Infographics look great and videos make content easy to consume but if you are a professional services firm, (for this post, let’s imagine a group of lawyers) how can you really show the expertise within your firm? The marketers can make the videos and infographics all day long but that will never do justice to all the knowledge that sits in the mind of every lawyer. The only way to get that knowledge out is the written word. This is why LinkedIn are putting such a huge emphasis on letting professionals write and publish content on their network.
A couple of problems.
One: A lawyer’s time is very valuable. It’s all about billable hours, so spending half a day writing a blog post does not make financial sense.
Two: Writing words is easy (ish) for a natural wordsmith. For everyone else it is hard. Very hard. A job that the majority of us dread. (I have been putting off writing this post for a week!) Lots of lawyers will not feel able or confident to write 700 words on a blank canvas. This means their knowledge remains in their head and so the next potential client will never discover that knowledge or that this is the best possible person they can hire to represent them.
That’s why we built Passle. So that all those businesses with lots of clever people, that don’t have the time or ability to write 700 words every week, can still showcase their knowledge online. They can share their thoughts and expertise in minutes not hours.
Not only does this mean the marketing team of a law firm can get the knowledge of the lawyers online but they also have a steady stream of content they can share on their social networks. So instead of sharing "interesting" links on Twitter and LinkedIn, everything they share can be the thoughts of their lawyers and so every link always comes back to their website. And that is powerful.
For marketers who have something valuable to share—like industry insight or compelling information (e.g., the Social Media Marketing Industry Report)—written content works brilliantly and provides an opportunity for true thought leadership. LinkedIn understands the power of the written word and that’s why they opened up their publishing platform to all members in February of this year. As a content marketer, that should make you jump for joy. Now you can really leverage LinkedIn’s core strengths: lead generation opportunities and direct access to decision makers.