Content takes a lot of forms. Blogs. Emails. Social media posts. Press releases. News items. Attorney bios. And so much more. But where to start?

This week’s Ask Me Anything is all about Writing Marketing Content. Join Julie Ackerman, Communications Manager + Legal Content Writer, and Taryn Elliott, Director of Client Success + Marketing, as they answer all of your questions about how to produce content that drives traffic to your website and converts prospects to clients.

Taryn:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to LISI’s Ask Me Anything livestream. This month we are talking about writing marketing content. I am Taryn Elliott, director of Client Success and Marketing at LISI, and I am joined this week by Julie Ackerman, our communications manager + legal content writer. Welcome, Julie.

Julie:

Thank you.

Taryn:

I think this is your first AMA.

Julie:

It is, yeah. I’m delighted to be here.

Taryn:

Well, we’re happy to have you here. Julie and I were just catching up on football, and the Eagles are having a phenomenal season. Makes the blow of the Phillies loss a little bit better, but we’ll focus on the Eagles here.

Julie:

Yeah, we are 8-0. We got a big Monday night football game coming up this week against Washington. It’s funny because Philly is… We love all our sports teams, but we’re really an Eagles town, except this playoff run with the Philly, for once it was like all anybody was talking about. Even though our Eagles are amazing and we’re excited, the Phillies really were top billing for about a month or so, which is unusual and was fun.

Taryn:

Yes. Yes. Well, in Indianapolis, we have fired our coach and hired a new coach that I’m pretty sure has not coached at the NFL level before.

Julie:

Well, but that’s what the Phillies did, and then that’s what started their amazing run actually. So maybe it’ll work out.

Taryn:

Yes, my fingers are crossed. I mean, everyone has loved Jeff Saturday. He has always been a fan favorite. My husband was like, “Do you have a Jeff Saturday jersey?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Julie:

And he’s the new coach?

Taryn:

Yes, he’s the new coach. He was the center for many years, especially during the Peyton Manning era. So everybody’s pretty excited and lots of questions, but as he said, “I’ve played with multiple Hall of Fame players. I was in the league for a really long time. Been there, done that. I’m pretty sure that I can give this coaching thing a go.” You learn from the best.

Julie:

Yeah. Wow.

Taryn:

[inaudible 00:03:19] in action. So I’m excited to see. And he was kind of like, “If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, and I will leave. You’ll get somebody else, and it’ll be fine.”

Julie:

Yeah. Well, that’ll be interesting to see. What’s the record this season? Do you know?

Taryn:

I don’t remember.

Julie:

Probably not great if they fired the coach though.

Taryn:

No, it hasn’t been going well. There would be times my husband would be like, “I’m going to rake leaves because watching the Colts game will be frustrating.”

Julie:

Yeah.

Taryn:

Never a good thing.

Julie:

No. Yeah, we’ve had seasons like that for sure.

Taryn:

Yep. I mean, I grew up a Bengals fan, so the entirety of my youth was spent… Except for our one Super Bowl run. But anyway, speaking of learning how to do things on the fly and learning from other people who do it well, writing marketing content, Julie, for those of you who don’t know, is an attorney and one of our contents leads here at LISI. We write a lot of content for law firms, for individual attorneys, you name it, Julie and her other writing counterpart, Anne, have probably written it at one point or another.

And for those of you who don’t know, I also do content more from the LISI side of things. A lot of the content we put out, I have either written it or worked with the team who was writing it, or at a minimum, edited it… Is it edited? It as has Julie. So we are here to answer any of your questions you have about content and I think all the people who submitted questions in advance. So let’s go ahead and jump right in.

Julie:

Let’s do it.

Taryn:

There’s a lot of content that people can produce, but I think sometimes when we have discussions like this, people start thinking about blog posts, which has been a form of content that’s been with us for a pretty long time. So I’m going to start there. I have a question here that says, how do I write a blog post for a law firm? Julie, I will let you start with that one.

Julie:

Okay, yes, I do this quite frequently. So if you’re the attorney or the marketing person who’s writing the post, it’s really important to think about… I mean, any piece of writing you do, it’s important to think about your audience. So who are you trying to reach? What are the goals of the firm or the practice at this time? What industries do you serve? Where are you trying to grow? Those are all things to think about when you’re getting started. And then I think… I mean, I’m going to say this probably many times in the next half hour. If you stay focused on creating high-quality content, so answering a question that one of your clients or prospects or contacts would have, that’s a good way to just stay. You’re going to create something that does well, you’re going to provide a service for your audience, and if you stick with that, that’s just a good guiding principle, I think.

