My last blog focused on the importance of Pitch, the first step to and, in fact, the critical cornerstone of your marketing campaign.
The next forte of any successful marketing plan is Publish. Publish often, and now, during lockdown, is the perfect time for you to develop this forte. After all, publishing doesn’t require in-person social interaction, so start writing, and you’ll have a bank of publications ready for prime-time when the quarantine is over.
And, by the way, appreciate all the material that the lockdown is generating for you!
Publishing gives you credibility, “authority,” if you will, in your profession. Why is this? The public perceives authors as experts in their subject matter. Credibility enables you to write clear and compelling blogs, articles, tweets, and books that people will read, relate to, and, perhaps most importantly, share with others.
And your pitch runs throughout everything you write because it clearly captures your passion; it’s who you are!
You can’t raise awareness and interest in the subject about which you are passionate without establishing your credibility first. And you won’t establish your credibility if you ignore the power of the written word, whether it’s in pen-and-paper form or electronic. I’ve had several clients tell me during our consultations together that they were retaining me as they waved my book in my face, without saying but clearly emphasizing the reason why.
Start Your Publishing
So what do I work on while I’m stuck at home? For now, focus your efforts on these five powerful activities:
- Develop the avatar of your perfect reader, and write as though you’re addressing her. Once she’s heard your pitch, what big, burning question does she want answered? Think about your favorite clients. Does she look like any of them? Does she ask the same questions as they did? Or is she, perhaps, a combination of several of them, with an imaginary one thrown in?
- If you don’t have one yet, set up your own blog on your website. In fact, establish a writing schedule that will carry you beyond the lockdown, and plan a publishing schedule, too, for the blogs that you produce.
- Begin writing. What will you write about? That’s likely the easiest of all of these tasks.
- Write about the remarkable collaborations you have witnessed, the clients you have counseled, whether financially, legally, or emotionally, the lives you have improved, the problems you’ve solved and how your team solved them.
- Write about The Ten Worst Mistakes you’ve witnessed other professionals or clients make.
- Write about your Seven Worst Litigation Eperiences.
- Write your Timely Top Ten Tips for clients, like the ones I wrote last week:
- Write about the issues, whether ethical, procedural, or pragmatic, that you’ve read about, discussed, been confronted by, or considered in your practice.
- Write about what’s in the headlines or what tickles your imagination in your newsfeed. This week I focused on the judge who yanked 50/50 timesharing from the devoted emergency room doc during lockdown upon her ex-husband’s request. (That decision was immediately stayed by the appellate court.) How might that issue have been handled in a collaborative setting?
- Answer your clients’ FAQs. My favorite is “Am I Abandoning My Interest in Our Home if I Move Out Before I’m Divorced?”
- Answer “How To’s.”
- Write about how you discovered collaborative practice and why it makes sense to you, about where your passion comes from.
- Join networks like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and stay current on and respond to requests that you might be able to answer.
- Review publications from all organizations to which you belong, or which are pertinent to your work (newsletters, magazines, e-zines, etc.). Contact the publications’ editorial boards to discover how articles should be submitted and what their requirements are for those articles. Consider what articles you could write that they’d be thrilled to publish. What articles could you create from work you’ve already done for clients or for cases, repurposing work you’ve already been paid to do? And, for extra credit . . .
- Start writing your book. Create your book map (an outline or overview of the entire book). Create your chapter maps. Review your old blogs and articles and determine whether any of them will fit as chapters in your book. Expand any that require additional discussion to fit as chapters in your book. Aim for 3000 (1000-5000) words for each chapter and 35,000 words for your entire book.
Every time you publish, you should offer your unique take on collaborative practice. There’s no point in being a clone of an existing collaborative personality. Your perspective and your “voice” are yours alone. Keep in mind the specific next step you want your avatar to take right after she finishes reading your article. Make sure to include that call to action in every piece you write.
Here’s mine; email me at Joryn@OpenPalmLaw.com, and let’s discuss how my marketing tools and webinars can help you learn how to effectively market during lockdown so that you are ready to leap into the future when the lockdown ends!
