Did You Know Gmail Has Keyboard Shortcuts?

If you use gmail (which you should) you will be pleased to discover that Gmail has a laundry list of shortcuts that can make you more efficient both in terms of organization as well as tackling that ever growing inbox.

*Directions and list compiled from multiple sources including Google, About and others. This is not a complete list.
** From anywhere in Gmail if you type a question mark (?) the shortcut reference sheet will appear.

First off, make sure keyboard shortcuts are enabled for Gmail
• Go to the Settings link in Gmail.
• Go to the General tab.
• Make sure Keyboard shortcuts on is selected under Keyboard shortcuts.
• Click Save Changes.

Once Keyboard Shortcuts has been activated you can start using these time saving key combinations. In most cases you only have to press the stated key (no Ctrl, Alt or Command key required).

In the Message List
• x: Check or uncheck a conversation
• j: Go down to the previous conversation
• k: Go up to the next conversation

With Messages Checked in a Mailbox or Label
• y: Archive the conversation (if in the Inbox) or remove the current label (if in a label’s view)
• e: Archive the conversation (no matter the view)
• # (Shift-3): Delete the conversation
• ! (Shift-1): Mark the conversation as spam
• + (Shift-=, but = alone works as well): Mark the conversation as important
• -: Mark the conversation as not important
• l: Open the Labels menu to add or remove labels
• v: Open the Move to menu, adding a label and archiving the conversation
• Shift-U: Mark the conversation unread
• Shift-I: Mark the conversation read
• Shift-T: Create a new task linked to the conversation (with Tasks enabled)
• m: Mute the conversation
• Future messages in the same thread will go to the All Mail archive straight away bypassing your Gmail Inbox unless your email address is in the To: or Cc:line.

While Viewing a Conversation
• y: Archive the conversation (if in the Inbox) or remove the current label (if in a label’s view)
• e: Archive the conversation (no matter the view)
• # (Shift-3): Delete the conversation
• r: Reply to the sender only
• Shift-R: Start your reply in a new browser window
• a: Reply to the sender and all recipients beside yourself
• Shift-A: Start your reply to all in a new browser window
• f: Forward the conversation
• Shift-F: Start your forward in a new browser window
• ! (Shift-1): Mark the conversation as spam
• + (Shift-=; or just =): Mark the conversation as important
• -: Mark the conversation as not important
• s: Mark the conversation with a star
• l: Open the Labels menu to add or remove labels
• v: Open the Move to menu, adding a label and archiving the conversation
• u: Return to the message list
• x: Return to the message list checking or unchecking the current conversation
• Shift-U: Mark the conversation unread and return to the message list

While Composing a Message
• Tab followed by Enter: Send (under Windows)
• Ctrl-S: Save the message as a draft (while composing)

Anywhere in Gmail
• z: Undo the last action if possible (i.e. an Undo link appeared in the yellow status bar near the top)
• c: Start composing a new message
• Shift-C: Start a new message in a new browser window
• d: Start composing a new message with the Cc: field added.
• b: Start composing a new message with the Cc: and Bcc: fields added.
• . (dot): Open the More Actions menu
• g followed by
• i: Open the standard inbox (Priority Inbox or Inbox)
• c: Open Contacts
• d: Open Drafts
• s: Open Starred
• t: Open Sent Mail
• a: Open your All Mail archive
• k: Open Tasks (with Tasks enabled)
• l: Open any label (except in Google Buzz)
• p: Open the phone dial
• ?: Show a keyboard shortcut reference sheet

At first glance this list may seem daunting and overwhelming but like most things, the more you do something the easier it becomes. You will find that you use the same shortcuts several times per day where others you will only use occassionally. Choose the ones you like and forget the ones you don’t. In any event, I hope this will make Gmail more enjoyable and easier to use… it’s a terrific program both for personal and company email (did you know you can use Gmail for your [email@company.com] email?

When it comes to Lawyer Marketing, so often we are compelled to try and convince our potential new customers that we are the right choice for them. We do this by drawing attention to our credentials, awards, accolades and achievements… in essence we are focusing on ourselves.

What if there was a far easier and effective way to earn the trust (and business) of our most sought after prospects?

This potential magic bullet is a concept called social proof which is a relatively unknown idea yet it may just be more influential than any of your high marks and credentials.

