Episode Description
In this episode, LinkedIn expert Julie Livingston reveals how attorneys can transform their LinkedIn profiles from static resumes into powerful client-generating tools. Julie shares actionable strategies for building thought leadership, explains why less than 10% of attorneys effectively use LinkedIn despite 89% having profiles and provides a step-by-step approach to developing engaging content.
Learn the do’s and don’ts of professional networking on LinkedIn, how to optimize your profile with visual elements, and the optimal posting schedule to increase visibility. Whether you’re a LinkedIn skeptic or looking to enhance your current presence, this episode delivers practical tips for leveraging the platform’s billion-user network to grow your law practice.
Listen now!
Episode Resources
Connect with Julie on LinkedIn
Download her free guide: “Make Your C-Suite Stand Out On LinkedIn”
Episode Transcript
JULIE: [00:00:00] A lot of people, they use LinkedIn as a resume, whereas it should be more of a landing page for who they are.
LAUREN: Welcome to a different practice. I’m your host, Lauren Lester, and I’m passionate about helping solo attorneys build thriving practices. After starting my own solo firm straight out of law school.
And building it to a successful practice that earns well over six figures while working part time. I’m here to share the tools and strategies that made it possible. Think of this as grabbing coffee with your work bestie while learning everything they didn’t teach you about running a business in law school.
Pull up a seat and get ready to build a different practice. Welcome back to a different practice. This probably doesn’t surprise you, but did you know that 89 percent of attorneys are on LinkedIn? Right? Kind of a duh. That’s where we all are. It’s probably the number one social media site that many of us use because social media in other forms just doesn’t seem to quite fit our practice or [00:01:00] our goals.
But what surprised me is to know. that less than 10 percent of attorneys are actively using LinkedIn to grow their practice. Surprising, right? It feels like, at least to me, that there’s a big opportunity there. When we talk about platforms like Facebook or Instagram, that has a much broader reach. The focus and the people on those platforms are not just professionals, right?
It’s everybody. And for your business, that can make a lot of sense. But when we think about LinkedIn, it really is focused on other professionals. And if you’re like me, a lot of the folks in your network are other attorneys. So while I’m on LinkedIn a bit, I wanted to know how could I take advantage of what appeared to be a really great opportunity.
And today’s episode does. Just that it will transform how you think about this powerful platform. Today, I’m chatting with LinkedIn expert, Julie Livingston about turning your LinkedIn presence from a [00:02:00] digital resume boring into a client generating machine judging, we unpack the strategies that successful attorneys are using right now to land clients through LinkedIn.
Julie shares insider tips on who lawyers should really be targeting with their profiles. And believe me. It might not be who you think. It wasn’t who I thought. We explore real success stories from attorneys who’ve mastered LinkedIn’s ecosystem. And Julie doesn’t hold back in pointing out the cringeworthy mistakes that could be costing you clients.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is Julie’s practical approach. And y’all know if you’ve been around a minute. I’ll love a practical approach as someone who understands the time constraints of running a practice. Julie breaks down exactly which LinkedIn activities give you the biggest bang for your buck.
We also dive into how to leverage LinkedIn’s content tools to position yourself as the go to expert in your field all while managing your already packed schedule. [00:03:00] I ain’t trying to add more to your plate, I’m just trying to grow your business. So for those who don’t know Julie, she is a New York City based public relations and LinkedIn expert who made a name for herself helping professionals amplify their visibility on the platform.
As a LinkedIn top voice, And member of LinkedIn’s advisors. She brings insights straight from the source, her expertise and communications runs deep. She is a three time board member of New York women in communications and holds an MS in communications management from Syracuse university’s prestigious.
Newhouse school of public communications, whether you’re a LinkedIn skeptic or was like I was, and just hadn’t quite found your groove yet on the platform. This conversation is packed with actionable strategies you can implement today. So let’s dive in and learn how to transform your LinkedIn presence from passive to.
Profitable. Julie, welcome to a different practice. Oh, it’s great to be here with you, Lauren. Thanks for having me. [00:04:00] I’m really excited for this conversation today because I’ve heard in different pockets from different quote unquote marketing experts that LinkedIn has been a little bit of an untapped market when it comes to marketing.
I think we always think of. Facebook and TikTok and YouTube and more big players in the social media space in particular and I don’t think LinkedIn gets the credit that it’s due. So I’m really curious to hear what power LinkedIn has and how we can really use that to our advantage. for our businesses to be able to promote what we do in our law firms day to day.
