Six Ways to Spotlight Thought Leaders with Content Marketing
By @Leslie Valenza, Vice President of Content Client Services, Poston CommunicationsAs firms finally make plans to move forward with flagship events in the year ahead, legal marketers are focused on raising further awareness of their top programs, elevating the profiles of firm thought leaders and enhancing the overall speaker experience, particularly for clients and prospects who participate.
While often not considered as part of an event strategy, content marketing provides a range of methods for repurposing thought leadership from in-person events into digestible, on-demand content in written, visual, and digital formats. Specifically, firms may consider producing these six types of content to spotlight firm and outside thought leaders before, during, and after events.
1. Speaker Q&As – Q&A interviews or profiles elevate the speaker experience by enabling them to reach a broader audience beyond event attendees. Q&As may be published on firm or event websites and distributed via email and social media. Tag both the firm's and speakers' social media handles to promote the content across networks. When facilitating Q&As, include questions that encourage speakers to share their success stories, lessons learned, and best practices to showcase their expertise and ultimately provide readers with useful content.
2. Podcast Interviews – Leverage an existing firm
podcast or pilot a limited series program to profile key speakers, including firm thought leaders and participating clients/prospects. Podcasts allow lawyers to further engage (even remotely) with speakers in a medium that can be edited and repurposed into shorter segments or lengthier discussions over time. Episodes could preview upcoming programs or cover key takeaways stemming from past events. Provide participants with an outline of key questions prior to recording so that the conversation stays on track. Centering discussions around the goal of adding value to clients/listeners is key to cultivating a loyal audience.
3. Social Media Campaigns – Schedule social media posts promoting programs and key speakers to publish before, during, and after events. Tagging speakers' company pages and/or personal profiles will help raise awareness among their networks, as well as the networks of their firm or company. Attach speaker headshots, event images, and helpful infographics when relevant. Include a call-to-action in each post, such as "Click to register" or "Click to watch recorded program," to drive traffic to the event website and related firm content.
4. Video/Audio Recordings – Hybrid events that are accessible to in-person and virtual audiences often are streamed via a webinar service and, therefore, are convenient to record. Consider posting a digital copy of the program on your firm's website or YouTube page, where viewers may access related on-demand content. But note, in-person events sometimes do not translate well to raw video. If a firm works with an experienced in-house or outside editor, consider merging portions of the audio and video recordings with a related PowerPoint presentation, infographics, or other imagery for visual interest. Additionally, consider pulling your speakers aside immediately after an event to record video footage of the highlights of their presentation. Their comments can be edited into short soundbites for social media channels and/or other content.
5. Blog Posts and Client Alerts – As a follow-up to attendees (or those who could not attend), consider distributing concise summaries of key takeaways from recent events to further promote thought leadership by firm and guest speakers. Firm lawyers who speak at an event may wish to repurpose their presentations as blog posts or client alerts to get more mileage from the topics they've developed. One presentation covering a range of issues may be broken up into a series of posts or alerts that dive deeper into those issues to extend coverage over time.
6. Infographics – Consider producing infographics that illustrate at-a-glance summaries of key points from presentations and share them via social media with links to related written summaries on your firm’s website. Share PowerPoint slides, if available, as related visual content.
Remember to include outside speakers in your rollout plans by inviting them to share the content from their own social media and online platforms for maximum exposure. And consider leveraging your events to gather data from attendees that can be repurposed into other thought leadership. Not only will you collect valuable information about how your clients and prospects think and act, but reporters welcome original data that they can cite in their own news reports. Regardless of how presentations are repackaged, remember to repurpose the information as “client-centric” content that is timely, relevant, and useful to your audience.