Social Proof is the authority or influence created when someone discovers that other people are already doing something. In other words, using the actions of others to infer the value of a course of action.

“Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation.” – Wikipedia

On any given day we can observe countless examples of social proof. Consumer ratings (i.e. Yelp.com) are a cyber version of social proof and those ratings influence our buying habits. For example, we are much more likely to buy a product that has 150 positive reviews than a similar product that only has two or three reviews.

Psychology Professor Robert Cialdini, conducted a number of studies in an attempt to find out if social proof is as powerful as he assume it was. In most cases his assumptions were proven accurate. People are greatly influenced by the actions of others and more often than not will choose what others have already chosen.

There are many types of social proof: Expert or celebrity endorsements, crowds (long lines) and referrals from friends, just to name a few. One of the most influential types of social proof is testimonials. Video testimonials on your legal website are exceptionally powerful when it comes to attracting new clients on the web.

In this era of the social networking, social gaming and social everything; social proof may be the new marketing method of choice.

If you want more business from the web, encourage past and present clients to write or video a testimonial. Prominently posting these testimonials throughout your site will allow new visitors to learn why your service is so great and should help move them quickly towards taking that next step.

Online Legal marketing  is exciting and has the ability to make or break your firm… Tap into the vast number of potential clients online and your case flow can skyrocket. However, you can also get caught with your pants down, by trying to keep up with the “big boys” who have already “made it” and are now burning through huge sums of money “elephant hunting” for their next million dollar case.

Keeping your law firm competitive means understanding how to effectively market your services and attract new clients. Whether you like it or not you are paying for leads. You are either buying them directly from a vendor or you are indirectly buying them by paying for traffic to your website; SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), Mobile Apps For Lawyers, TV ads, Social Marketing etc.

Any way you slice it you and your firm are purchasing leads and it is ultra important that you make sure you’ve got a plan in place to turn as many of those leads as you can into appointments and hopefully cases.

Precious Time
The number one folly that I see firms make is not following up immediately. Research has shown that when there is a delayed response to a lead the close ratio dramatically goes down. So, how fast should you follow up? Immediately! As in, right now! You may think it’s cool to wait as to not seem too eager but all you are doing is wasting precious time. The prospect is in the moment and ready to be helped by you or someone else if you give them the opportunity to spit the bit they will be gone. Carpe Diem and call that lead!

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again.
While following up immediately is the number one most important tactic for online lead success, you can’t stop there. You must be willing to try and contact the lead several times in the first couple days. Everyone is busy and gets distracted. If you don’t get them on the phone right away then leave a voice message and quickly follow up with an email.
When leaving voice messages make sure to sound curious not desperate. Something like “Hi, this is Joe Blow from XYZ law firm. We are the best law firm in town and I’m sure you’d be pleased with our experience and service…” sounds salesy and desperate and is not likely going to get you an immediate call back. Instead, try creating a bit of curiosity and see if it doesn’t improve your success. “Hi, this is Joe Blow from XYZ law firm. You just visited our website (xyzlawfirm.com) and asked to be contacted. I’ve got an interesting question to ask you that may affect your case. Please call me at your next opportunity.” When they receive that message they can’t help but be curious to know just what that interesting question is.

Put Them in Your Database.
Even if you never make contact with the lead or it turns out that they are not a good fit that doesn’t mean you should just toss that lead in the trash. At the very least have your assistant put their name, number and email address into a spreadsheet. If you already have a drip marketing campaign then this is a great way to add to your subscriber list. Who knows, this may not be the last time this particular person needs legal help. Also, if you get lucky they’ll refer you to a colleague or family member in need of your services. Email marketing is cheap and a good way to keep your brand in front of an audience of potential clients.

Lead conversion is not difficult but it does take discipline and time. If you are willing to follow these few simple rules, have a system in place and stay consistent; you too might land a career changing case and be on your way to joining the “big boys” in their next elephant hunt.

You may encourage individual accounts with the firm, a general firm Twitter account, or both. Bottom line is that if you consistently tweet, your firm will get exposure. Even if you do not have that many followers, your tweets can still be viewed. There are opportunities for re-tweets, trending topics, and general searches. Twitter can be a great opportunity to show your firm’s personality. If your firm does any kind of special events or charitable actions for the community, be sure to tweet about these.

