Content marketing takes time and effort, but staying top of mind with your target audiences is a key goal to marketing and business development – and providing value-added content is one way in which you can do this while branding yourself as a subject-matter expert in your area of the law.

Here are 12 tips to make your content marketing efforts successful and worthwhile. Keep in mind that they may take time to show real ROI, but I have seen thought leadership content lead to new business over and over. Remember that great content invites followers and potential leads/referrals and clients – that is how you achieve content marketing success.

LinkedIn has never been more important than it is right now – not only because it has nearly 700 million users globally, but because during this time of social distancing, and this pause in in-person networking –social media is the most effective (and efficient) way to build your brand and business.

LinkedIn is a great place to network with other professionals who could become business partners, referral sources, clients and employees or employers.

While quality is always better than quantity when it comes to the number of LinkedIn connections you have, most business professionals who use LinkedIn can greatly increase their connections with a strategic plan.

Join me in spending the month of August strategically building your LinkedIn network. Aim to get to at least 501 connections (which will add the coveted 500+ connections mark right on your profile instead of your actual number of connections – some believe those LinkedIn users with 500+ connections are somehow more accomplished). I know all of you know more than 500 business professionals out of the millions who are using LinkedIn. If you’re already at the 500+ mark, aim to increase your connections by 10 percent this month. Here’s a plan for how to do this for business professionals of all levels and in all industries.

This is not the year to take a break from social media during the summer. Instead this is the time to focus on your business development and branding efforts.

I don’t know anyone right now especially (or ever) who would say they have enough clients or work. I think everyone is nervous about the economy, the ability to maintain their current volume of work, bring in future clients and support their people.

That being said, it’s incredibly important to ensure your current clients are happy and that you are consistently generating new sources of leads and referrals.

Here are 25 ideas on how to do that, which now involves shifting your strategy from in-person networking and client entertaining to having a strong online presence and thought leadership platform. If you have never used LinkedIn, written an article or blog post or spoken at a webinar, now is the time to pivot to doing all of these. It is never too early or late to start marketing yourself or your firm.

My guess is that many of you have more free time now due to the pandemic, which had slowed down deal flow and litigation activity.

Plus working from home eliminates