Putting 'Thought' Back Into Thought Leadership
A version of this article was originally published Feb. 12, 2021. Then on Linkedin Pulse on December 16, 2021, here. Copyright 2021. ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
Thought leadership has been a much bandied-about and ballyhooed term for law firms long before 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged it.
Last year was a long and challenging slog, and I think most of us were hoping that we could leave a lot of the nasty behind when we ripped the old 2020 calendar off the wall and stuck a shiny new 2021 one up in its place. I’m hoping we could toss a few overused phrases from 2020 in the trash too. I’m sure you have your list, but here are a few of the buzzwords I’m tired of hearing:
Unprecedented times. New normal. Fake news. Thought leadership.
Wait, what?
Yes, you read that right. Yes, content marketing is what I do. Yes, I talk about thought leadership an average of half a dozen times a day.
Thought leadership has been a much bandied-about and ballyhooed term for law firms long before 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged it. When event-based marketing came to a screeching halt almost a year ago, content-based marketing became critical for firms needing to stay connected and visible with clients.
As a result, everyone scrambled to cloak themselves with the mantle of thought leader.
Now don’t get me wrong: content marketing has always been one of the most effective tools for marketing legal services—even before we had a fancy name for it. Whether we’re talking about marketing at the individual lawyer level or firmwide marketing for Big Law, in today’s competitive market thought leaders attract attention—and business. And as the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue into 2021, and in-person meetings, on-location conferences, and other live social and networking opportunities are on hold (or on Zoom), thought leadership remains essential to marketing and business development.
But like “esquire,” thought leader is an honorific that has to be given to you. You can’t just call yourself one; you have to earn it.
Thought leaders are the lawyers and the firms that clients turn to, time and again, for new, original, and valuable information and insight. Their visibility gets—and keeps—them on the radar of the people who make and influence legal hiring decisions.
Not every piece of content rises to the level of thought leadership—it doesn’t need to. But tepid content won’t advance your marketing, and tepid content you tout as thought leadership can do serious damage to your efforts to be recognized as a true thought leader.
Here are some thoughts on developing thought leadership.
Thought Leadership Is Two Words.
Yes, the substance of what you put out—the thought part— matters. It should be accurate, timely and informative, at the very least.
But the leadership part is what sets it—and you—apart from the ordinary. Thought leaders are proactive, not reactive. In other words, they frame the discussion, not just participate in it. Good thought leadership not only provides answers to your clients’ at-this-moment questions and suggests solutions for their most immediate and pressing concerns, it also helps identify what might be coming next and offers strategies to prepare for it.
When the pandemic hit, we saw lots of firms chasing after the content ball, creating COVID-19 alerts, newsletters, designated sections on their websites, even standalone websites and “resource centers.” A growing avalanche of content landed in client inboxes every day. Some of the content was great, but a lot of it just repeated what others were reporting—and clients noticed. In fact, the most often-repeated complaint was that the COVID-19 content coming from law firms was generic.
Many lawyers shy away from offering advice, taking positions, or making predictions in their content. I understand their hesitation. But to be considered thought leadership, content needs to go beyond just informative. It needs to be actionable—and not just in general, but for your specific client audience or industry.
Too often the focus, especially for firm-branded content, is to be the first into client inboxes. But as we saw with the COVID-19 content, the rush to the inbox becomes a race to the bottom in terms of quality. It’s also nearly impossible to win this race consistently, given the volume of content being generated by firms. The real purpose of thought leadership is to build a trust relationship with clients by becoming a reliable source of high-quality, usable information. Over time, clients will skip over the first-in-the-inbox emails in order to look for yours.
Thought Leadership Evolves.
In today’s technology-driven world, clients want—and expect—information to be available nearly instantaneously, the right information, right when they need it. Good thought leadership meets this demand with “just in time” knowledge; it gives clients accessible and appropriate resources to address their problems and avoids deluging them with extraneous or stale information. From a content development perspective, this kind of just-in-time content is resource efficient, focusing on reaching defined audiences of clients with in-demand content helps avoid the waste of both time and money.
At the beginning of the pandemic, clients wanted up-to-the-minute content on the impact of government responses to the spread of the virus on their industries and market sectors, on their businesses and their personal lives. Most of this COVID-19 content was in written form—client alerts and newsletters, website resource pages and blogs—because law firms, which were also suddenly dealing with government lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, either had existing infrastructure to get the content in front of clients or could quickly put it in place.
Now, as the pandemic stretches into the second year, client needs have shifted toward future-focused guidance. They are also looking for new ways to access and digest the information, including webinars, videos, and podcasts. While developing content across these media takes more time, effort and expense, savvy firms are investing the resources to meet this client demand. Offering this kind of thought leadership both distinguishes them from other firms and helps avoid getting lost in the inbox noise.
Thought Leaders Are Generous.
You have an expertise developed over years of practice and you want to showcase it to clients in the hopes of reaping the benefits—more business opportunities from both existing and new clients and an easier time getting hired, among others. But thought leaders treat content development as more than just a marketing tool; they treat it as a value-added service they provide to clients. True thought leaders regularly offer to act as a key resource to clients by providing thoughtful information and analysis—for free. Some firms provide exclusive or semi-exclusive content as a premium for clients. Impact alerts and newsletters, webinars, videos, and podcasts can be tailored to individual or limited groups of clients or offered to clients first and then pushed out to a wider audience after a set time period.
Thought Leaders Work Smarter Not Harder.
All of this might leave you with the feeling that thought leadership is more trouble than it’s worth, but the key to successful content-based marketing is aligning your efforts with your business development objectives and forgetting the rest. Resist the urge to cast too wide a net, and focus instead on engaging with your existing clients and your target audiences with the content that appeals to them the most. Use today’s version of the CORE principle—create once, repurpose everywhere—by putting the bulk of your effort into developing distinctive substantive content and then leveraging it strategically in various formats and across multiple channels.
So far, 2021 has yet to prove itself, but I remain relentlessly optimistic on a number of fronts—including that we can all pledge (right now) to put both the “thought” and the “leadership” back in thought leadership.
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