This Spring I will taking the Content Success Summit in 2013, and I can’t wait to “meet” the thought-leaders of online content.

Even if the closest I get to the Swiss Alps this winter is the Pocono Mountains, for online content professionals the CSS 2013 is the DAVOS of online media strategy.

While United States Postal Service sees a decline in mailed letters overall, tech-savvy paper-lovers—in frequent contact via blogs, Facebook and Twitter—are giving rise to a host of small stationery makers.

There is no doubt that receiving — and writing — handwritten notes can make a powerful impression.

This is especially true in this era of text message-centric communication.

Notes can fall into three categories:

1) one from a super-busy somewhat important person

2) one from a non-busy but extremely important person

3) and the personal (like a thank-you note from your son who is learning how to write.)

In each of these cases, the note card is like a work of art, something to be safely tucked into a mirror above the mantel.

Think about the opportunity you have right now to reach out to clients and send a personal note their way.

Properly done, the handwritten note is a real relationship builder because it says to your client or customer that you have taken the time to recognize them as an individual and that their business is important to you.

It’s also a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition because so few people bother to follow up at all, let alone follow up in ways that are as impressive as a handwritten note.

1. Like Fight Club, the first rule about publicity, is not talking about publicity. Never mention that the reason why you’re calling the reporter is to get “publicity.” The only thing that would annoy me more was the qualifier “free” publicity.

2. Make your firm incidental to the story. Lead with compelling content and the fact that you’re a thought leader in a particular area — and the credentials and depth of resources your firm offers will be apparent to the reader.

3. “Call my secretary to schedule an interview appointment.” Yes, you are busy, but so are reporters. If getting a hold of you for an interview is like pulling teeth, they will almost always move on to the next credible source.

2. Showcase expertise.
Address client concerns head on by publishing regular articles, updates, and news on current and relevant topics. Publicize attorney accolades, speaking and seminar activities and share presentation materials when appropriate. The idea is to promote your firm’s attorneys as subject area experts through publishing and speaking activities and documenting it all on the web site in an organized and systematic way. This requires time, effort and the skills of an experienced managing editor.

Remember…when highlighting attorney accolades, BE SELECTIVE!!!

Showcase a FEW key accomplishments. Too many listings and you risk turning off the reader, as the laundry list of recognition and awards becomes meaningless:

3. Make it easy.
Your web site is the public face of your firm. A visitor’s experience with your web site is his experience with your firm. Is your site easy to navigate, well organized and logical? Does it have a useful search function? If not, a visitor may not find what she is looking for, become frustrated and leave. A web site that doesn’t perform as expected can leave the impression that the firm is poorly managed, does not value customer service, or has poor attention to detail. In today’s sales and service environment, a good web experience can impress, a poor one can be a red flag. And remember, fancy and expensive is not always better than simple and direct.

4. Edit copy to be client focused, not firm focused.
Web messaging should address your clients’ needs and concerns, not the firm’s oldest partner. When writing or editing for the web, repeat this mantra: It’s about them, it’s not about us. Law firm “About Us” pages are famous for long-winded histories that start off with phrases such as, “We were founded in 1939 by Joshua R. Smith and Samuel M. Smith,” or “We are organized into three divisions.” While there may be a place on the web site to communicate your firm’s rich history, it ranks low on the relevancy scale. What visitors really want to know is how you can help them. The quicker you begin to demonstrate that, the closer you will be to the sale.

5. Ask for the business.
In conjunction with demonstrating your relevancy and providing all this information of value, don’t forget to build in calls to action. Encourage the reader to take the next step (whatever that may be), and make it easy for the reader to act.

Note: Adapted from Legal Marketing Reader.

One of the apps featured got me thinking about the marketing potential for law firms who come up with useful iPhone/Pad and Android apps.

If you’re a corporate lawyer and find yourself puzzled by financial jargon like “second lien” while doing document review, the law firm Latham & Watkins has a solution for you.

Last year, Latham released “The Book of Jargon,” a free app that has a glossary of 750 financial terms, like “bear hug letter.”

Courtesy of Latham & Watkins
The firm’s compendium isn’t comprehensive, though: While it has definitions for “material adverse change,” “Rule 144a offering” and “white knight,” it lacks definitions for more au courant terms like “collateralized debt obligation” and “credit default swap.”

These small quibbles aside, The Book of Jargon is useful for lawyers and those curious about the terms of art used in the words of corporate law and finance.

Editor’s Note: If you haven’t watched Gary speak, you might want to check out this video. Some language is PG-13, so you’ve been warned.

This really is an amazing revolution. We talk, we share, we exchange ideas, we listen, we support each other. We are connecting and building relationships. The strength of relationships, the currency of caring, and the power of word of mouth are revolutionizing business today!

We talk passionately about things, products, brands, and causes we care about it. We tweet about it on Twitter. We post about it on FaceBook. If we really love something, we will even write a 1000 word blog post about it.

Social media is all about sharing and a total stream of consciousness of what is happening in the world and our worlds.

There are some people, businesses, and brands standing on the sidelines very wary of this whole social media train. This train is moving down the tracks and they are standing on the sidelines watching it move by them, moving forward into the future.

If you know any person, brand, or business that needs convincing of the Power of Social Media and that it is here to stay (maybe not always the same platforms, they are bound to evolve, and new platforms are being created right now) and that they need to hop onto that train, give them Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “The Thank You Economy.”

His book does an amazing job convincing you that social media is not just a fad or somewhere that a bunch of teenagers are hanging out. Social media is not just about a specific platform, it’s about the opportunity to listen and connect with people and customers. In the old days, you had to find and pay for an expensive focus group for a product launch or to get feedback. Now you have it all at your finger tips 24 hours a day for free.