But I wanted to start out so that I could understand a little bit more. What is the audience for LinkedIn? Cause I have heard it’s a professional network, so we really should be. crafting our content for our colleagues, but then at the same time, it’s supposed to be a marketing tool to be able to grow our business.
And typically our colleagues aren’t our [00:05:00] clients. So what do you say is, what should we be focusing on when we are looking through the LinkedIn lens in terms of content?
JULIE: That’s a great question, Lauren.
LAUREN: Well, you know,
JULIE: LinkedIn now says that they have a billion users worldwide, which is kind of my mind boggling.
In 200 countries. Wow. So it is the world’s number one business networking platform. And if you’re not on it and not active on it, you’re really missing a primary business networking and business building opportunity. It is definitely the platform on which you can communicate with internal audiences, fellow team members, employees, and certainly that would be very important for larger law firms.
Who, and even smaller ones to really keep team team morale high and get people from across the organization, engaging and kind of talking and with one another and sharing information [00:06:00] and ideas. But it’s also a great business building tool because once you’re on LinkedIn and you position yourself as a thought leader and somebody whose opinions are really interesting and compelling, your outside audience starts to build.
And who knows if some of those people could not potentially be clients, potential strategic partners. Journalists are now searching on LinkedIn for subject matter experts. So on any legal questions that they might have, I have clients who get speaking opportunities at major industry conferences. So being active on LinkedIn has multiple benefits.
LAUREN: What are some of the specific ways that you have seen folks, and if you have, you know, solo and small firm attorneys, or at least anything that could translate over to what we do, that they have used LinkedIn in a way that has kind of clicked over successfully? For them and for their business. What are some specific things we might think [00:07:00] about doing?
JULIE: Well, I think the most important thing is to number one, get your profile optimized so that people can find you, you know, I, I, a lot of people still think of LinkedIn as a job search platform, but it is so much more than that. And if you’re only using it for that, and if your LinkedIn profile reads like a resume, that’s so, first of all, it’s so boring.
It’s not dynamic. It doesn’t present you really for who you are right now. And so I would suggest number one, reviewing your, your profile and making sure that it’s up to date, that it has everything about your current work experience, as well as your past. That it has any articles that or publications that you’ve been featured on in your experience section in the publication section, and that you use the featured section, which is like a visual, more theatrical marquee, use that as sort of a slideshow to show yourself speaking at [00:08:00] conferences or at an important legal event, and also that shows you being quoted in different places, but use that That visual marquee to showcase the different expertise that you have and the different experiences that you’ve had.
So definitely use that profile to really pump up the volume on who you are and what, what makes you different and what makes you somebody who’s. Worth listening to and worth following because what you want to do is really build your following on LinkedIn. So that’s, that’s number one. If you want to be positioned as a thought leader on the platform, you have to first identify your, what you want to talk about.
What do you want people to think of when they, when they read your content and that comes down to content pillars. Or key themes that really help to define your personality and your [00:09:00] expertise. And those are sort of, those are your guideposts. So every post that you, that you write for should fit under one of those content pillars.
So for example, it could be trust, right? Cause that’s going to be a big one in the legal field. Integrity could be particular kind of expertise, whether it’s family law or intellectual property matrimonial law, you know, whatever corporate law, whatever, whatever it is, definitely, you know, think about that as one of your, one of your guideposts, but also it could be leadership.
LAUREN: All right. Do you think that one of the pillars could be a little bit more. Personable. Like if somebody, I don’t know, is really loves out being outdoors or like to bring a little bit more of their personality or should it be much more of a, from a professional standpoint,
JULIE: it should be from a professional standpoint, but you could, if you are outdoorsy and you love, you know, you [00:10:00] could make sure that all of your posts have a sort of a type of energy to them.
That relates back to the fact that you love that. And also I would include something about. being outdoorsy, perhaps if you’re a marathon runner or somebody really who is very focused on meeting goals, I would include that in your headline. And I like to include something that’s a little funky in one’s headline.
So I think that’s a good idea.
LAUREN: What are some of the mistakes that you see folks do outside of not getting your profile up and making sure that your content kind of fits in those pillars? So you have a consistent messaging. What are some of the other common mistakes that folks are making on LinkedIn that are being a detriment to getting their name out there or just maybe mixing the messaging folks are confused about what they do?
What are some things that folks should try and avoid?
