a recent conference.

- An employer who has faith in my work ethic and passion enough to humor my various projects - which resulted in a Your Honor Award in 2009 for a series of legal cartoons and great success in social media in a field where a lot of law firms are banning sites like Facebook.

- A job that encourages me, and sometimes pushes me, to step way out of my comfort zone, both mentally and physically (a la hiking a mountain in southern California as one of our attorneys' wives held onto my arm because of my fear of heights!).

- The challenge to find new and creative ways for our firms to work together in the new year.

- And you, dear readers, who give me a reason to write. I've always had a lot to say, and now I have a place to say it!

What are you most thankful for this year?

Rainmaking Recommendation from Jaimie Field, Esq.

Lindsay Griffiths — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:33:09 -0500

I've been preparing for (and am now away for) our 2011 Regional Meeting of the Americas here in Newport Beach. I'll be writing more on that soon, but while I'm otherwise engaged, I wanted to share with you an email that I got this morning from my friend and Rainmaking expert, Jaimie Field of Marketing Field. You can see her previous rainmaking recommendations here or you can sign up to receive them right in your email inbox on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. I highly recommend doing that - they're always excellent!

On to her recommendation!

Rainmaking Recommendation #46: The Reasons You aren’t becoming a Rainmaker

There are only two reasons why you aren’t becoming a Rainmaker.

1. You don’t know what to do

If this is the case there are many things you can do:

· Take a class,

· Read a book,

· Ask a mentor,

· Hire a Rainmaking Coach

And

2. You aren’t doing the things you need to do on a constant and consistent basis.

As with many of my clients, I suspect this is the main reason.

If this is the case there are things you can do:

Create a plan and stick to it,
Schedule your rainmaking activities and make them inviolable appointments

with and for yourself.

Rainmaking requires that you are constantly doing the things you need to do to create relationships with others and turning those relationships into new business.

Twitter Tutorials - Anatomy of the Home Page Part III

Lindsay Griffiths — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:49:37 -0500

We have looked at a LOT of information about Twitter this week, and we'll finish out the week with our final post on the anatomy of the home page.

Yesterday, we continued our conversation about the left hand column, which focuses on the tweets in your stream, replies, retweets, searches, and lists (which I'll cover in a later post). So today, we're going to take a look at the right hand column.

The right hand column serves as a sort of Twitter snapshot for the day, from your perspective.

Let's see what this looks like:

At the top of this column is a count of how many tweets you have posted. For me, this is 14,394 (I know, it's a lot). This number is hyperlinked, so that when you click on it, you're taken to your profile page, which includes more information about you:

Back on the right hand column of the home page, the next line down is your most recent tweet, including when it was sent. The time on this is also hyperlinked, and you can click on that for more information:

The right hand column then has a quick overview of how many people you are following and are following you - I am following 2,343 people, and I'm being followed by 3,409 people. Beneath these numbers, I can see the avatars of the five most recent accounts that I've followed and been followed by. I can click on any of these pictures to see that person's profile information:

And I can also click on either of the numbers to see the full list of those I'm following...

And for those who follow me!

From each of these pages, you can see that I can follow people (which I'm already doing on the "following" page), and I have that same drop down menu next to each of their profile information:

I can @ message this person, add them to a list, block them, or report them for spam. You'll also note that on each of these pages, I can see the Twitter name, full name, and profile information of each of the accounts that I'm following or are following me.

In case I may have missed someone who followed me, and I would find following them useful, this is a good place to start. It's also a good way to review the people you're following and unfollow anyone that is no longer useful to you. You do this by just clicking the "Following" button next to their profile, which turns into "Unfollow" when you mouseover it.

Below the numbers of followers and followees, we have "Trends."

Trends are the current topics that are showing up most often in people's tweets. As you can see, my list of trends defaults to those in the US. If I'd like to change this, I can click on "Change" and a new window pops up:

I can either select from this group of locations within the US, or I can click on "Worldwide" at the top - I can then stay with the general "worldwide" trends, by clicking the "x" in the upper right corner of the window, or I can select one of the countries that is listed.

I'll go back to US for now.

