Last week I had reason to travel to Newcastle NSW. On the train journey up there (which is roughly three hours from Sydney’s CBD) I took the opportunity to listen to a podcast by Mark Stirving and his guest Darren LaCroix – “How a smart subscription pricing strategy improves retention“.
Very little of what follows in this post actually has much to do with pricing, bar the fact that at approximately the 20 minute minute mark Darren cites a quote from Raymond Aaron which immediately caught my attention:
“They’ll come for the content, they’ll stay for the community”
Wow, as someone who has done a ton of thought leadership and content marketing over the past 20 years for law firms, this really hit home.
After all, let’s face it, law firms are good at content. Actually, they are really, really good at it. To the tune of at least one client newsletter a day good at it.
But, largely they’re really rubbish at building communities.
And this is important because?
Simple really: if you have ‘customers’ it isn’t. But if you want your firm to grow ‘communities’, it’s critical.
As always interested in your thoughts, views, feedback.
RWS_01's B[D]log 
Richard, thanks for sharing. If you think about what Seth Godin has written about in Purple Cow and Tribes, I think law firms have to create something that’s remark-able. Sadly, most of the content that I’ve seen and read is dull and that’s why they’ll struggle to build a tribe of loyal followers. I can be more specific: when I think about the time I’ve got as In-house counsel to read let alone disseminate internally the content, law firms (locally at least) need to invest much more time and effort to break through my short attention span. As to the community piece, I wouldn’t want to enter the walled city if I thought that all it was about was selling me another service etc. Sorry I know that’s all a bit negative, but that’s how it feels to me right now. Take care — Julian
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a lot, if not all, of what you have said is valid Julian. It is incumbent on law firms to pick-up their game, not our clients. In my opinion, the firm that starts to build a tribe – rather preaches to one – will standout
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