Taryn:

Okay. We started with blog posts, but another question that I think kind of lays the foundation that was sent in is what content should be included in a law firm website? I will start with that, and, Julie, jump in if I miss anything. We think often about homepage content. Of course, what you say when people first get there is important. Practice area descriptions or industry descriptions, I can’t think of a law firm website that doesn’t have that, so you definitely need that, attorney bios and a contact us page. That’s pretty much the minimum of what should be included on a law firm website.

A lot of law firms will then add in some other pages that will give people an idea of who they are as a firm and what they stand for. And so I think it’s important to consider, if you want to add something like an about the firm page or a history. A lot of people we’re seeing now are adding pages about their efforts to expand diversity, equity, and inclusion, not just in their law firm, but in the legal community in general or in their communities in general. A lot of firms will talk about their community service. Then you see random things that really depend on what your practice areas are.

But I think a good way to look at this part of it is to say, after your credentials have been vetted, why should anybody hire you? What sets you apart? Who are you as a firm? And this is a good place to put that. And all of that information will pretty much be created when you’re redoing your website or when you’re redoing your content. And while it should be reviewed regularly to make sure everything is correct, it’s not something that necessarily is going to be updated on a monthly or weekly basis, but there is a lot of content that’s really valuable that you should consider creating for your law firm website that does need to be updated or added to regularly.

And this is where you’re looking at blogs, you’re looking at video, you’re looking at podcasts. A big one that I think can be a lost opportunity but somewhat tricky for law firms is case studies. And you can call those any number of things, but basically, if you can share it both based on your practice area and confidentiality rules, are there examples of the work that you do that a prospective client might be able to say, “Oh, this is the firm for me. I like what they did there because that’s related to what I need them to do for me.”

You’ll also see people sharing other thought leadership. It might be promoting a workshop or a seminar or even a workshop or seminar that you put online that people can watch or take. And another thing to consider here is frequently asked questions. Especially depending on the kind of firm that you are, if you have people who are coming to your website, not just to vet you, not somebody who’s typing in Julie Ackerman attorney at whatever the law firm is and wanting to just get your bio, but people who are really coming to learn about things related to your practice area. Frequently asked questions is great because it establishes you know what you’re talking about, it establishes that you’re up on current trends, and it’s really good for S.E.O. and something that a lot of people are looking for. So that is broadly some areas of content for your website. Of course, there are a ton more.

Julie:

Yeah, and I think the only thing I would add is, which you did touch on, is any of this content that you produce will then get put on your website and can really help with SEO and visibility of the site.

Taryn:

Yes. Okay. Next question we have is… Let’s go with what is the ideal length for content?

Julie:

Yeah, I think about this with every piece of content that I write. Okay, so the general principle again comes back to quality. So if it’s a very simple news update about something straightforward and you can say it in 100 words, 150 words, then do that. You don’t want to ever stretch something out because you’re trying to meet some kind of word count. And conversely, if it’s a meaty topic and you need a lot of space to really dig into it, then take the room that you need, but I wouldn’t take extra. Again, just keeping in mind your audience. It depends on who you’re writing for, how interested they’re going to be. If it’s like a legal case that really affects somebody’s business, the C.E.O. is probably going to want to read your analysis of that. If it’s what to do after a car accident and it’s a more general audience, you want to keep it, I think kind of short and sweet. So it depends. That’s what we love to say as lawyers. It depends.

Taryn:

I always tell people the length of content to write that you should be aiming for is the one that you will actually write. If you are overwhelmed by writing, say, three pages of content, then just write one page of content. Just make it really good and find the right vehicle for it. So taking it not just from the content part of it, but the digital marketing part of it, you might be able to create something longer that, for your example, a C.E.O. would want to read that maybe you send out in an email that’s very important about a new decision that was just handed down. Or maybe you just want to write a social media post, which can be a lot shorter and still share broadly some of that same information.

Julie:

Yeah. Something is definitely better than nothing. So yeah, to your point, don’t post nothing because you want to write the meaty article. Get started with something shorter is a great idea.

Taryn:

Well, and I think related to this, I have a question here that says, how do I write so that people actually want to read what I have to say?