JULIE: Well, a lot of people, again, as I said, they use LinkedIn as a resume, whereas it [00:11:00] should be more of a landing page for that, for who they are. That’s one that really describes what they do and the special types of expertise they can offer. A lot of people are just dormant on the platform.
They don’t ever post, they don’t share articles. They don’t share their, their expertise, or they don’t share stories about their experience. So there’s sort of just not using it at all. And that’s just a wasted opportunity. That’s a lost opportunity. In my opinion, other times they’re sharing too much personal information on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is not Facebook. It’s not Instagram. It is a business networking platform. So. Really, you want to keep it business like. Now that’s not to say that once in a while you shouldn’t post a picture. You know, I do this with one of my clients where I posted recently a photo of her and her daughter who was graduating college.
She was in a cap and gown. But the post was about [00:12:00] her offering career advice to the next generation of executives, right? So we tied it in nicely and it blew up on her LinkedIn because it showed her in action. People respond very well to photos of her in the field. And yet it also provided some very important takeaways.
For the audience to read about.
LAUREN: That’s where I always struggle. I think sometimes on LinkedIn I wanna use it more, but I don’t know what to post. And so like share, sharing an article, I’ll read an article that I think is really interesting and then I think like, am I just supposed to go on and go, here’s the link to this interesting article that doesn’t feel good.
JULIE: Don’t embellish right. Embellish on it. Explain. Let’s say you read something in a law journal or another publication. That you, you know, the theme can be applicable to the lawyers, lawyers world, you know, in some way. I would not only post a link to the article, but explain why and bullet points. [00:13:00] You know, I, this article caught my attention because it’s about, you know, an issue that we all are facing right now.
And here’s why. And I would provide, you know, two to three bullet points about it. And then end with a call to action. At the end of the post, which you should do in every single post. This is an engagement tool. And it’s so simple. You know, what do you think about the article? What do you think about this subject?
What has been your experience so that people are left with, Oh, it’s like a thought prompt.
LAUREN: Gotcha. And so it’s not a call to action of like, call me that type of call to action. It’s an engagement.
JULIE: No, you’re never to be selling on LinkedIn, you know, where you, where you’re doing hard hitting selling because.
You’re looking to build relationships over time. And how do you build relationships by sharing information and expertise, not by hitting somebody over the head with that will not go over well at all.[00:14:00]
LAUREN: Does that engagement also come from interacting with other folks posts? So folks are saying, Hey, what, what was your takeaway from this article? Or what have you found to be the most challenge, right? They put out that prompt. You then want to go in and not just like. The post, but maybe say, Oh, actually my take is this, or I agree with you and add some more.
So the engagement is on both the content creation, but also talking with, on other people’s posts.
JULIE: One of the best ways to increase your standing and visibility on LinkedIn is to come to like and comment and repost other people’s posts. So, and I mean more than like, Oh, great article, like something more in depth where you’re really offering your insights.
And this is how you meet other people. It’s how you develop relationships with other people. And it’s also how you underscore your expertise and knowledge. So definitely do that. And certainly do it with people you [00:15:00] want to meet who you don’t really know that well. Start commenting on their posts and you’ll get to know them over time.
They’ll get to know you too.
LAUREN: For the network that we have on or the connections, I think LinkedIn called, I get a lot of What seemed to be salesy people like they’re in marketing or they have business development, is it better to have. More people like the quantity is good because that puts out more tentacles.
Or do you want to say, I don’t know who you are. I think you’re just trying to sell me something, ignore and really focus on either folks, you know, or who are in your space. Like how does LinkedIn look at the number of connections?
JULIE: Well, really it’s the quality of your contact network. That’s valued the most and not the quantity of contacts that you have.
So when I get invitations from people who are just trying to sell me something from out of the blue, I don’t know them. They’re not a second degree [00:16:00] connection. I just delete it. Sometimes I’ll, you know, they’ll give you the option to say, I’m interested. I’m not interested. And I’ll write back and say, I’m not interested in this.
But I think that is a lousy way to try to build a relationship with somebody. I like to accept invitations from people who are second degree connections to me. In other words, we have a mutual contact or contacts. You could also receive connections. Let’s say you sit on a board of directors for another company.
Could be other members of that board, you know, so they could be second or third degree connections, but you have that, that board role in common. So I think that it’s always the quality of your connections versus the quantity of connections. Nobody can know 10, 000, you know, 30, 000 people. Well, right. So it’s really who, you know, who you, who you really kind of know, or you want to know.
