Man it has been a long time!

I want to apologize for the time between posts! I have been crazy busy working on the new website design and since it is online and trucking I can get back to some blogging.

The marketing committee met last night and had a great discussion on ways to utilize schools as a tool to build your membership as well as give some great recognition to your state and local associations while building relationships with both students and professors. I feel that vocational schools and colleges with paralegal/legal assistant/legal secretary programs will be the best options when it comes to getting participation. One idea was to use schools to host your meetings and invite students to join you. This will give them access to your group and give them the opportunity to see how it could benefit them when they enter the work force. By using the schools facilities and by inviting the students you could potential save money on renting a room as well as bring in some potential members. Another idea was to host a career fair at the school and allow firms to send HR people to exhibit and interview the students for potential internships and/or jobs. This would be a great way to help out both the students and the law firms if they are having trouble filling positions...new graduates will often work for less money and can be trained without any preconceived ideas of how things are done.

NALS offers some great benefits to schools and students. The NALS textbooks are known to be among the best and most comprehensive while our ALS exam is the only certification geared to new professionals and students. We even have a curriculum guide to help a program get started without truly having to start from nothing.

Keep an eye out as the marketing committee will be putting together some information to make building these relationships with schools easier...we will even have a listing of schools for you!

Jay

My First Mobile Blog Post!

Well after seven hours of trying to update my iPhone it finally worked! This is a new application called lifecast so I figured I would give it a try. Not sure if I will use this much since I still like a normal keyboard better but I may use this while traveling or if I get bored!

Now back to work!

J

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Simple Idea

I may have mentioned this in the past and if so I apologize. I have an idea on a way to cost effectively advertise for your local chapters. Classified Ads. They are relatively low cost in most newspaper and those reading them are often the ones that will benefit the most from having a support group around them. Imagine if you were looking for a job and saw that there was an organization you could go and meet with that represents those you are looking for jobs with. So if you need a legal secretary or paralegal job in Austin, then you can go and meet with a group of legal secretaries and paralegals in Austin. Not only do you get the chance to learn which of their firms are looking, you get a chance to make a great first impression with some involved with that firm. It is almost like a guaranteed first interview!

All of that on top of the fact that they will learn what it is they need to separate themselves from others in the field and have the opportunity to gain continuing education at the same time.

It sounds like a no-brainer because it is! You guys just have to make the effort to tell everyone that you can about it. SPREAD THE WORD PEOPLE! Anyone that has used this method let me know how it works...I am curious. Also if you have some simple and low cost promotion ideas post them in the comments!

Jay

Facebook Groups and LinkedIn are growing!

As of this post the NALS Facebook group was up to 22 members...Not Bad! Now get in there and start some conversations people! This is a way to network both professionally and socially so take advantage. Also this is a great way to promote your state and local associations and use them to build your membership base. You can post events you are hosting and also send invites to people as reminders. Might as well take advantage of these offerings and use them for all they are worth.

Over at LinkedIn which will basically only work as a professional contact builder the NALS group is looking good with 66 people signed up. This is a great way to build your contacts and will serve as a way for you to connect with people across the country. The world is small people and it can be smaller if you use the right tools!

We are here to help you so please let us know of the things you need and we will do our best to help you out!

Jay

Help Make NALS Famous!

Well Facebook and LinkedIn famous at least! I have started group pages on both Facebook and Linkedin for NALS. I am sure everyone is familiar with Facebook but some are not so much with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking site that lets you make contacts with people and see how many steps away from others you are. You can also post and look for jobs as well as give and receive recommendations. The NALS Groups will give you access to other members of the group so you can use them as a resource if needed. Here is the link to the NEW NALS Group on LinkedIn:

I have no idea how to give you a link for the Facebook group but I am trying to figure it out. Until then you can do a search and hopefully that will get you to the proper place.

Let me know how it goes!

Jay

Support Those Supporting You!

One thing that people take for granted when flipping through their next issue of @Law or even a local newsletter is the advertising. Advertising is what pays for these publications and the publications count on its readers to support those paying to advertise in them so that they will continue to support it and use it as one of their marketing venues. You might think that this is not a chapter or NALS marketing issue when it involves someone else's ads but think of it this way. When NALS or your chapter needs support to host a conference who do you look to? Often times this is a corporate entity. If we take these businesses for granted and do not support their efforts by picking up a copy of your local or national publication and taking a look at what the people that are supporting your organization have to offer then one day they may not be there.

So the next time you need a deposition company or a process server or even mailing labels or copies take a look at @Law or a local publication and see if anyone in there offers these services. If they do I urge you to give them a try...they are giving you one by paying to put their information in front of you!

NALS members are a loyal and devoted group, if we show our corporate sponsors and advertisers this then we will be able to prove to the world outside of NALS what kind of organization we are...and that is marketing!

Jay

Happy April Fool's Day!

Nothing new regarding Marketing but I would love to hear some stories about great April Fool's Day pranks! I know everyone has them so share...maybe you will give someone a good idea.

I will start with a good one. I have a friend from college that got married to a Naval Academy grad and moved around a lot right after school. They settled in Maryland and when she found out that she was pregnant we all were excited for them. The next April Fool's day several of her friends got calls from her husband saying that they had just had a baby boy. Of course we all thought it was a joke being April 1st. We all played it off as a joke not wanting to seem like we were fooled. A few days later we tried to call and check up on her and found out she actually did have the baby on April 1st...we actually fooled ourselves!

Okay so not a great story but something interesting to kick things off.

Leave comments, I like to read them!

Jay

******NALS is not responsible for any stress or mental anguish that may be caused by any of the shenanigans posted on this blog...this is for entertainment purposes only and no pranks here should be duplicated on those individuals not able to take a joke. Please do not use the NALS name or logos in conjunction with any pranks.******