Ben Paul, CEO and Founder of The BD Ladder, discusses personal branding techniques for Lawyers that allows them to manage their workloads whilst still enhancing and growing their presence and credibility in the wider internet scape, specifically on LinkedIn.
The last 2 years have increased lawyers’ desire to boost their personal brands and use social media and, in particular, LinkedIn as a way of staying ‘top of mind’ with their clients and target markets.
However, many are fearful of investing too much time on LinkedIn, particularly as time is even more precious as client needs have to be met – all while balancing a working from home life, although these factors are easing somewhat as New Zealand starts to re-open.
To help lawyers manage their workloads and still enhance and grow their presence and credibility on LinkedIn, I’ve provided 3 simple and practical steps to follow below.
- Carve out your daily/weekly LinkedIn time
To avoid becoming addicted to regularly checking LinkedIn, set aside time during the week, say 15 minutes on Tuesday and 15 minutes on Thursday, to spend posting and sharing articles. Many people spend 5-10 minutes a day, either first thing or at lunchtime checking LinkedIn.
- Build and follow a LinkedIn activity plan
Now you know how much time you can commit to LinkedIn, the next stage is to focus on what activities you will undertake to promote and strengthen your profile on it.
Make this plan clear and actionable. E.g.
- Update LinkedIn bio
- Post 8 articles on LinkedIn per month
- Post one long-form post on LinkedIn per month
- Get 10 new connections per month
Even simple bullet points like the above will make it easy for you to follow and deliver your plan.
- Sharing information beats self-promotion
People will want to read what you post on LinkedIn if you provide them with information that is of interest to them. A LinkedIn post in which you showcase your expertise will most likely get little traction. However, one that informs people of a recent law change and then points out which are the areas that those affected by it need to be aware of, is key.
Conclusion
You will quite quickly start having more engagement and conversations on LinkedIn if you are diligent and consistent. Following simple steps, such as those as outlined above, is the perfect way to do this and what is even better is it won’t absorb too much of your most valuable commodity – time.
There is, of course, a great deal more to Personal Branding and BD for Lawyers which is why we have created this downloadable guide for you to use.
About the author: Ben Paul is the Founder of The BD Ladder a BD and Marketing consultancy that specialises in growing professional services and law firms. He has over 20 years’ experience in providing sales and marketing advice and has worked in senior BD roles in several professional services and law firms. You can speak with Ben on LinkedIn.
