Golden Practices Blog

Marketing by Teaching

Since 2005 (for years and years) I've raved about the effectiveness and amazing coolness of sharing your intellectual capital in order to build business. 

It's still one of the most effective and affordable means of marketing out there for professional firms. Today I came upon a recent(ish) post on Mack Collier's blog called "5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Marketing and Start Teaching." Couldn't agree more. 

To take Mack's post a step further, there are a handful of problems or missed considerations I see in execution, or things that I am asked about when professionals want to know how to get started. Here goes:

1. Let go of the fear of sharing. This is a tough one for CPAs and lawyers. You can't get away with semi-sharing. Hinting that you know something doesn't gain you any cred. Gotta demonstrate it. "Giving it away" isn't going to hurt you and the best business developers have always been the most generous ones. I implore you to watch Jason Fried's video at the bottom of Mack Collier's post. Even if you watch only the first 5 minutes...
2. Know who you're teaching. You cannot overthink when it comes to defining your ideal audience. What you share is going to depend on whose interest you want to catch and hold. If you don't know who your buyers and referrers really are or what they care about, you'll miss the mark. I go into how to define your audience deeply in my book. 
3. Engage with others who create content that relates to yours. One of the best ways to build an audience is to interact with others who have similar interests. Engaging is another word for building relationships. Compare this to referral-source marketing. It's critically important.
4. Don't talk down. This ties in to "know who you're teaching." Good teaching involves clarity and simplicity, but this doesn't mean that you should assume that your audience knows nothing at all. Just be really careful to keep the level appropriate to your readers. I see too many firms err on the side of dumbing it down. Better to err on the side of too-high-level content.
5. Jealousy of the "teachers" among colleagues is dumb. Stop it. Rock stars are good for everyone associated with the record label, right? Your company is the label. Your other people are the emerging artists and your rock stars bring attention to you all.
6. Don't be pitchy. You don't see Emeril blatently hawking his cookware on his cooking show. But he might be using it. Subtlety, people. Nuff said. 

Why Social-Media Rock Stars are Good for Your Firm

Partners and associates often worry about marketing “the individual” versus marketing “the firm.”

When a person markets herself (whether online or off) and receives some attention around it, colleagues can become envious. Some may speculate that she’s not a team player, and that she’s more interested in getting her name known than the firm’s.

Others might pick at her with comments like “You spend too much time on your blog, not doing client work.” Just anticipating these sentiments could preclude her from promoting herself, as if she’d be stepping out of bounds.

But marketing in the professions of law or accounting is much more about relationships than about leveraging a corporate-like brand.

People want to buy from people. Not from logos.

Logos and brands aren’t accountable and accessible. People are. Brands are inherently impersonal yet your firm’s value and long-term appeal are based on your people.

Rock Stars and Record Labels

A good way to look at your firm's marketing is to view the firm as a record label and your people as performers ... with some as potential rock stars.

When a label has only one rock star, you could chalk it up to luck in discovering that talent. With two rock stars signed, people start to wonder if it’s more than just luck. Three rock stars and it’s a trend: the label consistently finds and draws talent.

Think Motown.

A record label that has signed multiple stars is more prestigious among its competitors and is more attractive to aspiring stars. There’s something magical about that label; it appears to have a formula for success.

Your firm should want your attorneys or CPAs to become rock stars so they can elevate the firm’s visibility and reputation.

Rock-stars using social media can quickly put their firm on the map. The higher profile of the firm, in turn, raises the profile of all its attorneys or CPAs.

Creating the Connection

With the visibility comes responsibility.

In all his marketing interactions, a lawyer or CPA should associate himself with his firm in appropriate ways. Online, this means naming the firm and linking to the firm’s website within his bios on social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and blogs.

This doesn’t mean that every profile or photo needs to incorporate the firm’s branding, just that the connection to the firm is consistently reflected on social sites.

And if the person avoids referring to the firm, you might have reason to question his purpose in marketing so independently.

But this isn’t just a social-media problem, it’s an age-old concern. I know of a partner who contributed an article to a local print publication and refrained from naming his firm in his byline. He confessed his intent was to distance himself from the firm—he felt the firm didn’t support his interest in marketing. Whatever his reason, his behavior reflected an underlying problem. The behavior was just the symptom, the root cause was a deeper issue.

