The oldest strategy in the book for winning clients must be “communicate regularly, be helpful, demonstrate expertise, build your relationship”.

These days we call it “building a platform” – but back in the day it was just called “keeping in touch”.

And it's a classic example of the third and key phase of attention – “long attention”.

Long attention is where people tune in to your message because it's from you and they expect it to be interesting and valuable.

You're not having to grab their attention by being different or surprising. They tune in because they're confident it'll be worth their time based on their past experience with you.

Tuning in might be listening to the latest episode of your podcast, jumping on your livestream, reading your emails, or grabbing a coffee with you for an update (remember that?).

These days, I believe the bar is higher than ever before for people being willing to voluntarily give you their attention.

There used to be a time where if you asked a client if they'd like to grab a coffee to chat over the state of their industry or to share some ideas you'd had they'd jump at the chance.

Back then it was one of their few chances to get an outside perspective or updates on the latest trends. These days they're overwhelmed with outside information and updates.

So if you want someone to willingly give you their time, you have to have earned it.

That said, I think it’s a mistake to set the bar so high that you think you have to come up with life-changing wisdom every time you communicate. The reality is that will result in you hardly ever communicating.

A much more realistic goal is to have a few brilliant ideas, interspersed with just good, solid advice. And don't overlook the value to your audience of simply amusing them or inspiring them or illustrating a point with an interesting example every now and then.

In our next email, I'll be sharing ideas about how to come up with valuable content consistently so you can build this relationship with your ideal clients.

And you may have noticed one of the ideas already…

At the top of this email I've started “branding” them as the “More Clients Memorandum” – making it easier to remember the value rather than them just being “Ian's emails”.

And more importantly, I've made a commitment in the branding that they're a “bi-weekly briefing” – committing myself publicly to doing two a week. (Well, unless I play with the ambiguity of biweekly and switch it to being every two weeks :) )

Commitments like this are one way to force yourself to keep up that regular contact. I'll cover a bunch of ways to make it easier in the next email.