Thought leadership is a marketing and business development asset whose value compounds over time by growing your network, supporting your business development efforts, and building trust with your audience.

Thought leadership isn’t just a fundamental marketing and business development tactic. It’s a compounding asset that can pay huge dividends over time.

Most people are at least aware of the principle of compounding in the personal finance realm. Specifically, compounding interest.

Compounding interest allows us to earn exponentially increasing returns on our savings and investments over time because we earn interest or a return on both the initial principal we’ve saved/invested and the interest/return we’ve earned to date on top of that principal.

(For example, if we’re getting 5% interest from our bank on our savings account and we have $100 in that account, we’ll earn $5 on that money. But over time, we get 5% back on that $105 (which increases our savings to $110.25), and 5% on that (which increases them to $115.76), and so on.)

Similarly, your ever-growing library of thought leadership is a compounding asset that can lead to exponentially increasing marketing and business development benefits over time.

Here are four ways your thought leadership can compound.

Thought leadership compounds in the form of audience discovery

When you publish an article, a podcast episode, or a video, people might find it on their own, through the publication of that content on a third-party platform, or on your or your firm’s social media channels or newsletter.

But down the road, people will find that content through web searches or algorithms on platforms like TikTok and YouTube that serve up similar content to the content they’ve searched for, liked, shared, or commented on.

This means clients, referral sources, media outlets, conference organizers, recruiters, and others will discover your content over time. An article you write today could be discovered by a prospective client—and could persuade them to reach out to you—next week, next month, or next year.

Thought leadership compounds in the form of business development assistance

Building on the theme of thought leadership having value beyond the first few days or weeks after it is published, the value of your thought leadership compounds over time by becoming a tool you can deploy as part of your business development efforts.

You can refer to your thought leadership when you meet with a current or prospective client or referral source regarding a legal or business issue you’ve previously covered in your thought leadership.

By referring that individual to an older piece of thought leadership, you can show that individual that the legal or business issue they’re facing (or their client is facing) is one that you’re familiar with and have opined on publicly.

(If you’ve opined on it publicly, the client or referral source is going to assume that you know MUCH more about the topic than you’ve shared publicly.)

Though the piece of thought leadership you’re referring the other person to began as a one-to-many marketing piece that was disseminated to many readers/viewers/listeners, over time it can morph into a targeted one-to-one business development tool that shows off the knowledge and wisdom you have regarding a particular issue to an individual who is looking for assistance with that same issue.

Thought leadership compounds in the form of growing a network

As more people consume your content and share it with others — whether publicly on social media or privately via email, direct messages, or texts—your network grows.

Some of these people seeing your content for the first time when it was shared may become clients. Some may become referral sources. Others may become prospective clients or referral sources. Still others might simply become regular consumers of your content, but they would still be in a position to share your thought leadership with even more people (who could become clients or referral sources).

As you produce more content, you’re creating more opportunities for people to view and share that content, which puts it in front of more people who can view it and share it. The more thought leadership content you create over time, the faster this network-growing wheel spins.

Thought leadership compounds by building your reputation and trustworthiness

As your personal library of thought leadership content grows, you’re giving people an ongoing opportunity to see you’re an authority regarding the areas of law you practice or the industries you serve because you’re consistently putting out relevant, valuable, and compelling content.

You’re showing that you’re not an occasional producer who produces content a few times a year. You’re consistently building your reputation and trust from your target audience because they see you out there, again and again, producing content.

The more thought leadership content you produce, the better your reputation gets and the more trust your target audience has in you because they’re seeing just how knowledgeable and wise you are about the work you do.

A caveat: You’ll need to keep making deposits

In the world of personal finance, compounding works best when an individual regularly adds money to their existing pool of savings or investments while, in the background, interest accrues on the money they’ve already saved and they receive returns on the money they’ve already invested.

The same thing goes with thought leadership.

If you want your library of thought leadership content to be a compounding asset, you’ll need to regularly contribute to it.

It can’t be a once-a-quarter thing. It has to be a regular occurrence—at worst, a once-a-month thing.

In addition, to give your thought leadership the best chance to compound, it can’t be salesy. It has to be relevant, valuable, and compelling to your target audience, and should provide value to them.

A personal finance concept applied to legal thought leadership

When it comes to money, your ability to accumulate compounding assets can be a key driver of your financial success.

When it comes to your legal practice and/or your personal brand, the ability for you to create and accumulate compounding thought leadership assets can be a key driver of your marketing, business development, and branding success.