When we look at the trends, you'll notice that the top one is "promoted" - that means that a company has paid Twitter to push this to the top of the list, and it's not necessarily a "most talked about" topic. The others are organically generated, so in my mind, they have greater value.

You'll also notice that some of these have hashtags and some don't - Twitter changed their search capabilities over a year ago to better search keywords without requiring the hash.

So let's take a look at a couple of the trends - I'm wishing I wrote this post yesterday morning, when Daniel Craig was trending (he's my favorite actor), but we'll just have to make do with the options we have. We'll take a look at both a hashtag trend and a non-hashtag trend.

The first one, "#LiesThatAlwaysWorked" is a hashtag trend. To see what people are saying about that, we'll click on it - doing so works effectively like a Twitter search, in that you're brought to a page that lists all the tweets referencing that hashtag. It includes tweets from people that you are not following:

Hashtag trends like these are normally clever phrases or jokes that people are putting up - like participating in some big email chain that you add to. They can be fun and funny, and as you can see, they can fit in well for a brand if you have someone clever behind the account - a la Superman Tweets.

You have the option of saving this search, as we did yesterday, if you wanted to be able to come back to it.

Now, we'll look at a non-hashtag trend, also by clicking on the trend link -

I love Christmas, yes, even in November, so we're taking a look at this one. You can see all recent tweets mentioning Christmas, and this again, acts just like a search. Additionally, in the upper right hand corner, you can see that there are people results for the term "Christmas" as well - you can follow these accounts right from this page.

Now, I'm sure for many of you, there's not a lot of use in following Christmas-related accounts. But I'm sure you can see what the business applications of this would be in helping you to find relevant accounts. I've found that developing my list of accounts to follow has been a very organic process, which happens as I come across interesting people being retweeted or shared through trends like this.

Trends will often be terms or people that are currently in popular media, and unless you're into celebrities, they may not have relevance to you. But they can also be important news items, which will have relevance to you - such as the IMF, mentioned above - so it can be a good idea to take a look at these periodically.

And finally, the last thing we'll talk about on the home page is the "Twitter Tweet Button," which, as Twitter says is "the easiest way for users to share links from your website."

To learn more, we'll click on that link:

This gets into the more technical aspects of creating and including a Twitter button on your website, so I'm not going to get into that - but if you want a Twitter button, let your IT or webhosts know that this is where they can get it, and have them walk you through the steps so that you have the options that you'd like.

That's all on Twitter for this week! Tune in next week for more on engaging, lists, and maybe even some third party applications that will make your use of Twitter FAR more efficient! Have a great weekend everyone!

Twitter Tutorials - Anatomy of the Home Page Part II

Lindsay Griffiths — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:55:29 -0500

Today, we continue with examining the anatomy of the Twitter home page. Yesterday, we focused on the tweet stream, and how to post a tweet.

Now, we'll look at the other tabs in the left column.

We've already talked about the timeline, so we'll look at the next tab over "@Mentions." As we've talked about in the past, @mentions are when someone uses @your_twitter_name to either send you a public message, or mention you in their tweets.

When we click on the tab, we get this:

Here, you can easily see the two types of @mentions - the first one, from Bridget Pilloud (@intutivebridge) is a reply to a message I'd sent her. It begins with my Twitter name and is publicly visible.

The second type is a mention, as in the tweet from LXBN - they are tweeting about my Twitter post from yesterday, and including my Twitter handle as the author. This is also a publicly tweeted message, but since my name appears later in the tweet, it is visible to all of their followers, not just our shared followers.

And here, you can also see a third type of mention - that's the retweet. Jill Rako retweeted my message to her yesterday about gratitude, in the old style of retweeting. So it includes my Twitter name in the main body of the message, and Jill added her own comments. This puts it in the @mentions list as well.

From this column, we have a few options. As you can see from the bottom tweet which is highlighted in pink, when you mouseover, you have the options of favoriting the tweet, retweeting or replying. This will work the same way as when we did it yesterday.

But you'll also notice that there's a little speech bubble and an arrow on the right hand side. What's that for? Well, when we click the arrow, a window pops up on the right that shows us the conversation that we've had with that Twitter user!