Julie:

Yes. So it’s another really good question. A couple things. Attorneys are my people. I worked as an attorney, I trained as an attorney, and the kind of writing that we do for memos or briefs is very different than when you’re writing for a more general audience. So I think the number one thing that can help attorneys in their marketing writing is move your conclusion to the top. Think more like a journalist. You want to give the most important information upfront with the hope that those people that it’s relevant to will keep reading. And if it’s not relevant, then we shouldn’t waste our time anyway.

And the other thing is that as we’ve all become digitalized, as we all read now on our devices more than anywhere else, people scan. And this for me too, if I see a wall of text, I have to be really interested to even start it because it just feels like too much to your eyes or something. So I think it’s really important to break it up with headers, bullet points, short paragraphs, anything that makes it easier to scan, so again, those people who really are interested will scan it and say like, “Okay. Yeah, I need to read this,” and then continue on.

Taryn:

And we’ve kind of talked about how to produce content, but what if somebody’s ready to start producing content, where should they start?

Julie:

Yeah, that’s a good question. So I think, again, backing up a bit to what are the goals, what are you trying to accomplish with your practice or with the firm’s practices. So I think being clear on, again, who you’re trying to reach, where you’re trying to grow. And then for lawyers, I would say really talking it through with your marketing department. If you have a department or outside agencies, if you work with somebody like us. Because lawyers are not marketing experts, and so to talk it through like, “This is what I’m trying to do, which platforms make the most sense for me?” Really tap into those resources that you have to help you have a plan and get started. At firms, I mean, I was just at a conference with marketing professionals, some from firms and some from agencies, and I heard a number of professionals talk about how they’re there to help the attorneys and they feel like they could be a lot more.

They feel like they’re there to help and to support the attorney’s practices and they want to do that. So to the extent you have those resources, I would really recommend taking advantage of them.

Taryn:

Yeah. And I know as a marketing professional and with the clients that I work with when I work with attorneys, sometimes they’re like, “We know what we want to say, how we want to say it, but we want you to look at it from a marketing perspective because how we would write it to share with another lawyer or a judge or client is different than how we would want to put it on our website for people who might still be vetting us.”

And so, to your point, I think that bringing a marketing professional can help. So I have a question here, and this is one we get a lot, what kinds of content should I be producing? And broadly, I always say the kind that you’ll actually create. And when I sit down with an attorney, I really try to find out where is your comfort zone? What are you comfortable with?

An attorney who has debilitating stage fright is not a good candidate to present at a conference, or maybe even not a good candidate to do video. But somebody who’s really busy and just really comfortable being up in front of a room full of people, having them create video content might actually be quicker and easier. You kind of just give them a topic and they go. So I always try to start there when we start thinking about how to produce content, is what’s the kind that you’re most comfortable producing.

And then from there, there’s a lot of different options. You can produce… Thought leadership, we’ve talked about. I think a lot of people think of this as social media, but anything that’s establishing you as an expert. There are blogs, there are videos, social media posts, podcasts, interviews, speaking engagements, case studies. I mean, the list is endless of various ways that an attorney could produce fresh content on their website. But kind of to what you said, your practice areas, your firm, all of those things will impact how you’re producing that content as well, how you want to reach clients and prospects. And somebody maybe outside of being an attorney can generally step in and kind of guide you through the best way to bring that all together, the content you want to produce, how to get started, and where it’s going to go. Because all of those things are important to actually making it to the finish line.

Julie:

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I was at this conference last week and I heard… Oh my gosh, there’s a hawk outside my window. Very distracting. Well. Okay. I love birds.

So I was at this conference and I heard somebody say that lawyers don’t break the news, but they help make sense of the news. And I’ve really been thinking about that in the few days since then that with… I mean, we’ve had some pretty major Supreme Court cases come down over the last few months, and that attorneys really can provide a service in a way that other people can’t as far as interpreting what was decided, how it might apply, how it might affect different audiences. And I just think that that is potentially really valuable content that lawyers could be writing either on their own or working with writers who are lawyers such as myself. But there are others like us who are, again, marketing professionals who are able to write at a very sophisticated level.

Taryn:

Yeah. And I like what you said about they’re not breaking the news but making sense of the news. Because one of the questions we have goes along with that and it is, where’s the best place to spend my time or money? Is it blogs? Is it LinkedIn? Is it newsletters? Is it something else? And the best place to spend your money is the place that you will actually produce content. Are you a person who needs some skin in the game, you need deadlines from an outside organization, or you need some money spent on it to make it happen? Do that. Maybe a paid program or an article for a publication is right. If you’re just looking to get your feet wet, blogs and social media might be a good place to start. There’s low barriers to entry, anybody can do it. There’s generally not a cost for that.

