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Want to produce better thought leadership in 2025? Be a social media lurker

Creating effective thought leadership content starts with observing what’s on the minds of your clients and referral sources so you can create content that resonates with them.

As you create your list of professional New Year’s resolutions for 2025, allow me to add one that could elevate your legal practice by elevating your thought leadership efforts: Become a social media lurker.

That is, become someone who studies what your past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources are talking about on social media.

Lurking on social media in 2025 could be the key to creating thought leadership content your clients and referral sources actually want to consume in 2025.

Why you’re going to want to lurk on social media

Your clients and referral sources are on social media posting, sharing, and commenting on items of interest to them.

But if you look a bit deeper at the substance of those posts, shares, and comments, you’ll see the substance falls into categories, such as:

Challenges they and their organizations are facing.
Opportunities they and their organizations could take advantage of.
Trends they see in their industry.
Trends they see in the world.
News articles that cover issues of importance to them.
Other people’s posts they agree or disagree with.

And so on.

Your clients’ and referral sources’ social media posts are windows into what’s on their minds. If you know the topics and issues they care about and respond to, you can create thought leadership content that speaks directly to those topics and issues.

In addition, the media outlets your clients and referral sources read/watch/listen to and the professional associations and trade groups they’re involved in are also likely publishing content on social media regarding topics and issues of interest to them.

How to (strategically) lurk on social media

Lurking in this context means following your clients and referral sources on social media, along with:

Their companies/organizations;
Media outlets they read/watch/listen to, or are likely to read/watch/listen to, such as those that cover their industries;
Individual “influencers” in their industries; and
The professional associations and trade groups they’re involved in, as well as those that serve their industry but which they’re not involved in.

Given the state of social media platforms as of the time I’m writing this post, you should primarily lean on LinkedIn for your social media lurking. Most of your clients, referral sources, their companies/organizations, their preferred media outlets, and any relevant professional associations and trade groups will likely primarily be posting on LinkedIn. But, if any have a notable presence on X, TikTok, Threads, Facebook, or Instagram, you’d be wise to follow them on those platforms too.

In addition, you can join particular groups on LinkedIn and other social media platforms you would expect would help you glean what’s important to your clients and referral sources. You can also set up alerts for hashtags or keywords that are relevant to your clients’ industries or your legal practice, or are the kinds of hashtags and keywords you’d want to be alerted to if your clients or referral sources mentioned them or used them in their social media content.

Once you’ve begun following particular people and organizations as part of your lurking efforts, the point isn’t to scroll mindlessly through your social media feed. You’re strategically lurking. Your goal is to get a feel for what’s on the minds of the people and organizations you’re following.

Are you seeing trends your clients, referral sources, and others are spotting? Concerns they’re raising? Unexpected challenges they’re facing?Buzz about certain topics that’s coming from multiple sources? Opinions about world events?

In short, are you seeing inspiration for future thought leadership content you can produce?

The path from lurking to content creation

As you lurk and see what your clients and referral sources are talking about, and what the media outlets, influencers, and organizations they follow are discussing, you can take what you’ve learned about what’s on their (and others’) minds and create relevant, valuable, and compelling content about it.

The topics and issues they’re posting, sharing, and commenting become the inspiration for your thought leadership content.

The trends they’ve observed, their concerns, their unexpected challenges, the buzz, and the opinions about world events become fodder for your thought leadership content.

How about a blog post about a trend that’s been discussed frequently by several prospective clients?

Or, a client alert about a concern you’ve seen raised several times recently?

Maybe a deep-dive LinkedIn post regarding an unexpected challenge a referral source mentioned?

Perhaps a YouTube video challenging a popular opinion about a world event that would likely do well with your ideal clients?

The goal is for you to offer knowledge, wisdom, insights, and analysis regarding issues of relevance to your clients and referral sources that positions you as the go-to attorney regarding the work you do.

The more relevant your content is to your clients and referral sources, the more valuable it will be to them and the more they’ll look to you as someone they or their client should turn to for help with the kinds of legal and business issues you help clients with.

Embrace social media lurking in 2025—and beyond

Unfortunately for you, if you want to consistently create relevant, valuable, and compelling thought leadership content, social media lurking is a long-term strategy.

Don’t treat social media lurking the same way millions of people will treat their 2025 New Year’s resolutions. In other words, don’t abandon this lurking strategy by President’s Day or worse, MLK Day, the same way many people will abandon their fitness-related New Year’s resolutions.

Lurking is not a short-term activity, nor is it a one-time activity. Lurking is an activity you should be doing on an ongoing basis. It’s how your thought leadership content can stay fresh and engaging because as your clients’ and referral sources’ interests and focus change, your thought leadership content should change with them too.

If you want to improve upon your thought leadership efforts in 2025, start lurking. Monitor what your past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources are talking about on social media and use those conversations to guide you as you create thought leadership content in 2025 and beyond.

Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.

Wayne Pollock, a former Am Law 50 senior litigation associate, is the founder of Copo Strategies, a legal services and communications firm, and the Law Firm Editorial Service, a content strategy and ghostwriting service for lawyers and their law firms. The Law Firm Editorial Service helps Big Law and boutique law firm partners, and their firms, grow their practices and prominence by collaborating with them to strategize and ethically ghostwrite book-of-business-building marketing and business development content.

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