Here, you can see that I clicked the arrow next to my tweet from Intuitive Bridge, and the conversation that we've had came up. This can be helpful if it's been a day or so since the last tweet, and you're trying to figure out the thread of the conversation.

Now, let's move over to the next tab, Retweets.

Before we click on the tab, notice that there is a down arrow next to the word "Retweets." When we click the arrow, we get a menu:

We have the option of looking at Retweets by others, Retweets by us, or our tweets, retweeted. We'll go through each of these options, starting with retweets by others.

When we click on that, we get this:

As you can see, this filters our full tweet stream into just retweets - you'll notice that it only includes the new style of retweet, and not the original. This can be a helpful list, because it gives you the chance to see what types of things the people you follow are finding interesting - it may help you find new people to follow or expose you to articles that are getting lost in the noise of the full tweet stream.

The next option is Retweets by you. When we click on this, we get:

This is the list of tweets that I have retweeted, using the new style of retweet. In case I wanted to see what I've retweeted in the past, since I'm often retweeting things of interest to me, that I might want to look at again later.

And finally, we can see others' retweets of posts that we've tweeted.

At first glance, it looks just like a list of our tweets that have been retweeted. While it's helpful to know what people find of interest, it's also useful to see WHO those people are! Especially so we can thank them for sharing our content.

Never fear, we can get to that information!

With each tweet, there is an arrow when you mouseover it - those that also include a document icon indicate that there is an attachment. When we click on the arrow, we get the tweet, as well as those who retweeted it:

This is very useful! From here, I can see that this tweet was retweeted by four people. I could click on each of those photos and/or twitter names to thank them for sharing my tweet.

Let's move on to the next tab - "Searches." The searches tab also has a down arrow that offers us some options:

In my case, it's showing me a saved search. So this will be different for everyone. This is helpful if you want to keep track of the tweets from a certain hashtag, without having to find and click it each time.

So let's look at how to do that.

First, we'll go back to our timeline to look at our full Twitter list again (in this case, I'm actually going to look at my retweets, since I know there's a hashtag that I want to follow in there).

You can see in this tweet that I retweeted from Amy Knapp, she uses the #LMAMKT hashtag. To look at other tweets with that hashtag, I'll click on it.

I get this page:

Twitter considers this to be a search, for all tweets including #LMAMKT, which I can see here. If I want to be able to go back to this easily, I can click the "Save this search" button at the top, which will include it in my "Searches" list.

As Michael Caine would say "Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

If I decided at some point that I no longer wanted to save this search, I could delete it here using the same button.

Let's look at what else we can do here. You can also see that next to the word "Tweets" is a dropdown menu that allows us to filter the tweets we have. We're currently defaulting to the "Top" tweets, but we can also look at all tweets, or just those with links.

I'm not sure how Twitter defines tweets as "top," but my assumption is they are those that are favorited or retweeted. (Any Twitter experts want to weigh in on this?).

All tweets is self-explanatory:

And we can also look at just those tweets with links:

Further, from this page, we can also refine our search results if we wanted to. We click on the link on the righthand side, which brings us to an advanced search page:

Since we're searching within the LMAMKT hashtag, that is already populated for us. You can see that we have the option of including keywords, either a list of words, an exact phrase, any of a list of words, or excluding words. We can search by language, from certain twitter users or to certain twitter users, or even mentioning certain twitter users. We can look by location, and even select whether we're looking for positive or negative tweets, questions, or retweets.

And whatever additional search terms you add, when the results come in, you can save that exact search if you so desire. This will then appear in your dropdown menu for searches on your home page, for you to access at any time:

The last tab on the home page is "lists," but since they can be a post all on their own, we'll leave that for now. We'll come back tomorrow to talk about the right hand side of the Twitter home page.