LAUREN: No, that makes a lot of sense. I know that LinkedIn has some other content creation tools. I think they have like [00:17:00] articles and newsletters. Are those things that we should be looking into? Should we be using those? If somebody is just getting started, is that too overwhelming? They should really just kind of focus on content and engagement or is LinkedIn really putting a lot of emphasis on those other tools that they would be good to take advantage of.
JULIE: I think the main thing to get started, if you’ve been dormant on LinkedIn is to create an editorial content strategy and as well as your content pillars, your themes. And I would get into a regular cadence of posting at least twice a week on consecutive days. I, I think that posting three times a week on consecutive days is best.
Usually between eight and 10, 30, 11 in the morning in, in your time zone is kind of those, the magic time on LinkedIn to get engagement, I would make sure that when you mention other people or publications or media or companies [00:18:00] that you tag them on LinkedIn. So again, that’s another way of amplifying your content.
And I would consider newsletters and articles a little later on down the road, once you have a little bit of traction, I think it can be overwhelming. I would start with a newsletter because once you start building, you could start building subscribers to your newsletter and you could build more followers to, to a newsletter that you publish.
I think that’s a great idea over time, but in the beginning I would stick with. Getting content out there because that’s a big enough job in itself
LAUREN: is the newsletter feature on LinkedIn. Because I’m curious, is it essentially competing with sites like MailChimp and constant contact? Is that what they’re trying to do is to get a list of subscribers that you then send this newsletter out to?
JULIE: I guess it’s sort of similar, but You know, it’s all on the LinkedIn portal. So, okay.
LAUREN: So they’re not getting it in their email necessarily.
JULIE: There’s [00:19:00] just seeing it as a notification. They’ll get a notification.
LAUREN: Okay. Okay.
JULIE: If they follow the person, they will get a notification.
LAUREN: Okay. Interesting. But that’s sort of like a 2. 0 getting into it.
Let’s start with the basics.
JULIE: I think so. I would get a client. If you were a client of mine, you weren’t an attorney, I would get you started in developing your content. First, get into the rhythm of it, the cadence of it. Start seeing where you’re getting traction, which content pillars are really getting people’s attention.
You might have to change them a little bit, you know, to see, to make sure that you’re really focusing on the right, the subjects that people want to hear about from you. And that might take a little, you know, refining over time.
LAUREN: If somebody wanted to get started, what would be the first three things you would tell them to do to kind of get that ball rolling?
JULIE: I would first tell them to optimize their LinkedIn profile using all of the bells and whistles that LinkedIn has To make it as visually exciting [00:20:00] as possible with photographs, LinkedIn loves video. In fact, they’re just testing a new video carousel, a new in feed video carousel feature. Not everybody has it yet, but they really do love short form video and video is a wonderful way to kind of showcase your personality and Demonstrate to people who you really are.
So I would make the profile as exciting as possible using language. Now, this is not to say if you’re an attorney to use very salesy language, you know, to stand out, but to use specific words and phrases that really explain what you do, maybe something about some of the wins you’ve had your, your specialty areas.
And, and, and photos of you or video of you doing some public speaking or even just a Zoom video showing you talking about a subject that’s kind of near and dear to your heart in the legal profession.
LAUREN: So a good mix, [00:21:00] it sounds like, of the text, but also visual. Because LinkedIn, I think, for a long time was Pretty heavily text.
And now it sounds like they’re really encouraging more visual.
JULIE: Definitely, definitely encouraging to you to be more visual. And let’s face it when you’re LinkedIn feed, what’s going to grab your attention, something visual, it could be an infographic. Maybe you’re sharing an infographic on, on something.
Maybe you’re sharing some statistics that, you know, so that will help you make a point. about, you know, about something about how, you know, how lawyers in a particular field work or what they’re, what they’re looking for in representing a client.
LAUREN: So getting our profiles up to date and more visual, what would the next thing then be that you would say?
JULIE: Would be to develop an editorial content strategy. You know, what, what are you looking to achieve? What are your goals? And objectives for LinkedIn specifically, you know, what do you want to, what do you want to get out of it? And if it’s to [00:22:00] establish your thought leadership, well then, then you’re going to go to develop your content pillars.
And those are usually from two to four things that will be, those will be the themes that you’re going to be dedicated to posting about. If it’s about trust, which I think probably every lawyer should have as a content theme, you’re going to talk about relationship building and Maybe you could even share some stories about how you developed a relationship with a difficult client and all of these things are from a hundred thousand feet of that kind of view.