In a scenario like this, be careful to address issues like these for what they really are. Don't let fear preclude you from nurturing rock stars. 

Leaving the Label

So there’s this one lingering concern: what if you do support the growth of a rising star, and then she leaves your label?

Your big stars could certainly migrate just as top artists change record companies. This is one reason it’s best to have several rock stars.

It’s true that blogs and social networking sites make it easier than ever for people to build visibility and social capital. And this certainly means they can leave and take this social capital with them. The important thing to remember is that your firm’s stature is already higher for being associated with your stars. That stature stays even when they go.

There’s one way to be particularly proactive about associates or partners possibly leaving that also inspires people to want to create content: establish who will own content like articles and blog posts.

Regardless of the firm’s ability to assert copyright, the wiser approach is a generous spirit of sharing. Agree to let authors use their own articles even after they leave while being clear that the firm can also continue to use the content.

Here’s why you want to share copyright:

When a firm insists on solely owning the content, it creates a disincentive for people (especially non-partners) to contribute their intellectual capital. I’ve seen this completely kill blog efforts, which is a shame because providing content is some of the most valuable marketing you, in a knowledge profession, can do.

Alternately, if the departing attorney or CPA solely owns her content, the firm faces a hassle of scrubbing blogs and websites to remove her content.

Keep it simple and take the high road: agree that the firm and the departing professional can both use it.

When your firm aspires to create, equip, and support as many rock stars as it can, you’ll have far more success than trouble as a result. Encourage your practitioners to create content and participate in social networks to raise both their profiles and the firm’s.

Feature photo courtesy of feiticeira_org on flickr.

Who Are You Talking To?

Got a great question, or set of questions, this morning on a recent post. My answer got so long, I decided it's a post of its own. 

Jim Caruso asked about whether he should start multiple blogs or a single blog since he's thinking about writing for clients/prospects, his peers, and his personal interests. 

Here are my thoughts:

For anything we do/write/etc, always begin with the question "who is the audience?" And if the answer is that there are multiple audiences as you've described, you then have to ask yourself, where do their interests intersect and where do they deviate? 

The key with writing, especially in a blog where you desire loyal readers and subscribers, is to stay relevant to your audience. If the discussion can stay relevant to all your audiences (covering the "intersection" of interests) then by all means, approach writing for all in one place. 

BUT, if one audience will likely be bored, annoyed, or otherwise feel as though the content is not applicable to him or her, then break your blogs up. People, being SO busy and flooded with info, seem to pretty readily unsubscribe from previously interesting things that stop meeting their needs. 

The more specific your content is to any one common-interest group (say, martial arts on the personal side, or family-owned businesses on the work side) the more meaningful your content will be. 

Sometimes just one off-topic post on my part, and I lose a couple subscribers. Other bloggers I know have lost followers by talking a lot about their sports team or elections...veering off from their usual stuff.

Writing for peers in the same place you write for prospects and clients is probably not the best approach. 

A good post on this appeared yesterday by Jordan Furlong on the Stem Legal blog talking about lawyers writing for lawyers versus for others. Jordan wrote that the client cares about what's in the FedEx envelope while lawyers care about how you get to what goes in that envelope.

The occasional post about your personal interests or whatever is great. I've been downright shocked by the warm response to a couple of these that I've shared...like my son's return from Afghanistan (he's a soldier) -- the outpouring from business friends was very moving and that post is among the 10 most "clicked" on my blog.

Pick your audience first. 

Ideally this is based on what your greatest business passion is (because blogs without passion are awful). 

Think, literally, in terms of "common interest groups."

In the event you choose to focus your business blog on your peer group and not the end client, you can still gain a little out of it for marketing, but it's not truly a marketing effort. Certainly some prospective clients may see this writing and think, wow, he knows what he's doing, and you'll earn some credibility for that. But don't necessarily expect them to subscribe to your feed. 

And if you go down the road of a personal blog, assuming the content is publicly appropriate (not airing dirty laundry or constant party pics) go ahead and add the blog to your LinkedIn profile. This shows you are a dynamic person with rich interests. Others who share your interests might ultimately reach out to you on a business level.

Bottom line, think of what you're passionate about (enough to fuel ongoing interest in writing) then think about who the audience for those subjects might be. And then think more broadly about what they do and don't care about. Know your audience well. Stay as true to their needs and interests as possible.