Twitter Tutorials - Anatomy of the Home Page Part I

Lindsay Griffiths — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:02:14 -0500

So now we've got our profiles set, and we're building our followers. I'd like to talk about engagement as we did during the LinkedIn series, but first, I think it's important to understand the Twitter home page. Because Twitter does seem to have a strange language all of it's own, I want to make sure that it's all understandable as we move through the tutorials. One of the best recommendations I can give you though, is to play around with Twitter as much as possible - with all of the various social media platforms out there, I've found that diving in is one of the best ways to learn what Twitter is all about.

But along with testing out Twitter on your own, let's check out the home page now that we have some people we're following.

This is the home page. I'm using my existing Twitter account to show this to you, since it's well-established and includes a lot of people that I'm following. We'll talk first about the column on the left:

At the top, you can see the familiar "What's Happening?" box, which we talked about the other day - this is where you can type your tweets. As I mentioned, within your tweets, you can also include a photo and location if you would like:

Let's talk about how we would do that. If I wanted to add a photo, first, I'd make a comment about it so that my followers would have a reason to look at it.

(As an aside, normally, I like my daytime/workweek tweets to be work-related, but unless I'm at a conference, I usually don't have work-related photos).

Next, I'll click the camera icon on the bottom left so I can include a photo. This will pop up a new window, so that you can browse to and select your photo. Once you've selected it, it will appear underneath your tweet text.

You can see that Twitter indicates that the image will appear as a link in your tweet.

Now, at this point, we could click "Tweet" to send out the tweet. Or we can also include a location if we'd like. For the purposes of the tutorial, let's do both in the same tweet.

Clicking the location icon will pop up a new window:

This box gives us information on using locations in tweets, so let's click "Turn location on."

This will then automatically populate your location with where Twitter thinks you are:

But, you have the ability to change locations if you would like - you just click on the arrow that appears when you mouseover the location for a new menu:

Here, you can see that I can select a nearby city if one is closer to where I actually am, or I can search for a neighborhood or city. I can also turn off the location for this tweet.

I'll stick with Manahawkin for now, and click "Tweet" to publish my tweet, photo and location.

You can see that the new tweet now appears in your timeline!

And the timeline is the next thing we'll talk about. Just below the "What's Happening?" box, you can see that there are five tabs - timeline, @mentions, retweets, searches and lists.

The first of these is the timeline, and that is the most recent tweets from you and the people that you are following:

Here, you can see what some of my followers have been tweeting. On the leftmost side of each tweet, you'll see the profile picture, which can also be called an avatar, that the person has chosen to represent them. Next to that is their twitter name, like "donnaseyle" and "KenKaminesky."

Just next to that, still on the top line, is the person's full name. That way, you know who you're talking to, even if their Twitter name doesn't include their full name.

The second line, or in some cases, the next two lines, are the tweets. As you can see, there are various things that can be included with them. For example, SoloPracticeU includes a link, which is highlighted in red. Mondaq does as well. They first give a description of the link, which encourages their followers to click on it, and then the link itself.

You may notice that NoNonsenseLawyr has included some words with #, which are also highlighted in red. These are hashtags, which are keywords or phrases that become easily searchable and filtered when you include the # symbol.

For example, let's say we want to see all of the tweets relating to the #employee hashtag. We click on that, and it gives us a page of all of the recent tweets that include #employee:

As I mentioned previously, the Legal Marketing Association uses #LMAMKT as their hashtag, and there are many others out there, including #lawyers. We'll look at some ways that these might be useful to you when we look at some of the third party applications like TweetDeck.

You may also have noticed the RT in front of some of the tweets:

These days there are two kinds of retweets (you'll remember that we talked about RT/retweets here) - the classic or original retweet, and the new retweet.

The classic kind appears above - This is when the text of the original message, plus the original tweeter's name is within the text of your tweet. It enables you to add your thoughts to the message, as long as it doesn't exceed 140 characters.

The new kind of retweet looks like this:

It looks like a regular tweet, but I don't follow the thegothamgal - and I can see at the top that there is a circle of arrows that indicates it was retweeted by 85Broads. In this kind of retweet, the original tweet is posted to your followers in its entirety. This is particularly useful when the tweet is too long to also include the person's Twitter name and the RT.