But it really depends on the practice that you have, and to your point earlier, if you’re trying to make sense of what’s going on, really think about that for your clients and prospects, and that’s the content to produce, and then figure out the vehicle to get it out there, and that’s where you should invest in it. So for some people, that might be a newsletter. A lot of firms have really good success with breaking news alerts if that works for their practice. And it’s a very specific, this is my audience, this is who I’m sending it to, this is why it impacts them, this is why it’s helpful to them, and I’m meeting them where they are. Is it email? Is it social media? Is it just a general website post that you’re going to do?

On the flip side, we have a lot of plaintiffs firms who are being more proactive. They’re producing their content so that way when people do search, they can be found. A lot of plaintiffs firms have success with paid social campaigns, really well-thought-out ones that maybe somebody who’s doing employment law wouldn’t see as much success with. So when you’re looking at where to put your time and your money, really think about where you’re looking to find clients and where do your clients hang out and what questions are they asking? And those should guide how you go about producing content and disseminating it.

Julie:

Yeah. Just one more thought about that is that one piece of content can be repurposed in many ways. So like a video that you produce, you could do a transcription of that as a blog post, you can take pieces of it to do LinkedIn or Twitter. No effort should be wasted. So this time and money you’re investing can really be used in a variety of ways.

Taryn:

Yes. One of my favorite things that I learned when I was first starting out in content production was find something that does well and then produce more of it. So you might create a piece of content that is five ways to sell commercial real estate and not open yourself up to liability. And maybe you have those five things in this one post, and it does phenomenally. All right, your next goal is to take those five different things and break each of them out into a separate post. And that kind of guides your content, that kind of guides what people are doing. You can link them all on your website. It has a lot of benefits toward being efficient, so that way you’re making the most of the time and effort that you’re putting through to get it out to the most largest amount of people you can who are interested in procuring your service.

I have a couple questions here that are kind of more nitty gritty about the actual content production. And this one I think is one that you’ll like, Julie. Do you have to be formal in your tone? What about grammar?

Julie:

I’m smiling because I love this question. Yeah, I think a lot about tone and grammar. I mean, it’s just a lot of what I do. And so, once again, you need to think about your audience. So I do a fair amount of writing for personal injury firms who are talking to anybody who’s had a car accident or anybody who’s had a slip and fall or workers’ comp issue. And in those posts, I try to keep it pretty simple, and I use proper grammar, but it might be… There’s more room to be informal, I think, in that type of post. If you’re writing for other attorneys or a different type of specific audience, you know that audience or hopefully you know that audience. So yeah, if I’m writing for other lawyers, I keep it more formal, I definitely watch my grammar because most lawyers are pretty persnickety about grammar, including me. So yeah, I think, again, it’s really keeping in mind who do you want to read this and how is the best way to actually keep their eyes moving down the page or to keep their attention while they watch or listen.

Taryn:

I like that. And related to that, I have a question that it says, is it okay to get personal? So kind of building off of that. My answer to that would be in general, yes, your content should be a reflection of who you are and the type of lawyer people can expect when they hire you. And so a little bit of that is sitting and reflecting upon the brand that you want to put out into the world, and a lot of that will depend on the type of practice areas that you have. If you’re a lawyer doing estate planning, there’s a certain amount of empathy and friendliness that you’re definitely going to want to show in your marketing. Whereas if you are somebody doing a major class action litigation where people have been harmed in some catastrophic way, you’re probably going to want to come out more as a tough as nails, we fight for you type of attorney. And that doesn’t mean that there’s not room for both in your marketing.

But in general, when people are going to hire an attorney, they want a person who is doing the work. So I think you should always consider making things personal to the extent that you can. I mean, it’s what differentiates you from all your competition. We’re all different. And for some people, that’s being extremely personal, and for some people, that might be a little bit less. So find your comfort level, find what works for your practice and do it. But don’t be a robot. Don’t feel like you have to be a robot. And I think we’ve moved past that a little bit too, where people expect that more from the legal profession than they did probably a decade ago. People hire people.

