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	What are the hottest trends in law firm/professional service marketing? What are firms doing to stand-out online and elsewhere? July 2008 by Christopher Batio 1. ERM systems like...BranchIt 2. Online Networking using tools like LinkedIn 3. Lawyer blogs that look independent but are really created in conjunction with Marketing and Law Firm Management 4. Competitive Intelligence programs to support effective biz dev 5. Developing incubator practices to serve cutting edge industries and issues (climate change, subprime litigation, nanotech, clean tech) The Need for Social Networking within the Sustainability Community July 16, 2008 by Scott Boutwell Over the course of the past 4 years I have had the opportunity to work with or share market strategies with executives at social networking companies such as LinkedIn, Spoke Software, Visible Path, and BranchIt. Of particular interest to me was the ability to develop and leverage what I referred to as "Relationship Capital Management"; the opportunity to develop, foster, and share relationships within an organization (or ecosystem) for the purposes of optimizing knowledge management and revenue generation... Open vs. Closed Networks May 19, 2008 by Carmen Hudson A couple of years ago, a friend of mine from way back in the day showed me a demo of his new product, BranchIt. It was a cool product, but I thought at the time, this won't fly with corporate recruiting teams, not in a million years…I think I was wrong…It's only a matter of time before it becomes a commonly accepted tool. As the open social networks continue to decline in value recruiters (and salespeople) will look for ways to build networks of unique contacts with deep value...Closed networks dangle the promise of building networking capital that provides a competitive edge. A strong network is good. A strong network that belongs to you and you alone is even better. Tech Crunch: The Enterprise Social Network, Auto-Generated And Visually Mapped April 24, 2008 by Mike Butcher Making social networks work inside companies is a difficult task. Who wants to update their “status” to tell everyone what they are working on, or have to tag things manually? We’ll do that for our friends on Facebook, but for our co-workers on the terrible ‘knowledge management’ system the company installed? Not so much… Systems that mine email traffic (but not content) and other activities to passively determine relationships can be used to answer the “who knows X” question… From Puddles to Pools: The Evolutionary History of KM at H&K November 8, 2007 by Steven Kaye Ted Graham of McKinsey & Company presented. He focused on his experience as Chief Knowledge Officer of Hill & Knowlton. He looked at ways of recording relationships with companies and media outlets. Old way - Nag people to reveal relationships. New way - Employed BranchIt to uncover relationships; recorded active relationships and one-time contacts from email interactions. Social Networking Goes Enterprise May 2007 by Tom Aley Peer-to-peer social networking has grown significantly in popularity in the past few years. Companies such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Friendster and Facebook were established to help consumers connect with colleagues and friends. Today, the enterprise is beginning to harness the power of emerging Web 2.0 technologies to increase employee efficiency, detect competitive threats and drive incremental revenue…Until recently, however, the enterprise hasn’t been able to fully leverage such search technologies as early experiments in B-to-B social networking didn’t pan out. However, a new wave of companies built upon Web 2.0 technologies are changing the game and delivering compelling value and clear ROI to corporations. Brain Storm! Business Podcast: Building Your Rolodex with Online Social Networking Sites December 30, 2006 by Stacey Greenwell In today's Brain Storm! business podcast, we will discuss the different ways to find the business contacts you need - via online social networking sites. Turning Sales Into Science December 2006 by Alex Salkever New and intriguing sales tools figure out ways to harness the collective network of an entire company. So-called relationship mining software made by San Francisco-based BranchIt, for example, combs through all of the correspondences and files on a corporate network to create a map of each employee's external relationships--allowing individual salespeople to tap into the collective knowledge of their organizations. Offices Co-Opt Consumer Web Tools Like 'Wikis' and Social Networking September 12, 2006 by Vauhini Vara Mr. Gregson's employer, Hill & Knowlton Inc., had recently bought software from BranchIt Corp., a San Francisco start-up that supplies businesses with social-networking tools made popular by Facebook Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace.com. Using BranchIt, Mr. Gregson found the client's regional communication directors, as well as a list of his own colleagues who had exchanged email with the directors and might be able to broker an introduction. Within days, he heard back from a colleague who helped him pitch the idea. Social Networks and Knowledge Management June 16, 2006 by Stacey Greenwell Ted Graham, from marketing firm Hill & Knowlton, presented ways of discovering the hidden relationships in a work environment. We are used to the hierarchical way of viewing a network of work colleagues; software now permits to see the informal networks...The idea is then to use the results for strategic relationship and functional relationship building. BranchIt's Relationship-Mining Solution Uncovers Millions of Relationships May 1, 2006 Press Release BranchIt Corporation, a provider of on-demand relationship-mining solutions, today announced that it has enabled its customer companies to identify millions of relationships held by their respective employees. In addition, BranchIt has helped these companies to assess the quality of uncovered relationships... MySpace for the Office April 18, 2006 by Steve Rosenbush Visible Path isn’t the first social networking company to target Corporate America…These guys sound similar to Spoke.com. They both raised and burned through lots of money, achieving poor customer traction. Check out BranchIt Corporation or Interface Software. These two have had customer successes in the corporate market. Using Marketing Technology to Get a Foot in the Door March 8, 2006 by Tom Baldwin In preparation for a client pitch, lawyers traditionally walked down halls and asked if anyone knew someone at the company in question. With the advent of e-mail, the "all-lawyer" e-mail blast has become commonplace. But are you truly leveraging your firm's relationship capital? Given the glut of e-mails, it's likely some lawyers will miss the e-mail or not respond. However, the concept of mining e-mail has emerged... Enhancing Government's DNA February 2006 by Judith Ribbler Social network analysis software, such as...BranchIt...provide a visual representation of social networks within organizations and uncovers