Chapter 3: “Why Smart People Dismiss Social Media, and Why They Shouldn’t”

Gary has talked to countless businesses and brands over the past 6 years and he has compiled a Top 10 list of objections and excuses he has heard along the way. He takes each objection and provides fresh information, facts, and even case studies to obliterate those objections. Some of my favorites are:

#1 There’s no ROI
#4 Social media is just another trend that will pass
#5 We need to control our message
#7 We are doing fine without it

and the famous…

#8 We tried it and it doesn’t work!

Gary Vaynerchuk’s best-selling book “Crush It” was very insightful, but his new book The Thank You Economy is now my new recommendation!

This is a book that I will be reading again and again and is now an importantpart of my resource library.

The multi-million dollar integrated advertising and marketing effort will blanket television, radio, out-of-home and online advertising, social media, public relations and in-restaurant activities. The effort features “everyday Joes” enjoying Dunkin’ Donuts traditional and iced coffees. The campaign’s objective is to reinforce and build on the brand’s coffee leadership in developed markets and establish credibility in emerging markets.

Regardless of what you think of their coffee and other products, the Dunkin’ Donuts campaign ties into customers’ passion for the brand in a very personal way.

Now, if they would only get rid of those styrofoam cups!

You can see the full ad, created by Boston- based Hill Holliday, here.

Editors Note: In honor of Dunkin’ Brands $400M (estimated) IPO this week, I thought I’d repost an item from the archives.

The ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 has issued proposed changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct regarding the use of Cloud Computing technologies. According to The Connecticut Law Tribune’s article, Attorneys in the Cloud May Get ABA Wake-Up Call With Proposed Rules, by Marie Grady, “Proposed rules would require lawyers to take reasonable steps to stay abreast of the benefits and risks associated with technology used by Dropbox and other popular cloud computing services.”

As digital communications continue to infiltrate the practice of law, it is important to remember that the rules regarding how attorneys conduct business remain ever steadfast and confidentiality is at the top of that list.

While Cloud Computing has its own set of risks, so too does storing any information on any computer that has an Internet connection. In today’s age of spyware, malware, viruses and hackers, it is critically important that law firms take every step necessary to secure and backup client information – don’t get stuck with your head in the clouds.

And good design gives you an edge. How big an edge? It’s the difference between getting read or getting ignored. You don’t have to understand Photoshop or other design programs to be able to create clean business communications. You just have to develop an eye for the difference between visual order and visual noise.

I often get inspired by the work in Communications Arts magazine. The subscription is not cheap, but when you get stuck, it’s great to see how the pros do it.

Everyone could benefit from taking an introductory design course at a local college or reading a great design book, like the aforementioned Communications Arts or A Book about Design- Complicated Doesn’t Make It Good by Mark Gonyea, which can be read in its entirety here.

But if you don’t have time for that, here are some basic rules:

• Blur your eyes and ask yourself, Does this communication have a sense of order, or does looking at it give me a headache?
• Have the decency to shorten your communication. Follow the wise insight attributed equally to Twain, Churchill, Pascal, and Lincoln (“If I had more time I’d have written a shorter letter”) or Richard Bach’s maxim (“Good writing is all about the power of the deleted word”) and remember that length is design, too.
• Clean up messes. If you’re sending someone a conversation thread but only one sentence of it is important, delete the extraneous 42,000 words. Delete automatically generated dotted lines, indentations, and fonts in multiple colors.
• Reduce the number of hard returns, especially in e-mails. They create visual noise.
• Avoid huge monolithic blocks of text. No one will read them.
• Don’t get fancy. If you haven’t taken a design course, stick with a classic font. Don’t use more than three font variations on a page. That means changing typeface, size, or style (italics or bold). Don’t underline.
• For e-mails, pick a font that’s web friendly. (Arial, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Palatino, Verdana.) That way, you’ll be sure that the way your message looks to you is the way it will appear to the reader.
• Break some rules. Where tradition might tell you to fill every page of your business plan with text, identify the single most important sentence on a page, blow it up to 36-point type, and give it the entire page to itself.
• If you don’t know what the rules are, be careful about breaking them. The point is not to be, or look, rebellious. It’s to be effective.
• Learn to use pull-quotes. If you have a lengthy block of text, pull out the most important sentence and create an easy point of entry for the reader, the way a magazine would.
• Learn to love white space. Don’t fill the page edge to edge with content. Leave room for things to breathe.
• A picture is worth a thousand words. Break up a business plan or a memo with a professional image. Stock photography or illustration houses like istock are your friend.
• Don’t use tacky images. If you’re generally tacky, I can’t help you with that. Just try not to be. Think a nice black Armani suit or cocktail dress versus, I don’t know, a Worldwide Wrestling Federation t-shirt.
• Don’t give people whiplash. Don’t center one thing, left justify another, right justify another, center a fourth, and so on. It makes things look like an obstacle course. Pick one justification and stick with it.
• Be careful with color if you don’t know what you’re doing. You could hurt someone. Stick to one color to be safe — black — and use shades of gray to add sophistication.

If you forget all this, just think simplicity. Less is more. Good design doesn’t add stuff. It takes stuff away. Don’t get fancy, don’t overdo anything, don’t use gimmicks. Simplicity and power are not mutually exclusive. They are often one and the same.

Note: This blog post was adapted from a recent article in the Harvard Business Review.

I remember having to pick up some Lifebuoy soap for a family member in Nassau while attending a destination wedding in The Bahamas once.

And in case the title of this post is teasing you, during the 1920s, an outfield wall advertisement for Lifebuoy stated, “The Phillies use Lifebuoy”. One night a vandal sneaked in and added to the ad, “And they still stink.”