Friday, October 13, 2006

E-mail Signatures

Signatures blocks are useful for providing important contact information for the people you communicate with on the Internet. And they can also be effective ways of marketing. Use them wisely.

· Provide your email address. Don't assume that just because your email address can be found in the header of the message, it will be found.

· Provide your Web address in link form. This makes it effortless for your correspondents to connect directly to your site.

· Provide a mailing address and appropriate phone numbers for alternative forms of communication.

· Provide a brief marketing message. Set up your signature so that it conveys a glimpse of what your company is all about. Slogans or catch phrases that touch upon your company branding will undoubtedly make your signature memorable. Think of your e-mail signature as your virtual business card.

· Include a link to recent articles that you’ve written or news coverage about your organization. Keep it simple.

· Don’t include a signature in every e-mail reply in a chain of messages. . . .

While attempting to include the most relevant and useful information, try to keep your signature to eight lines or less. If it’s too verbose, e-mail readers will avoid it. E-mail signatures are a great way to take advantage of subtle, free marketing opportunities.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Philadelphia Bench Bar Conference – Underlying Media Theme

I attended the Philadelphia Bar Association Bench-Bar Conference last weekend in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and found it quite interesting that in many of the panels – it was publicity and the law that was a recurring theme.

Some of the myriad topics included:

o The need of the Judiciary to be more public
o The affect of blogging on Judicial elections
o The need to use the media to educate the public about the roles of the Court
o The need to control/respect the power of the media
o The role the media plays in disseminating information about cases
o The need to train the Judiciary about the media and vice versa
o The need for attorneys and judges to understand and utilize the media
o Law school does not teach students how to promote or communicate via mass media
o The cost of judicial elections tried in the media
o The ethics of dealing with the media
o The need to embrace the media
o The issues of fair and impartial trials that are “tried in the media”
o The need for attorneys to be media trained
o How not to be a jerk when dealing with the media
o The opportunities surrounding the media

I left the conference energized and excited about being a strategic communications expert in the legal industry.

It’s a growing field and there’s a lot of ground we need to make up for the last century of “no comment” answers, however, we’re well on our way to a more enlightened industry!