You’re not going to give away client’s name, obviously, and that kind of thing, but you could talk about your views and attitudes about building trusting relationships and why they’re so important and how you do that.
LAUREN: And then what would the third step be once we have kind of the plan in place?
JULIE: Once you have the plan in place, I would put together all my graphical assets, whether it’s infographics, video, snapshots of your conferences [00:23:00] and events, even if it’s a networking thing where you’re just shaking hands with somebody, or there’s a setup photo where, you know, you’re with a few colleagues, where there’s a sign behind you that says International Lawyers Conference, whatever it is, I would, I would gather all of that and then I would start planning out the content month by month.
Decide how often you’re going to post. And if you, I would start with twice a week on consecutive days, not a Monday or a Friday, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
LAUREN: for planning out the posts. Does LinkedIn have a native scheduler? And if not, is there one that you recommend that LinkedIn doesn’t have an issue with?
JULIE: You know, it’s funny. LinkedIn does have a native scheduler now. I never use it, but they, they do have that nest. You can schedule your posts on the platform.
LAUREN: Okay, that’s good to know. Just in case someone’s like, I don’t know if I can commit to getting on on consecutive days, at least they can have it in there.
JULIE: The platform does not like when you use an outside scheduler. They will not, that will not help you on the platform. [00:24:00] So try not to use that.
LAUREN: Okay. So if you are going to schedule use LinkedIn’s built in scheduler but ideally you would do it manually and then take that five, 10 minutes to engage with other posts as you’re posting.
JULIE: Now, if you’re a busy attorney, I don’t expect you to be sitting there writing your LinkedIn content. I think that you’re probably going to need somebody to help you. Somebody like me or somebody on staff, maybe in the communications department, who’s going to help you do all this, but you would have to give them input as to what your content pillars are and you know, whatever is going on in your world and your day to day business that, you know.
That you can talk about from a hundred thousand feet.
LAUREN: Yeah, that was going to be my next question is folks who don’t want to create this content or even the visuals, like you talked about, they’re like, I don’t know how to create an infographic, obviously hiring somebody to do it, but are there any other tools that you would recommend looking into to kind of make that process easier?
JULIE: Well, to make the [00:25:00] process easier, I would say get familiar with AI. However, and I use a tool called perplexity, but there are a million of them out there. This could help you to combat writer’s block. I am not saying that you should use AI to write your posts because it will not rate well in the LinkedIn algorithm, but it could prompt ideas, bigger ideas that you can write about on your own, in your own voice.
And make sure that you develop your own voice on LinkedIn. You don’t want your post to sound like Joe Smith. You know, you want it to sound like you. And that means using colloquialisms and you could use some slang, you know, appropriate slang and language that, that’s really sounds like you’re talking to somebody.
LAUREN: As if somebody, you were at a networking event and actually speaking in front of someone, right? We don’t sound so robotic when we do that. So really having [00:26:00] that translate to LinkedIn.
JULIE: That’s right. Should have a friendly, more of a business casual kind of a tone.
LAUREN: No, that’s really helpful. If anyone would like to learn more about what you do or get help from you, where can they reach out to you?
JULIE: Guess where they can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Julie, Julie Livingston. My company is Want Leverage Communications, and you can find me on my website as well. Want leverage. com. You could also download my free tip sheet, how to make your C suite stand out on LinkedIn. And that’s a free downloadable. It’s on my homepage.
And you can download that. It’s got some great tips for developing your, your LinkedIn content strategy and your content.
LAUREN: Wonderful. Well, I will link all of those in the show notes so everyone can grab those, especially that tool and then definitely connect with you on LinkedIn. That
JULIE: sounds great, Lauren.
Thanks so much for having me.
LAUREN: You’re welcome. Thanks, Julie. Thanks for joining me on another episode of A Different [00:27:00] Practice. If you found value in today’s conversation, subscribe to my Solo Success Lab newsletter, where each week I test and share what actually works in solo practice. Sign up for free at adifferentpractice.
com slash subscribe. Want to help other lawyers transform their practices too? Follow the show, leave a rating, and share this episode with someone who might benefit. And if you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, download my free guide to the six pillars of optimization at adifferentpractice.
com slash optimize. I’ve distilled nearly a decade of experience, including all the mistakes and victories into the essential elements every successful law firm needs. I’ll see you next time, and until then, keep building a different practice.
