As a marketer, you might be thrilled that your professional service firm is made up of expert consultants. But all the internal expertise in the world won’t matter if you can’t translate their know-how into heavy-hitting content.
It’s one of the more challenging aspects of being a marketer in a professional service firm . . . but it can be overcome. Here’s how.
Branding can be tricky for professional service firms, and personal branding can be even harder. But the key to getting high-quality content out of your consultants lies in your ability to help them develop a personal brand.
To do that, first educate your consultants on what personal branding is and how they can build their own personal brand. In professional service firms, the brand is often related to thought leadership.
To turn your colleagues into thought leaders, ask them to consider questions like these:
Send these questions to your consultants by email and let them think it over before getting answers.
Then, once you have their responses, write up a brief on each consultant that lays out their “personal branding and thought leadership manifesto.” This will serve as the basis of the content you produce with your consultants.
You need blog posts, articles and social media messaging, and you want your colleagues to provide it. The trouble is, people often don’t have time to write, and they might feel intimidated by the prospect of facing a blank page.
Rather than asking them to write for you, you can write for them. The first step is to work with your consultants to develop a topic and refine their position on it. Topics that elicit thought-leadership-type content are:
Once you’ve gathered some talking points from your colleagues, turn their ideas into a blog post and promote that post on social media. Remember that if the topic is on the bigger side, you might have enough for more than one post, or a post as well as an infographic or white paper.
At least once a year, choose one of the more substantive topics you’ve written about and expand it into an article pitch for an industry trade magazine, or even a business publication like Forbes or Fast Company. You’ll get some rejections, but the effort is worth it: Once you get an article or two published, your consultant’s credibility will shoot up considerably.
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are prime platforms to showcase your consultants’ various personal branding manifestos. But rather than posting under the company in general, set up profiles for the two or three most prominent consultants, and post their content under their feeds specifically.
One caveat: Ask your colleagues if they’re comfortable with you reacting to others’ messages and engaging in conversations on their behalf. If they say no, you can probably still safely promote the content you wrote for them.
Getting media attention can be trying, especially if you don’t have dedicated PR staff. There are two tactics that can help.
First, devote a couple hours to researching articles on topics your consultant is an expert on and start a spreadsheet listing the journalists who wrote them. Then, when you have a substantial piece of content to pitch, send it to those journalists specifically, citing the other articles that make them a good fit. Eventually, you’ll develop relationships with the journalists who cover relevant topics. And when they need an expert to interview, they’re more likely to think of your consultants.
Second, take advantage of HARO and ProfNet.
Transforming your colleagues’ expertise into world-class content is a long-term process – but it’s a rewarding one. If you stick to it, your efforts are more likely to draw in prospects and turn them into paying clients. And as a bonus, you’ll learn much more about your field!
If you want more clarity in your marketing strategy, take the first step with our no-obligation Inbound Marketing Assessment.