The timeline is not just for reading though - you can interact with it. As you can see above, when you mouseover the tweet, some options appear at the bottom, next to the time that the tweet was sent. These include favorite, retweet, and reply.

When you favorite a tweet, it saves it to your favorites so that you can refer back to it later. This is helpful since Twitter only keeps tweets for so long, so if you'd like to see something again in the future, make sure to favorite it - you do that by clicking on the word "Favorite."

You can also Retweet the person's post from here. Let's take a look at doing that. First, I'll find something that I would want to retweet:

I love Jill's tweet about gratitude, so I'll hit "Retweet" on that.

This gives me a pop up window to confirm that I want to retweet this to my followers. Within the Twiiter interface online, we can only use the new retweet method.

I click "Retweet" to confirm, and then it appears in my tweet stream!

You can see that there's a little green triangle in the upper left corner, indicating that it's a retweet, along with the circle of arrows next to my Twitter name after Jill's name.

And that's a retweet!

Finally, we can also "reply." Replying is a bit of a misnomer, because it's one of two functions that this has - when you reply, it puts a @ symbol in front of the person's name, which will then come up in their list of replies (more on that later). But you can also use it to mention someone - it does come up in their list of replies, but it acts more as a comment than as a reply.

But let's look at how that works. We'll click "Reply" on Jill's tweet, so I can tell her that I love her idea for a November of gratitude. This pops up a new window:

As you can see, it puts Jill's Twitter name, with the @ symbol in a tweet box so that I can message her. It also includes the tweet that I'm responding to below, so I don't have to remember what it said.

You can see that i only have 130 characters, because Jill's name at the @ symbol take up 10 characters.

Also of note - this is a public tweet. That means that if anyone goes to your page, they'll see the messages that I've sent to Jill in my tweet stream. It will come up in their tweet stream if they follow both me and Jill. If I wanted to ensure that everyone in my tweet stream saw the @ message, I could also put a period in front of the @. There are private messages or DMs, which we'll talk more about later, but for now, just know to be careful what you're including in public messages.

I'll send Jill a quick note and click "Tweet." And my reply is sent!

As you can see, there is a LOT of information on the home page, and a lot you can do with it. We'll end here for today, but tomorrow, we'll be looking at the other tabs on this page. Happy tweeting!

Twitter Tutorials - Follow and Be Followed

Lindsay Griffiths — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:30:24 -0500

Now that we've got our Twitter profile ready for it's debut, it's time to start following people. Yes, this sounds a bit stalker-ish, and it is, a little, because you're subscribing to whatever someone else wants to tweet.

But although there are people out there tweeting about everything they ate for breakfast, you don't have to do this - there can be some use in tweeting if you've eaten out at a great restaurant, but we'll cover subjects to tweet on in a future post!

So let's begin by logging into our home page again. If you left the box checked yesterday to keep you signed in on Twitter, going to twitter.com will automatically take you to your home page. Otherwise, you may need to sign in again.

Because we didn't follow anyone yesterday, we've still got a lot of options listed for getting started, thanks to Twitter.

We're going to start by looking for friends, which is the second section here. We have five options - gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL or LinkedIn. You can use any or all of these to search for people you might already know. Let's go with Yahoo! to start with, since I use that for my personal emails.

I'll click the Yahoo! link which pops up a new window where I have to authorize Twitter's access of my Yahoo! account:

I'll click "Agree" (You may also be required to sign in using your username and password for Yahoo! or the account you're accessing) and I'm logged back into Twitter, which searches for my contacts using their email addresses. I get a page of those who are on Twitter:

It also notes at the top that 960 of my contacts are not on Twitter. I can invite them to join if I want to, but I generally recommend against this - people will join what they want to, and it always irritates me to get emails from people inviting me to join things.

From this page, we can start to "follow" people. This means we consent to see their tweets on our home page. As I've mentioned before, using the Twitter website isn't the best option for this in my book, but we'll talk about third party applications that make this simpler in the future.

Another note is that until you have 2,000 followers, you will be restricted to following only 2,000 people. This is one of the ways that Twitter tries to cut down on spammers following everyone under the sun.

