I just read a great blog post by Hinge Marketing’s Professional Marketing Blog, Rethinking Thought Leadership: 7 Tips for Gaining New Clients. It nicely describes how professionals should approach writing for their website, blog, etc. I’ve been telling my clients the same basic things for years, and thought this post might help reinforce the points — so, I shared the link with them. And now, I am sharing it here. I especially like tip #3, because this is where you can really add value and differentiate yourself by speaking the client’s language instead of the esoteric language of your profession.
The first 3 tips are below. Click here to read the rest.
1. Thought leadership should not be aimed at impressing your peers. While it may feel good to be the most clever tax attorney or the sharpest programmer, it will likely do little to generate new business for your firm.
2. It’s much more productive to impress potential clients. Potential clients are just that, potential clients. They are the appropriate targets for a thought leadership strategy.
3. Potential clients are impressed by the ability to explain a complicated topic simply. Making an already complicated topic more complicated doesn’t help. Even though you are impressed by your understanding of a topic’s subtleties and nuances, many readers will get that glassy-eyed look and stop reading.
Thank you to Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D. for writing this.
Thanks for the link Amy, that’s a great post. Surprising how often we forget that as lawyers our job is to make the experience of our complex legal system easier and better for our clients – not worse!
Thank you Amy for the nice comment. I think number 3 is perhaps the most widely missed point by potential “thought leaders”. It’s a favorite of mine as well.
Regards…lwf