If you feel you are too busy to tweet yourself, or that practicing law is not exciting enough to tweet about, that is okay. It may be a good idea to have a marketing firm handle your tweeting for you. These firms will be sure to consistently tweet about current legal news and events, and include relevant links to give your firm the exposure it needs. The Search Engine Guys are experts at doing this for their clients.

It is a good idea to apply some sort of call to action within your tweet, such as a link to a specific subpage of your website. Links can help your organic search engine optimization (make your website show up higher on Google results when someone searches a topic relevant to your practice.)

Someone who finds your site through twitter may have a simple question or a serious pending legal issue. Once they are on your site, live chat can help engage that visitor in a conversation before they may leave, or jump to the next site. It is then our job to get a general understanding of their situation and position your firm as the experts they need to speak to. We will get their contact information and then forward the chat transcript to your firm right away. In short, Twitter may be able to help drive traffic to your site, and Ngage can help convert them.

Austin, TX – Ngage ICS®, a Division of Cloud 8 Sixteen, Inc., the pioneer and market leader of Pay for Performance, 24/7, staffed live chat services, announced today that their total client list has now crossed the 500 mark. This achievement highlights the company’s leading position in the legal and healthcare industries.

Ngage’s rapid growth is being driven by its 24/7, staffed live chat solution which is unique in the industries it serves. Practices that recognize the value and importance of immediately interacting with their website visitor are relying on Ngage as the only provider offering a 24/7, cost-effective solution along with a complete backend management system, rapid contact delivery and top notch customer service. The combination of technology, attention to detail and customer service is an integral part of Ngage’s success.

Ngage revolutionized Live Chat with its pay-for-performance, 24/7, staffed live chat program. Compared to the traditional live chat model where a customer pays a monthly fee to use a software program and they are responsible for interacting with their website visitors on their own; a model that has been proven unsuccessful for busy Lawyers and Doctors.

Ngage is based exclusively on pay-for-performance, with the client financially responsible for only the results that the service delivers. With no long term contracts or fixed monthly fees, Ngage is allowing Practices of all sizes to capitalize on their preexisting web traffic. “By combining technology, a little psychology and a bit of human touch, we are able to increase conversion rates for our clients with our live chat software.”

While Ngage happily observes this 500-client milestone, the company is certainly not stopping and continues to look ahead, innovating and improving its strategies to increase visitor conversion in the Legal and Medical fields.

About Ngage ICS
Ngage was founded in 2008. We realized that the full extent of today’s technology was not being utilized and that by connecting consumers with web assistants via live chat, the visitors web experience would be vastly improved.
In addition, our research showed that most of our target market was achieving low, single digit conversion rates from their online marketing efforts.
Since then, Ngage has created a proprietary Clicks to Clients™ system and has helped organizations of all sizes turn their web visitors into pre-qualified contacts.

Contact:
Mark Shepherd
Ngage, a Division of Cloud 8 Sixteen, Inc.
www.ngagelive.com
(800)267-1704
mshepherd@ngagelive.com
SOURCE: Cloud 8 Sixteen, Inc.

Just about everyone not living under a rock has heard of Groupon.  Some people are huge fans of the daily deal aggregator and others, well, not so much. Regardless, I wondered if the service would be useful for a Legal Practice?

If you’re not already aware, Groupon is an online company that offers daily deals at all sorts of local businesses.  Basically, on behalf of local businesses they provide a coupon for 50% – 70% off of the retail price for a good or service.  After the buyer pays for the deal, Groupon sends them a coupon via email and Groupon and the participating business split the proceeds.  For retailers looking for additional exposure and/or traffic, Groupon can have a dramatic affect however, one needs to be very well aware of what they are signing up for.  Just try Googling “Groupon Horror Stories” to get a sample of some of their less than happy users.

But can Groupon benefit lawyers looking for more business?  In my opinion, the answer (like so often) is “it depends”.  It depends on the type of law that the attorney practices.  I don’t see Groupon being a very good fit for a personal injury attorney who more than likely is compensated on a contingency basis however I can see it working for an Estate attorney or for Legal Entity formation (LLC’s, Corps, etc). Basic Divorce filings could work but then again, maybe not… like I said, it just depends.

For a Lawyer considering using Groupon it’s important to check with your individual State Bar rules to make sure that in fact, you can use Groupon. The North Carolina ethics committee recently decided that Groupon violates state bar rules’ prohibiting fee splitting. They believe that consumers pay a predetermined price for the Groupon offer and that the participating lawyers subsequently split that fee with Groupon, a practice that violates North Carolina’s rules. This ruling seems a little ticky tack to me but I’m part of the advertising community.

