These days, content marketing is a must for your law firm. It’s a way to attract prospects with helpful material that’s relevant to their situation.
Yet, as many attorneys have discovered, creating educational content that turns prospects into leads isn’t as simple as it seems.
Law firms today push out more content than ever before. So competition for attention is fierce.
Fortunately for you, most legal content is just taking up space. The internet is saturated with blog posts, videos, and special reports that provide little value or offer information that’s identical to every other legal practice.
So not only are prospects unable to identify differences, engagement becomes almost impossible.
According to a recent study by Beckon, a marketing data firm, just 5% of branded content online gets 90% of total consumer engagement. Said another way, the vast majority of content online gets ignored.
So how can you ensure your educational content gets eyeballs and engagement?
1. Solve problems.
Your potential prospects are hunting online for solutions. They crave instructions on what can be done to improve their situations.
So be generous with your knowledge. What you share should inspire action and help people make informed, confident decisions.
Keep in mind, you earn trust fast when you’re seen as a helpful resource. So use your content to go beyond common knowledge and share real insight.
2. Tell stories.
People’s senses are assaulted by marketing messages all day long. This forces them to make split-second judgements — often on a subconscious level — on what gets attention.
Stories are one way to cut through this mental barrier and create a quick emotional connection. They also make your messaging more memorable, while moving people to action. So share client experiences and lessons learned.
Remember, too, your personal story is a differentiator in an industry where almost every legal firm seems identical. It’s also a way to humanize your law firm.
3. Update your “old” content.
If you want more organic traffic to your website, keeping your educational content fresh is critical. Google bots and other search engine crawlers behave like college kids on a Friday or Saturday night — they go to where the action is. So you must consistently show your content is worthy of attention.
Areas worth updating include titles, images, links and, as stressed earlier, content quality. In fact, low-quality content not only impacts your positions in search engines, it hurts the perception of your law firm.
Also, review your keywords regularly and test different calls-to-action.
4. Focus on performance over quantity.
Publishing platforms such as WordPress, YouTube and even Facebook make putting out content a breeze. Within minutes, you can have a new piece of content online and available to a worldwide audience — often at no cost.
The problem is, this ease of use leads to content goals where quantity takes priority over performance. What’s the benefit of having a bunch of content if it’s not causing your firm’s phone to ring?
Publish content only when you have something worthwhile to say. Then keep monitoring each piece, focusing on key performance indicators such as reach, leads, revenue and return on investment.
5. Target specific audiences.
For most law firms, just pushing “publish” on a blog post or any piece of content isn’t enough to drive significant exposure. The content landscape is just too crowded.
These days, you need paid traffic. The benefit with this approach — especially with a platform such as Facebook — is you can put your content in front of the perfect prospects for your law firm (and even personalize the experience). Paid traffic also allows you to quickly grow your audience, while increasing the frequency at which people see your messaging.
Now, please understand, this is something you must do for a little while before you see results. Jumping in for just a week or two won’t bring you any benefits. You need time to test and adjust based on your analytics.
The bottom line: How and where content gets consumed keeps evolving. To stand out, quality comes first. So deliver incredible value, update your content consistently and and monitor your metrics to ensure your efforts keep delivering results.
