We also recommend you attend industry events and collaborate with fellow professionals apart from participating in online discussions.
Today, creating a personal brand is very important to succeed online for lawyers. It helps you carve your own niche while allowing you to spread the word about your value proposition. The idea of personal branding comes from corporate or commercial branding. In that case, it basically means what a customer or potential customer “feels” when he or she thinks of the company’s name, product, or even its slogan or colors.
When translated to the personal level, branding means what kind of experience you create for a client or a potential client. Personal branding influences a lot and is, in turn, influenced by a lot—Including colors, logo, tone of communication, website’s user interface, and so on.
Ultimately, personal branding is about showcasing your expertise and thought leadership in a way that resonates with your target audience. In this article, we’re going to look at how lawyers can harness the power of personal branding through effective thought leadership and increase their website traffic and ultimately, conversions.
Determining Your Value Proposition
Most marketing agencies like Comrade digital marketing will first ask you to define your value proposition when they work for your personal brand. And that is what you should do when you’re doing it yourself.
Your value proposition is your unique selling point (USP). It tells people how you are different, why should they choose you over a competitor, or at the very least, what are your best qualities that will help the potential client.
Typically, you will begin by identifying your unique skills, experiences, and perspectives that make you a trusted authority in your legal niche. You can also boast of your achievements and success rate. The value proposition forms the foundation of your personal brand.
Expertise in Thought Leadership
Thought leadership involves sharing your knowledge and insights on legal trends, challenges, and solutions. The legal space is full of experts with strong opinions, but there’s never one too many experts.
You should aim to become an expert in your field and have a social media presence (at least, we recommend being present on LinkedIn and Twitter). Write your two cents on major issues and challenges of the time, maintain active social media profiles, share other people’s work, and so on.
You don’t have to publish an opinion on just about everything. You can get by just fine by being neutral or a passive commentator as well. The idea is to produce high-quality content that has value and is useful for people.
Also, work on articles, blog posts, webinars, and speaking engagements. All of these mediums can help you demonstrate your expertise while offering valuable guidance to your target audience.
You can hire a lawyer SEO company to publish content on key topics, covering all aspects of the field or domain. This helps you establish thought leadership online and you become a trustworthy and authoritative professional in the eyes of website visitors as well as Google (thus, improving your website’s shareability and SEO).
An Authentic Online Presence
The majority of law firm marketing companies will first try to create an authentic presence for your personal brand if you hire them. Your online presence speaks volumes about your personal brand. Here, you should focus on developing a professional and engaging website.
A part of this is also being active on social media which we covered in the last section. Overall, you should produce a lot of content on different topics and try to capitalize on any trending topic that you can reliably weigh on.
There’s a whole spectrum of legal content online. Some is simply Wikipedia-style knowledge that lacks a personal touch or expert voice and then some is so heavily opinionated that it reeks of controversy.
Ideally, you want to avoid both extremes. But in doing so, don’t become extremely dull and flavorless, so to speak. Only authentic and honest personalities work online and if you wish to develop an online presence for your personal brand, then you must have something.
What this something is depends on what you can accomplish easily and conveniently. It can be charisma, flair, energy, deep knowledge, or even a bold-sounding voice.
Networking & Building Relationships
Now, we come to one of the most important points of the discussion. Thought leadership isn’t just about broadcasting your knowledge—It’s equally about engaging in meaningful conversations.
Usually, it’s not hard to find something to be a part of, including online communities, today. From LinkedIn and Facebook groups to other types of legal advice forums and communities, lawyers have a lot of places where they can network and build relationships.
Apart from forums and social media networks, you also have active communities like Reddit, Quora, and Telegram where you can publish your opinions and take part in existing opinions.
We also recommend you attend industry events and collaborate with fellow professionals apart from participating in online discussions. Ultimately, doing it over the course of a few months will land you in a very nice position. You would have built a strong network that will support and promote your personal brand and add more credibility to your work for potential clients.
Wrapping Up
Wondering how do law firms get clients? Well, now you have some idea! Work on all these aspects for your website, work on your personal branding, and aim to develop thought leadership in your domain and you, too, can make it big and get a steady flow of clients from organic website traffic and word-of-mouth referrals!
Join the conversation!