So, in conclusion, I do think that certain Law Practices could see a nice bump in business by using Groupon. I would limit that opinion to firms that charge flat fees and/or can pretty well guage what the average case will cost. In practices where the attorneys are paid on contingency or there are multiple layers of variables for each case then I think that Groupon will do more harm than good; attracting new clients at a price that you are unable to perform is a recipe for disaster.

As always, in my opinion, if a Lawyer wants more business what they really need to do is aggressively market on the internet and ensure that they have a system to capture the lead and convert that lead into an appointment… Simple as that!

Facebook can be a marketing gold mine for Lawyers if used correctly.

The Nielsen Company Report went on to say that, Google gets more visitors than any other website  (176 million unique US visitors) and in total, nearly 215 million Americans were active on the Internet in August 2011.  In addition, they average more than 30 hours online in the month and went to 99 different domains.

So, if you are just now starting to think about internet marketing then Yes, you are a little late to the party but that’s okay.  You can get started now and it is our contention that your Attorney Marketing should be primarily focused on Google SEO, Facebook and on site Visitor Conversion.

According to a recent study from the Journal of Consumer Research, they found that the transition from novice to expert happens when we begin focusing on negative feedback.

The study suggests that when people are new at something, in an effort to stay committed, they seek positive feedback (e.g., “good job!”). On the other hand, experts are more focused on making progress and therefore look for and respond to negative feedback (e.g., what’s going wrong?).

So, whether you make your living as a personal injury attorney, lasik surgeon or live chat operator, if you find yourself looking more closely for negative feedback like how you can improve, then consider that a good sign, you may be an Expert.

It’s used by teens, tweens, mids and max’s. For pleasure, for work. By Nerds, Dweebs, Jocks, Cool Kids, Celebrities, Mom & Dads, Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers… even the President Tweets every so often.

With close to 100 million people texting at any given time it’s no wonder a new, short-hand-like language is being created.  These abbreviations are used by people to quickly communicate with each other while IMing, Chatting, Texting, SMSing, Tweeting etc.

So what do all of these symbols and acronyms mean?

Here are the Top 50 Popular Text & Chat Acronyms (as listed on Netlingo.com):

2moro – Tomorrow
2nite – Tonight
BRB – Be Right Back
BTW – By The Way
B4N – Bye For Now
BCNU – Be Seeing You
BFF – Best Friends Forever
CYA – Cover Your Ass -or- See Ya
DBEYR – Don’t Believe Everything You Read
DILLIGAS – Do I Look Like I Give A Sh**
FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Disinformation
FWIW – For What It’s Worth
GR8 – Great
ILY – I Love You
IMHO – In My Humble Opinion
IRL – In Real Life
ISO – In Search Of
J/K – Just Kidding
L8R – Later
LMAO – Laughing My Ass Off
LOL – Laughing Out Loud -or- Lots Of Love
LYLAS – Love You Like A Sister
MHOTY – My Hat’s Off To You
NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard
NP – No Problem -or- Nosy Parents
NUB – New person to a site or game
OIC – Oh, I See
OMG – Oh My God
OT – Off Topic
POV – Point Of View
RBTL – Read Between The Lines
ROTFLMAO – Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off
RT – Real Time
THX or TX or THKS – Thanks
SH – Sh** Happens

So, next time your chatting it up with a friend send them this:

“BTW, DBEYR because FWIW IMHO we all just need to RBTL and understand other peoples POV and if you can do that then MHOTY…J/K, LMAO, L8R!”

Huh?

Kim Curtis, Co-founder of  Ngage & COO of Cloud 8 Sixteen Inc, attributes the increase to a basic awareness of legal firms towards the importance of delivering 24/7 support to their clients and prospects. What once seemed like an optional feature or a gadget for high tech law firms is now becoming an essential strategic advantage for converting prospects and helping law firms adapt to the high-paced, information-now culture.

“These numbers show a fundamental shift in how lawyers view live chat support,” Curtis said. “The increased use of live chat has helped to turn Ngage live chat from a nice addition to an essential tool for attracting new prospects, providing client support, and being available around the clock.”

For more information on Ngage Live Chat Support visit: http://www.ngagelive.com