At the top of the page, you'll see one general follow button that says "Follow all 73" - if I wanted to follow everyone on this page, I can click that as one step. Otherwise, I can go through each of the individual accounts to decide if I want to follow them or not. I prefer the latter so that I can follow people more strategically.

Before we get started with following people, you'll see that next to the "follow" button under each person's profile, there's another button with a silhouette and a down arrow. That gives you a drop down menu like this:

Since we're loading these people in from our contacts, it's unlikely that we'd want to use either of the bottom two options. But so that you know, you can report a profile for spam using this button by clicking on that link, or you can block that profile, so they won't be able to follow you or see your tweets, and you won't be able to see their tweets either.

The first option is to "Mention" that person - this is the "@" symbol that we talked about in the first post. When you want to send a public message to someone (basically a tweet addressed to them), you can click this to automatically put @their_name in a tweet box. Then you can type your tweet and send it to them (it's publicly visible though). You can also just type @their_name if you prefer, which is generally easier to do.

You can also add this person to a list. Lists are something new that Twitter recently rolled out, which allow you to categorize people - note that these categories can be public or private, but when you assign one to someone, they are notified about it. So it's important to be careful what you title them. The reason for lists is so that you can segregate people by subject area or profession, or however you would like so that you can filter out only their tweets to read. We'll get into lists in more detail in a future post, but you may want to hold off on following too many people until we've covered that since it's easier to put them in lists as you follow them, instead of having to go back and do it later.

Here's another great tip - in the past, you would have to go to the person's profile page to learn more about them. But now, when you click on someone's profile in this list, it pops up in the right hand column:

From here, I can see his bio, location, web address, and how many tweets and followers the person has. This will let me know if the profile is worth following. Ordinarily, I won't follow a profile with almost no followers and very few tweets, but I know Sergey, so I'll follow him here.

I'll go through the list and click the "follow" button for those I want to follow. Clicking the "follow" button is all you have to do to subscribe to someone's tweets - how easy is that?

Now you're following people!

When you follow someone, they are notified via email that you are following them. Those emails look something like this:

In this email, it will tell you that someone is following you. You can click on their Twitter name to go to their profile, or the button at the bottom that says "View @their_name's profile." If it's someone who has followed you, and you don't already follow them and you want to, you'll need to click through to their profile so that you can click the "follow" button on their page.

This email gives you the basics, which is very helpful - you can see the person's photo and bio information, how many tweets they've tweeted and how many people they're following and are following them.

You can also see how many people you're following who are also following this person - it's Twitter's way of "vetting" them for you. If someone you like and trust is following this person, and you share interests, maybe you want to be following them too!

As I mentioned, when you follow someone, they'll get an email like this about you, and that may prompt them to follow you back. Before you know it, you'll be growing your list of followers.

I also want to include in here how you can add contacts from your address book to search for if you're an existing Twitter user and don't know where to look (I found out myself just this morning). At the top of your page is the main menu bar, including "Who to Follow:"

Click on this, and you'll be taken to a list of suggestions for you based on your account - more on this in a minute. Above this list there are three tabs:

You can view Twitter's suggestions, browse interests you have, or find friends. Click Find Friends, which brings you to this page:

It is here that you can search for contacts using the above services. Unfortunately, unlike LinkedIn, Twitter doesn't yet have a way for you to upload contacts from Outlook to see if any of them are on Twitter. So you can either search for those people individually (a pain, and who has time for that?) or you can upload those contacts into one of the above services, and then search for them that way. If you're not sure how to do that, ask an IT savvy person to assist you!

While we're here, let's look at Twitter's recommendations for people for us to follow. Right now, I'm working from my existing profile, so this list will be fairly extensive - it's based on the people that I follow and who they follow, so you may want to wait until you have a larger list to check this part out.

As an aside - although it is an ego boost, getting a lot of Twitter followers and following a lot of people is NOT the goal here. It's far more important to follow and engage with the RIGHT people. Particularly since Twitter can easily become overwhelming if not carefully managed. So make sure when you're following people that it's someone that you want to engage with - and if you're looking at this to make the right connections, that should be clients and potential clients, influencers in your industry, and journalists. For some great tips of Twitter for professionals, you'll definitely want to check out Kevin O'Keefe's webinar of the same name - the recording is available here.

