As a former business immigration lawyer, who is now an entrepreneur running two growing businesses in the space, I have one piece of advice I give to business immigration lawyers.
If you are a business immigration lawyer looking to get started on LinkedIn (and LinkedIn can be invaluable for building your network and your reputation) the key is to find your smallest niche. Once you find your niche, create a content strategy with that niche in mind so that you can be the thought leader in that space and grow accordingly.
If you’re new to practicing business immigration law or starting your own firm and you don’t have a steady client base— or one at all—finding your niche on LinkedIn can help you discover your ideal audience.
The reason why having a niche is so important for business immigration lawyers who want to grow their network is because having a niche helps cut out the noise from your competition. On the flip side, the broader you go in terms of your target market, the more competition there is and the harder it can be to establish your brand.
An Example of a Niche for a Business Immigration Lawyer
Being an immigration law firm focused on “tech startups” used to be niche but that’s not true anymore. Everyone’s going after tech startups these days. That means there’s more competition and a lack of focus.
So instead of going after the broad category of “tech start-ups,” think about a niche within that category and go after it. For example, brand yourself as the business immigration lawyer for agriculture tech start-ups (Ag-Tech.)
Why The Niche Is So Powerful for The Business Immigration Lawyer
There are three reasons why having a niche on LinkedIn works so well for business immigration lawyers:
First, having a niche makes it super easy to create content. So instead of an article entitled “Everything you need to know about H-1B visas” which competes with thousands of other articles and doesn’t rank well on Google, you can publish an article for Ag-Tech called something like “Here are 3 ways Ag-Tech startups can use an H-1B visa,” which is hyper-focused and more likely to rank well.
Secondly, having a niche positions you as an expert in Ag-Tech in addition to your expertise in business immigration. Think about it: Wouldn’t an Ag-Tech industry conference rather have a lawyer with some agriculture experience speak rather than a generalist?
And lastly, when you start focusing your content and growing your network in that niche industry, you gain a level of knowledge about that industry that other immigration lawyers won’t have. You’ll learn the lingo and understand the nuances, and thus, arguably, make yourself a better candidate to support those companies than a competing firm.
If you’re worried about being too specialized, there’s a silver lining too. The beauty here is that this one particular niche doesn’t have to be your brand forever either!
As take on a steady amount of work, for example, having five Ag-Tech clients for recurring business immigration work, you can expand and go after the next niche that you’re interested in such as “Ag-Tech and Food and Beverage tech startups.” Now you have a solid foundation, recurring revenue, and the resources to be able to afford to expand and thus compete.
So think about what niche you would like to pursue, study the niche, and you’re ready to start posting on LinkedIn!
