Many attorneys enjoy giving speeches as part of their personal marketing program. Speeches enhance your resume, increase your name recognition in niche practice areas or industries, and can help you meet new people.
It is important to remember that in most practice areas, giving speeches is not an especially efficient method of actually obtaining new clients — they can be labor-intensive and few people hire lawyers immediately after hearing them lecture from behind a podium. One exception to this very general rule is when you are presenting on a new or very narrow area, where the audience may be thinking how difficult it would be to find another lawyer who also has expertise in this.
With this in mind, there are tactics you can use to maximize the client-development impact of the seminar.
Record and repurpose your speeches.
Turn on a Dictaphone or other digital voice recorder and record and transcribe the speech. Send the transcription to an outside writer and within a week they can turn it into one or more articles, for a few hundred bucks. Once you’ve created the content for the speech, repurpose it as many ways as you can.
It can also become an ongoing series of blog posts or tweets.
For just over $200, you can buy an easy-to-use high-def Flip video camera plus a tripod. Set it up and record your presentation, then clip it into snippets and upload them to YouTube. You now have the beginnings of a podcast, or videos you can link to your website or blog, circulate via other social-media tools like Facebook or LinkedIn, etc.
Finally, instead of using a lecture format, consider structuring the presentation as a panel discussion, debate, or other format that enables you to use the services of a client or prospect. My experience is that they appreciate the invitation, and it is an opportunity to work together with them, which is especially useful for prospects.
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