If you are a solo practitioner, of counsel, or a partner at a law firm, you have at least two roles: attorney and entrepreneur. Your time and energy are split between performing client work and making sure new business is coming in the door.
One way attorneys educate themselves about effective business and marketing practices is by attending CLEs. But knowing how important it is to market yourself to your prospective audience, why limit yourself to only legal industry programs?
Try on a Fresh Perspective
You can supplement your CLEs by attending non-legal mainstream business and marketing events for entrepreneurs. They will expose you to new ideas, people and perspectives. It’s an especially good idea given that the legal profession tends to lag behind the times when it comes to things like web-based tactics.
I love attending mainstream events and probably attend as many non-legal online and in-person business and marketing events as I do CLEs. I always come away with tips and suggestions to help me run my practice more effectively and inspiration from other industries. Often these are tips that I’ve never heard at legal events.
Of course, as an attorney, I have to verify that the suggestions I want to try comport with my state’s rules of professional responsibility.
Over the next few months, I’m attending two conferences: BlogPaws in Phoenix (a conference for people who blog about pets) and Content Marketing World in Cleveland (a business marketing conference). Both events will provide valuable opportunities to develop my skills. Did I mention I get to bring my dog to BlogPaws?
Here are some of the sessions I’m most excited to attend so I can apply the ideas to my law practice:
- Reputation Management
- How to Establish Yourself as an Expert and Create Viral Content
- What Does Your LinkedIn Profile Say about Your Professional Brand?
- How to Get Off the Blogging Hamster Wheel, Attract an Audience, and Still Have Time to Enjoy Life
- What to Do When You’ve Written All the “Helpful” Content
- How to Manage Content Effectively in a Complex Organization
- How Brilliant Brands Create Less Content and Deliver Bigger Success
- 50 Essential Content Marketing Hacks
- How to Get Way More Traffic from Your Existing Content
- How to Use Improv Techniques to Improve Your Storytelling
How to Find Useful Events
If you need help finding mainstream conferences to attend, ask other entrepreneurs in your city what events they attend. Research your favorite business book authors and see where they are scheduled to speak. Some of the mainstream speakers that have been most helpful to me include Jay Baer, Rand Fishkin, Rae Hoffman, Tim Riesterer, Robert Rose, Peter Shankman, Pamela Slim, Evo Terra and Gary Vaynerchuk.
When researching possible webinars and conferences to attend, consider local, national and online events to build up your business acumen and marketing skills. There are a lot of events to consider, no matter what your time and budget constraints might be.
Ruth Carter will be speaking at BlogPaws and Content Marketing World, where she’ll be answering content legal questions.
Image ©ImageZoo.
