What to do when marketing yourself makes you want to hide under your desk
“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”
Last week, a group of Female Lawyers’ Club members got together for a roundtable on marketing ourselves. I opened by admitting that the whole subject makes me want to hide under my desk, and that I’m sometimes the person who’ll spend far too long agonising over a two-line LinkedIn comment. It turns out I’m not the only one.
It was a peer-led session, so there were no slides and no expert at the front, just senior lawyers swapping what has worked for them and what hasn’t. Here are four ideas that you may find helpful.
1. Start with what your client is going through
When we got onto what to actually say about ourselves, one member described the approach that finally worked for her. She starts by remembering how hard it is for someone to pick up the phone to a lawyer in the first place. By the time a client gets in touch, they’ve already done the difficult part by admitting they need help, and her job is to take some of that weight off them. Writing from the client’s perspective means she can talk about her expertise without feeling like she’s showing off.
It also means you don’t need a perfect elevator pitch or positioning statement. Another member admitted she can’t say hers out loud without reading it, so in conversation she thinks about what problem the person in front of her is likely to have, and answers that. One plain sentence about how you help will do more for you than a long paragraph you have to read off your phone.
2. Your LinkedIn profile works when you’re not in the room
As one member put it, your network is who you are, and your LinkedIn is what they talk about when you’re not in the room. Several members said they can rarely trace a piece of work directly to a post, but when someone recommends you, the first thing the client does is look you up.
So even if you never post, make sure your profile is up to date and your photo looks like the person who’ll turn up to the meeting. A photo from twenty years ago doesn’t help anyone trust you.
3. Commenting is the easiest place to start
If posting feels too exposing, start with comments. One member encourages her team to pick four people and comment on their posts regularly, which gets you used to seeing your name next to an opinion in public without having to write a whole post.
Comments can also reach further than posts, because they’re shown to the other person’s network. Two members had comments that were seen by far more people than their own carefully thought-out posts!
4. Do the work once and use it five times
One member is speaking at a conference soon, and another suggested putting the content of her talk into an AI tool and asking it for five LinkedIn posts. She’s already done the thinking for the presentation, so there’s no need to start from a blank page. The same goes for a seminar, which can become a post, a client alert and an article, and it’s worth asking someone to take a photo of you while you’re speaking.
She also planned to prepare her answer to “So what are you doing now?” before the drinks afterwards, so she isn’t caught out and left fluffing it, which she said is what usually happens. If you’ve got an event coming up, it’s a small piece of preparation worth doing.
Your one small thing
Almost everyone in that session said they weren’t doing much, then listed a huge pile of marketing activity (typical overperforming women, as I pointed out). So please don’t read this and feel you’re behind. Pick one small thing to try in the next fortnight, whether that’s updating your photo, commenting on four people’s posts, or turning your last talk or seminar into a handful of posts.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Rachel