relationships that can be the basis for new communities...Connecting people produces new relationships, solutions, Communities of Practice (CoPs) and sources of knowledge. Collaborative tools help facilitate group communication across multiple locations or virtual communities. Professional services firms' adoption of CRM has been low; analytics functionality and the hosted model may help raise it. February, 1, 2006 by Coreen Bailor Networking applications, which help people uncover potential connections, are making it easier for employees to identify who within their organization has ties to customers and prospects..."Frequently, people do business with people that they know or people that they trust," says Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal of Beagle Research Group. "When social networking came out a few years ago, one of the first areas that really took advantage of the concept was the professional services world." Pombriant expects hosted offerings to boost deployment rates. Social Networking and CRM: the Next Step for Law Firms January 13, 2006 by Joy London These products address two crucial shortcomings of traditional CRM systems. First, because they mine your firm's e-mail server and create individual contact records from e-mail your lawyers send and receive (filtering out spam and other junk mail) there's absolutely ZERO data entry required by lawyers or their secretaries - genius. The second thing these systems do is offer various access levels to contact information which can provide lawyers a much greater level of control over the use of their contacts than in a traditional CRM system. I was impressed with some of BranchIt's other features... Adding relationship capital to CRM… January 12, 2006 by Ingo Forstenlechner What struck me on the website of BranchIt was one sentence on the start page: “Recruiting: Find strong job candidates with the help of your employees. Cut out the recruiting middleman. Find objective references.” That sounds kind of familiar. Ask your buddies to work for the same firm you work for. Always a perfect match provided they (the firm and the buddies) think highly of you. But automate that? Would I like to take questions over friends of mine if they happen to apply for a job somewhere in a large organization? Provide references, yes. Talk informally with my boss, yes. BranchIt Names Mary Ann Davidson to Advisory Board January 5, 2006 Press Release BranchIt Corporation, a provider of on-demand relationship mining solutions, today announced that Mary Ann Davidson has joined its Advisory Board. Ms. Davidson is Chief Security Officer of Oracle, is a member of the Global Council of CSOs, and represents Oracle on the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Information Security Analysis Center. In addition, Ms. Davidson is a frequent contributor to industry publications, was named one of Information Security magazine's top five "Women of Vision", and is a 2004 Fed100 award recipient from Federal Computer Week... Lawyers Learn to Share September 1, 2005 by Alexandra DeFelice Pillsbury Winthrop wanted to lay down the law to its attorneys: Share your relationships, don't make your colleagues start building their own from scratch...Pillsbury Winthrop already had a relationship management and CRM system in place with Interface Software, but not enough of its 900 lawyers across 16 global offices were buying into the idea of sharing..."Some lawyers would share their information and others wouldn't," says CIO Warren Jones...We wanted better ROI--that's where BranchIt [came] in." The firm went to the provider of enterprise relationship management software and services for help. INDUSTRY WRAPUPS July 1, 2005 by Eric Young Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP is turning to new software to help its lawyers share information about the firm's clients. The software program by San Francisco-based BranchIt Corp. creates an electronic social network. With it, Pillsbury lawyers can choose to share information about clients with other Pillsbury lawyers. In this way introductions to other Pillsbury attorneys can come more easily -- much in the way that it's easier to begin chatting up a friend of a friend than it is to break the ice with a stranger... Who Knows Whom, And Who Knows What? June 15, 2005 by Susannah Patton We purchased 1700 subscriptions from BranchIt Corporation -- a corporate social networking service that we quickly deployed to almost half the company in just over 2 weeks. It has enabled us to map out well OVER A MILLION relationships from our employees already, and is an invaluable service for us to both serve our clients better and to develop new business for the firm. 100 Proven CRM Ideas June 2005 by Coreen Bailor, Colin Beasty, Jason Compton, Alexandra DeFelice, Marshall Lager, and David Myron "Don't reinvent your relationships," says Joshua Yuster, CEO of BranchIt Corp. Relationship management software from companies like BranchIt...can search digital records of customers and potential customers who have preexisting relationships with other members of your team. Reward team players. Provide bonuses or team player rewards for referring...to the right internal agent who can add more value. Talent Is Back as an Issue: A Brief Report on ER Expo 2005 Spring April 6, 2005 by Kevin Wheeler Other entrants to the employee networking space included BranchIt, located in San Francisco...a product worth a good look...Referrals, whether employee focused or externally focused, have grown in importance. Most organizations are now saying that referrals provide anywhere from 20% to 50% of their hires and almost always a lower cost than other methods. Is Relationship Mining Ready for Prime Time? March 23, 2005 by Gwynne Young CRMGuru.com is starting to hear from firms that do relationship mining and customer reference programs...BranchIt [was selected] by international law firm Pillsbury Winthrop LLP for global relationship mining needs. CUSTOMER WINS March 22, 2005 by Colin Beasty Pillsbury Winthrop is deploying BranchIt, a provider of on-demand relationship-mining solutions. Pillsbury Winthrop will activate 1,700 BranchIt subscriptions worldwide and will use BranchIt to enhance lead development and recruiting among its sales force.... BranchIt Takes a More Direct Approach to Mining Relationship Capital March 15, 2005 by Martin Schneider Analyst report on BranchIt Corporation (login required) The Technology of the Year November 1, 2003 by David Pescovitz Social networking applies the power of the network to one of the most fundamental problems in all of business: finding the person who has the critical information you need, right when you need it. That's why Business 2.0 has selected social networks as our Technology of the Year for 2003...The desire to exploit social networks will inevitably conflict with the desire simply to be left alone. But in the end, the potential value of all that social capital will likely prove too tempting to resist. As it turns out, the old cliche -- "It's not what you know, but who you know" -- is truer than anyone ever realized.