There are only two New Year’s resolutions you need to worry about if you want to be seen as a thought leader in the New Year.
A funny thing happens at the end of every year.
Most of us reflect on how we came up short that year, personally and professionally, and then make New Year’s resolutions that we’re convinced will lead to a better year if we follow them.
If you’re someone who believes that thought leadership is a key component of your marketing and business development efforts, I’ve got great news for you.
Among all the personal and professional New Year’s resolutions you may pursue, there are only two thought leadership-related New Year’s resolutions you need to worry about.
Thought leadership resolution No. 1: Get better at ideating thought leadership topics.
In the New Year, look at where you’re currently drawing inspiration from for your thought leadership and think about how you can expand that universe.
Hopefully, you’re already finding inspiration for thought leadership in conversations with clients, referral sources, and colleagues. The work you’re doing is also likely inspiring topics for your upcoming thought leadership.
But are there additional sources of thought leadership inspiration out there that you’re missing?
Could you find inspiration when talking to people in your personal and professional networks about non-legal issues or ideas that have a legal analogue?
Could you do a better job of finding inspiration in current events, including those in politics, business, sports, and pop culture?
Are there other areas of life outside the practice of law where you could find inspiration for your thought leadership, such as your hobbies, your interactions with family, your dealings with local businesses, etc.?
Challenge yourself to expand your sources of thought leadership inspiration in the New Year.
While you’re at it, improve how you gather your thought leadership topics
On a related note, aim to compile your ideas for thought leadership more effectively. Once you’ve expanded your sources of inspiration, re-examine how you track and centralize potential thought leadership topics.
If you don’t already, jot down your ideas in a notebook on your desk. Or on a notes app on your phone. Or in a Word document on your home or work computer.
However you do it, the goal is to keep all your ideas for future thought leadership in a centralized location. You’ll find that doing so will make your thought leadership creation process more efficient.
Yes, you’ll have all of these topics in one place, so you won’t have to jump from one list to another to find them.
Equally importantly, keeping these ideas in one place will help spark new ideas for your thought leadership. That’s because when you re-read through your list of topics, you’ll likely think of new angles from which to tackle one or more topics. Or, you might connect the dots between multiple topics in a way that leads to entirely new topics.
But stepping up your thought leadership ideation game in the New Year is only half the battle. The other half? Making time to turn those ideas into content.
Thought leadership resolution No. 2: Get better at consistently producing thought leadership content.
In the New Year, you’re going to have more sources of inspiration for thought leadership and a centralized location for potential thought leadership topics.
You’ll next need to figure out how to produce your thought leadership more consistently than you did last year. I’m willing to bet there’s room for improvement here on your end.
Aim to step up the frequency at which you’re publishing thought leadership in the New Year. If you’ve been publishing a few times a year, aim for once a month. If you’ve already been publishing at that clip, aim for twice a month. And, if you’re already there, aim for weekly.
The more frequently you produce thought leadership content, the more frequently people will be able to see your knowledge, wisdom, and insights on display.
And, the more frequently people are able to see your knowledge, wisdom, and insights on display, the more frequently you’ll be top of mind for these people, which will hopefully lead to more opportunities for client matters to come in the door, and for you to grow your book of business, your authority, or both.
The time-management aspect of producing more thought leadership in the New Year
If you’re going to try to produce more thought leadership in the New Year, you’re going to have to figure out a way to carve out more time to do so. You’ll need to figure out when and how to do that.
Will you block out time on the weekends? Or do so during the week, perhaps in the early morning or late at night?
Do you want to create thought leadership on a one-off basis each time you sit down to write?
Or would you prefer to set aside a day every few weeks to draft a handful of thought leadership pieces and then publish them over time?
If you anticipate your client work preventing you from producing as much thought leadership as you would like in the New Year, consider increasing the likelihood that you frequently publish thought leadership by working with a colleague or an outside thought leadership ghostwriter.
Using a colleague or an outside ghostwriter might seem unconventional to some attorneys. But much of the content we’re all reading today, including social media posts, email newsletters, autobiographies and memoirs, op-eds, and, yes, thought leadership articles, is ghostwritten.
There’s a lot of ghostwritten content out there—and there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as ghostwritten content reflects the “author’s” ideas and views of the world, then ghostwriting is simply a tool someone can use to help bring their ideas into the world at a faster clip than they could if they were writing content themselves.
(Relying on a colleague or an outside ghostwriter is not the only way to produce more content in the New Year. But if you want to meet your New Year’s resolution of producing more content, you’ll have to find a way to produce thought leadership, even when you’re consistently busy.)
Simple New Year’s resolutions, but not an easy path to following them
If you’re like most people, you’ve got a few New Year’s resolutions motivating you in the New Year.
But if you want to increase your thought leadership production, there are only two resolutions that matter: coming up with more ideas for thought leadership topics, and figuring out how to more frequently produce thought leadership content.
They’re simple resolutions to make, but not easy to follow.
Will this year be the year that you up your thought leadership game and solidify your reputation as an authority regarding the work that you do?
Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.