Back to Twitter's suggestions for me - when I click on that tab, I get a list that looks like this:

As you can see it's similar to the last list, in that we get a follow button, as well as a silhouette and down arrow button. There's also a "Hide" link if you don't want to see this suggestion again.

You may also notice that some profiles have a teal check-mark circle, like the Lawyers.com one above. This means that Twitter has verified that profile, and the person or company behind it is who they say they are. This is more common among celebrities and companies than individuals, but it can be useful. You may also notice a little lock, like next to John O'Keeffe's profile. This means that the person has protected their tweets, and only people that they give permission to can see them. I'll get more into that when we talk about settings, but for now, note that if you want to follow someone with protected tweets, you're "follow" only sends them a request, and doesn't allow you to subscribe until they give you permission.

So I've followed a few of Twitter's suggestions, and now I want to search by interest area. I click on the next tab, "Browse Interests" and get this screen:

This allows me to browse profiles by interest and follow those that intrigue me. Maybe I'm interested in having some funny people in my tweet stream - I'll click funny for that list:

I get a list of 57 suggestions from Twitter that I can follow if I like. I choose those I want to follow, and click the "Follow" button next to each.

Then, we click on "Home" to go back to our main Twitter page...and people's tweets are coming in!

We'll talk more about the breakdown of the home page in the next post, but in the meantime, get out there and start connecting!

Twitter Tutorials - Creating Your Profile

Lindsay Griffiths — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:53:57 -0500

Happy Halloween everyone! Since Halloween is my second favorite holiday (after Christmas), I had to take a time out to say "enjoy!" and share a photo of my little "spooks."

But back to the task at hand - let's get started with Twitter. To create your profile, we're going to start by going to Twitter.com.

As you can see, Twitter says that using their service, will give you "instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what's happening around the world."

At the bottom of the page, you can select from seventeen languages for Twitter. We'll go through this with English as the default, since that's what I speak, but feel free to change to the language you're most comfortable in.

To get started with creating our profile, we'll enter our full name, email and the password we choose in the box in the center right. One thing to note here - once you've used your email address to register a Twitter name, you can't use it again. Each Twitter name is linked to a unique email address. So if you want to have more than one Twitter name, you'll have to have multiple email addresses.

Once you've entered this information, click the yellow "sign up" button to get started!

The next screen lets you choose your username and checks the information that we have just entered.

As you can see, my name is fine, my email address will get a confirmation, and my password could be more secure. Twitter has also assigned me a username, but I can change this here if I want to.

Let's talk about names for a minute. Some people will argue that it's a good idea to have a keyword or subject as your Twitter name, but I disagree - I think it should always be your real name. As we've talked about before, people want to connect and work with people they know, like and trust - and how can they really know you if you aren't transparent with your name?

There can be some difficulties here, because Twitter only allows you 15 characters - my full name has more than 15 characters. My main Twitter name is @LindsayGriffith, so people will often think that my last name is Griffith. There are a few ways around this, and you can decide what works best for you if your name is more than 15 characters.

For the purposes of the tutorial, I'll change it to LinsGriffiths (LGriffiths is already taken). As I type the new name into the box, Twitter checks the availability and tells me whether the username I want is already taken or if it's available. LinsGriffiths is available

Next, I can choose whether I want to stay logged into Twitter - if it's a public computer, make sure you un-check this so that nobody else can use your account. This is also good if you're concerned about security generally. Otherwise, you can leave it checked.

You'll see that Twitter also says that when you click the button to create your account, you're going to be agreeing to their terms of service. You can click on these terms using the link to the right.

Twitter further notes that others will be able to find you by name, username or email, though your email will not be shown publicly. You can change your privacy settings at any time, which we will do in a future post. (But just so you know, as soon as we create our Twitter account, our profile is searchable).

For now, let's click "Create my account" so that we have a Twitter account!

