Lawyers always ask me if they should focus on building a personal brand or their law firm brand. Ideally, it would be great to focus on building both, however, I strongly believe in building a personal brand for many reasons. When you build your personal brand, your firm brand will also grow and benefit indirectly.
The legal industry is so competitive, therefore; you really must set yourself apart from your competition and stand out.
The best way to stand out amongst your competition is to create a personal brand for yourself.
Building Your Personal Brand is Like an Insurance Policy for Your Future
I always say that building a personal brand is like having an insurance policy; just as you would never go without having car insurance, you should never go without having a strong personal brand. You must view building your personal brand as an insurance policy for your future.
For example, I have a friend who is an attorney in the UK that works for an in-house law firm and because she has been building her personal brand by creating content on Instagram and Tik-Tok related to her industry, a legal tech firm approached her with an amazing job opportunity.
There are so many other reasons why building a personal brand is important. Whether you work for a large firm or have one or two partners, building your personal brand will ensure that you are leveraging your future success. If you work at a big law firm, you never know when law-offs may be coming and if you have a partner, you never know when conflicts may arise within that partnership.
By building your personal brand, it gives people the opportunity to know who you are and what you do. Instead of you having to go out and find opportunities; the opportunities come to you.
What Are Some Ways to Build a Personal Brand as an Attorney
Press Releases: position yourself as an expert in your practice area niche with a press release. It’s a great way to get more coverage for yourself and you may even get picked up by media outlets. Press releases also tend to rank high on Google, so make sure that you write the title and content strategically for SEO purposes. Backlinks are extremely important for SEO (search engine optimization) and press releases provide high authority and quality backlinks back to your website.
SEO Optimized Blog Posts: part of building a personal brand is to create fresh, relevant content for your website. Not only does that build your credibility, but it also gives you the ability to rank on page one of Google multiple times. Page one rankings do not come overnight, but if you consistently create relevant content, Google will reward you by ranking your website higher on the search engines.
HARO (Help a Reporter Out): you can go to this website and set up an account and alerts for your practice area topics and when reporters are looking to interview a subject expert matter for a story or interview, you can submit to those. The key to getting picked is to act quickly and answer the questions that they are asking in a manner that shines a light on your expertise.
Short Form Videos on Instagram Reels and Tik Tok: Recently Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram is no longer just a photo-sharing app. What Adam meant by this is that more priority is going to be given to short-form video content. More and more attorneys are starting to create reels to share legal tips and discuss legal topics in short 15, 30, or 60-second videos. I did a “reels for lawyers” challenge a few weeks ago and many lawyers who consistently created content and posted got clients from their videos. Instagram is even introducing monetization features for select influencers who create quality content.
Live-Streaming: many social media platforms give you the ability to go live. You can do a live stream on Instagram, and Facebook, and even stream your content to multiple platforms utilizing tools such as Restream.io.
YouTube Videos: YouTube is a great way to create educational content pertinent to your practice area niche. The key to YouTube videos is to come up with a strategy based on answering the most common questions that clients either ask you or are searching for online.
Your potential clients will go to Google and YouTube to find answers to their questions; if they come across your video, that gives you credibility and opens the opportunity for them to contact you and schedule a consultation.
Create Content on LinkedIn: depending on your practice area, LinkedIn may be the perfect platform to share your knowledge and expertise by creating blog articles on specific legal topics.
Download my podcast episode below to learn “Why LinkedIn is Important for Growing Your Business and Brand.” To check out more episodes of the “Mesmerizing Marketing” podcast, visit this website.
Start building your personal brand today. It starts with identifying one or two platforms that you are willing to commit to creating content for and be consistent for optimal success.
If you need help with your law firm’s marketing strategy or building your personal brand, fill out the “request a consultation” form.
