15 Easy Ways to Build Your Brand and Business Today

If you’re ready to invest in your marketing efforts but aren’t sure where to start, focus on tactics that will have a strong impact on your brand building and business development efforts.

Whether you’re a lawyer looking to build your own brand, or a legal marketer supporting your firm’s attorneys, here are some tips to follow regardless of firm size.

Professional Branding

1. Focus on your LinkedIn profile.?Make sure your cover image and your headline are customized, up-to-date and reflect what you do and for whom you do it. Make it as easy as possible for people to find you by putting your contact information (phone number and email) front and center on your cover image. Don’t use a generic skyline image or one of LinkedIn’s templates — this is an opportunity to customize a big piece of real estate to support your marketing efforts.

2. Update your bio.?This is a great time to look back on the past year and ensure your bios on every platform are reflective of the awesome things you’ve done, awards you’ve won, the unique experiences you’ve had, etc.

3. Google yourself regularly and set up Google Alerts for your top clients and prospects.?Information is power when it comes to your clients and prospects, plus setting up alerts is free. This is your professional brand, so make sure you’re managing it.

4. Update all practice area/industry descriptions for websites and pitches.?Be clear about what you do, so a potential client sees you as the best option.

Strategic Planning

5. Examine the analytics of past blogs, emails and client alerts?to refine your content strategy; do this often. This information ensures you’re creating content your audience actually?wants?to see and that you aren’t wasting your time or theirs.

6. Plan your social media strategy for the next quarter.?Think about your goals and what did well last year. Keep in mind:

• The lawyers and other key employees you want to highlight, as well as any practices, initiatives and industries on which you want to focus.
• Building in hashtags for days of awareness, holidays and monthly themes, such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride, etc.
• Content for potential Throwback Thursday/Flashback Friday/In Case You Missed It (TBT/FBF/ICYMI) posts to highlight past content and milestones.

7. Raise your profile by publishing value-added content.?The purpose of your content is to brand yourself as a thought leader in your practice area/industry. Publishing regular content helps keep you top of mind within your network; aim for one article per month. Look back at the past year and what’s to come, giving your insights and perspectives on important updates and trends that affect your clients. Make a connections plan for LinkedIn to strategically increase your network — the more connections you have, the more people will see your content.

8. Publish your top content of the past quarter or month via email and social.?This is a great way to repackage your top-performing webinars, videos, blog posts, articles, email campaigns or social media posts.

9. Repurpose top-performing content.?Many people make the mistake of sharing a piece of content once and never posting it again. That is a huge waste of time and effort, especially since people are busy and don’t always see our emails or LinkedIn posts. Plus, LinkedIn only shows your content to a very small percentage of people who have interacted with it, follow you or who the algorithm thinks would enjoy your content. The onus is on you to bring your content to more people — and that’s where repurposing comes into the equation. If you feel uncomfortable posting the same piece of content again, use a different image or edit the introductory text. Let your content work harder for you — it’s just smarter marketing.

10. Repurpose past videos and webinars into short video segments for social media.?You have great content on your website and YouTube channel already, now break them into smaller segments. It takes time to do this, but it’s worth the effort. Consider hiring a video editor to help you do this. It’s best to let them know exactly which segments you want, as well as to create a title and end screen for each clip. Video content is so important today and ranks highly on Google, so make this a priority in your content marketing strategy.

Client Relations and Networking

11. Focus on enhancing your visibility, which can raise your profile and keep you top of mind with current clients, as well as people who aren’t familiar with you. You can do this through traditional public relations (quote and article placements) as well as speaking engagements and owned media. This can include starting your own blog, podcast or video series, which you can promote on social media, email and other channels.

12. Reconnect with key former clients and referral sources.?If you don’t stay top of mind with them, you run the risk of being forgotten.

13. Clean up your email lists and add new contacts.?Your email list is so important — spend the time to make sure you have the right contacts. Segment your lists to ensure you’re sending the right content to the right people, too.

14. Commit to an industry-related activity, whether for a bar association committee, social cause, pro bono project or alumni association. This is a great way to network and find opportunities to speak or participate in a panel.

15. Demonstrate mastery of subject matter and connect with key people in your industry through speaking engagements.?This can open many doors, leading to additional speaking opportunities, article writing, referrals and the very best case of all: a new client matter. Look at upcoming conferences in your industry and make a list of the ones you want to attend — or better yet, speak at. Track the dates of the conferences along with speaking proposal submission dates. Create a few speaking proposals you can reuse and apply.

Don’t feel like you have to implement all of these strategies at once. You’re much better off if you do a couple of them and save the rest for later. This list offers just a few examples of what you can do.

But do commit to doing something — each step you take is an investment in yourself?and?your business.

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