Twitter has come a long way since I joined, and they now walk you through getting started. The first screen you'll see is this:

Twitter tells us that we'll be started in less than 60 seconds! The "Twitter Teacher" shows us that a tweet is a short message of up to 140 characters that can contain links.

To continue, we'll click the "next" button. Twitter then gives us a list of suggestions for other Twitter accounts we could follow. They suggest you follow five of these accounts, but don't feel as if you must. If you'd like your profile to be a bit more complete first (which I recommend), you can click "Skip this step." I'll give you my own legal follow recommendations in the next post!

The next screen allows you to add your favorites - this is where you can find people and brands to follow by subject area that might be of interest to you. Again, we'll talk more about how to follow people in the next post, so for now, we'll just "skip this step."

The next screen invites you to add your contacts, similarly to the way we did it in the LinkedIn series. As before though, we'll skip this step and do this at a later stage.

Before we can continue, we need to confirm the email address that we registered with - to do this, you'll check that email address and follow the instructions included in it. Once you've done that, your page will look like this:

As you can see on the right hand side, Twitter gives you some steps for getting started. You can see from here where their priorities lie, but I'd make "Set up your profile" #1 instead. The reason for this is that you want people to follow you back and see what you're saying - and most people won't do that if your profile is blank, you have no photo and you haven't tweeted!

So let's start by uploading a profile photo. There are a couple of ways you can do this - you can click the link under "Set up your profile:"

You can also click "Profile" in the menu along the top:

This will take you to your profile page, and at the top, it will say "Edit Your Profile."

From there, you would get this page:

As you can see, if you haven't uploaded a picture, you have an egg image. You don't want this. So let's upload a picture!

Click choose file, keeping in mind their requirements for size and file type. You'll browse to your photo and select it. The file will upload after you click "Save." (As a side note, this is how you would change your photo in the future if you wanted to).

Your name is already filled in, so unless you want to update this, you can leave it as it is. If you would like your Twitter followers to know where you are, you can fill in the location field - you can also leave this vague or blank if you would prefer.

If you have a firm website or (preferably) a blog, fill in that web address here. And then finally, you can write your bio information - this must be short. You only have 160 characters here (just a little bit longer than a tweet), so make it count. It's a good idea to include some of your non-professional hobbies too, which will broaden your Twitter experience. For example, mine says:

It includes some information about my job, but also that I'm a photographer, that I care about supporting the military, and that I love hockey and basset hounds - that gives people a lot of reasons to connect to me!

The final piece of this is connecting your tweets to Facebook - since we haven't fully developed our Facebook profiles yet, we'll skip this for now, but I'll add this note - I recommend against linking Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is designed more for conversation, for you to post a number of messages. Your followers will expect that - to a degree - but on Facebook, it may quickly irritate your friends who may "unfriend" you or hide your updates. The platforms are, and should be, kept separately in my book!

So now, we'll click save!

You'll get a message at the top that your settings have been saved, and to see your profile, click "Profile" again in the top menu bar:

Not bad!

In tomorrow's post, we'll talk about following people, but before we do that, I want to leave you with writing your first tweet. There are some recommendations for tweeting, but we'll worry about those in a future post as well - for now, think of this as your Twitter introduction. You may want to say something like "I'm new to Twitter, and I'm really looking forward to connecting with you." Or you can share what you hope to get out of Twitter, etc. We'll continue to play around with this in the coming days, but for now, it's helpful to have one tweet under your belt so that anyone who finds your profile will consider following you!

To post your tweet, you're going to click "Home" in the top menu bar:

Right now, your home page isn't very interesting because you aren't following anyone yet. But you can tweet from here!

In the box at the top, under "What's happening?" you can post your 140-character tweets.

When you click on the box, you'll be able to type into it - as you type the number of characters you have left will appear next to the "Tweet" button. You'll also see two icons at the bottom left - the first is a camera, and this allows you to include a photo with your tweet. The second icon is the location icon, which lets you add your location to your tweets if you wish. We'll get into the how's and why's of those later, but for now, you can type your tweet into the box and click "Tweet."

You've just Tweeted for the first time!

In the next post, we'll start following some different people. In the meantime, Happy Halloween!