Bar Functions, Trade Meetings, Networking and More -- Getting attention in 30 Seconds or Less

Getting attention in 30 Seconds or Less is published in this week's Legal Intellgencer's Young Lawyers' Supplement.

Here are someexcerptss about things you should keep in mind:

. . . . It is up to you, the attorney, to communicate what it is that you do and you need to do it in 30 seconds or less. Some call it the 30-second commercial and others call it the elevator speech or pitch.

. . . . It's a short, memorable statement that tells others who you are, what you do, who you do it for and how it benefits others. It must be easy to understand and compelling enough to leave the listener wanting to know more. . . .

Your crisp, concise, and memorable introduction must state the benefits of working with you. . . . keep it simple, short and focused. . . . [Y]ou must first, know the audience with which you will be networking and second, create different introductions for different purposes, audiences, and venues. Your introduction to prospective referring attorneys is going to be much different than your introduction to prospective clients in a particular practice area.

Ask yourself the following questions when planning how you are going to introduce yourself:

-Where am I going (venue)?
-Who is going to be there (target audience)?
-What do I want to accomplish / get across to those in attendance (key messages)?
-What are the benefits of working with you?
-Why should the listener care?

. . . . Write it down, rehearse it, and time yourself. . . .

How website hits are different from number of visits?

I received this message from our graphic design partner, Ampersand Design. . . .

In general conversation, folks seem to think they mean the same thing - "Page Views". However from a web-log's point of view, and in reading web log reports "hits", "page views" and "visits" are very different things.

Hit - A hit is simply any request to the web server for any type of file. This can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, and many other file types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid popularity gauge, but rather is an indication of server use and loading.

Page view - A page is defined as any file or content delivered by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), javascript (.js) and style sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition. Each time a file defined as a page is served, a page view is registered by the log file.

Visit (AKA Session) - A session/visit is a defined quantity of visitor interaction with a website. The definition will vary depending on how visitors are tracked. Some common visitor tracking methods and corresponding session definitions:

* IP-based Visitor Tracking: A Session is a series of hits from one visitor (as defined by the visitor's IP address) wherein no two hits are separated by more than 30 minutes. If there is a gap of 30 minutes or more from this visitor, an additional Session is counted.

* IP+User Agent Visitor Tracking: A Session is a series of hits from one visitor (as defined by the visitor's IP address and user-agent, such as Netscape 4.72) wherein no two hits are separated by more than 30 minutes. If there is a gap of 30 minutes or more from this visitor, an additional Session is counted.

* Unique Visitor Tracking (cookie-based, such as Urchin's UTM): A Session is a period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending upon the closure of the browser window or shut down of the browser program.

Source (if you have trouble sleeping one night...) - http://help.urchin.com/index.cgi?cmd=gloss