Julie:

Yeah, no, I think showing some personality is, yeah, a good idea. Something else I’ve been thinking about is that to try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. So why is this certain audience coming to look at whatever it is you’re producing? And again, with the personal injury folks, I think about, okay, if I’m a parent and my child just suffered some kind of medical harm, I don’t want to be reading something jokey. So I think that it’s really important to keep in mind who is the end audience. A lot of times lawyers are… We’re involved because something has gone really wrong. So I do think it’s kind of a fine line. You want to show some personality, certainly empathy is probably a good way to go a lot of times, and also keep that professional… Just keep in mind what people might be going through who are coming to you.

Taryn:

Exactly. Well, we got a couple questions on this topic, and I want to make sure that we definitely hit it because I know we’re starting to run long on time here, but when producing content, a bunch of people had asked me what should they be considering from a Google or an SEO perspective. Do you want to start us off on that one, Julie?

Julie:

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We get asked this, I mean, probably every day. I mean, most lawyers I think at this point understand that Google is the main way people look for anything. So being on that first page of Google results is pretty important, especially if people don’t know what they’re looking for. If they’re just looking for real estate attorney, you want to be on that first page, so how do you get there? And again, from the perspective of producing content, it really comes back, once again, I said I was going to say this over and over, but producing high-quality content that is going to help your audience. So I have no idea how the Google algorithm does this, but it really can suss out what content is valuable to people. And so that just producing, again, something that your audience will find helpful, high quality is one of the best ways to boost that search engine optimization, SEO.

Taryn:

Yeah. And I think something that can help that is being really intentional about the content that you produce. Of course, if you just want to sit down and write a blog post, that is a great place to start. But once you really get into content production, sitting down and planning out the content that you’re going to produce, why you’re producing it, what you’re trying to target, what you’re trying to get from that goes a long way towards helping with Google and SEO. You’re making sure you’re producing high-quality content, like you said. You’re making sure you’re producing content that people want to read, so they’re driving traffic to that, which Google likes. You’re making sure that you’re producing content that has those targeted keywords in it that you might be looking to get attention from when people are actually doing searches.

So once you get comfortable producing content, I highly recommend really sitting down and spending some time planning out your content, again, because the time that you spend producing content should be as efficient and as effective as possible. As you said, everybody’s busy, lawyers are billing time, any content you’re producing is taking away from that. It’s important, but it can be very hard to balance the two. So really thinking it through.

Julie:

Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll just one more time say that there are people who can help. So your in-house marketing people, agency, there are writers who can work with attorneys to help produce this content, because it is, I mean, your time is very valuable and it’s very hard to put aside billable work to do this work that you might not see an immediate return from, even if you know it’s important. So yeah, take advantage of those resources who can help you actually get it done.

Taryn:

Yes. And we are pushing up against 30 minutes. We know your time is valuable, and you have lots of other things that you need to be doing. So I will do one final question, which is also kind of a final thoughts thing. Assuming people have listened to this and been like, “Yes, you have sold me. I know I need to produce content, I’m going to get started.” Kind of two questions here. How do I get started? What’s the best way for me or for my law firm to produce content? And what do I do if I don’t have a lot of time to produce content? Are there any tips and tricks? Kind of final thoughts to answer not only this question, but how do we apply this and get people to actually take action on it?

Julie:

So a statistic I heard recently is that most lawyers produce one piece of content a year. So I really just want to encourage people, like even if you do two or three pieces of content a year, you’re ahead of a lot of your peers. So I think maybe just setting a reasonable goal for yourself that feels achievable. It could be once a week I’m going to post something to LinkedIn or something that feels like, “All right, I can actually do this.” And maybe get a buddy at your firm to help each other be accountable. Set goals together. Could be somebody in the marketing department, could just be another attorney who’s trying to also start producing content. So I think start small, start reasonable, and reach out for help.

Taryn:

Yeah. And I agree with all of that. Plus, there’s a lot of tools that can help you too, whether it’s a content planning worksheet, which we have a couple of those on our website, whether it’s a workshop that gets you started or gets you thinking about ideas. I know we’ve run those before too, so those are two we use. But there is some AI that can help you start writing that might be worth pursuing. Just make sure you run all your traps to make sure you’re getting the product that you want. Plus, there’s lots of people who do parts or all of this, whatever it takes to start producing it and getting it out there. There’s help. It doesn’t need to be quite as daunting as it can sometimes be when you’re starting from scratch and thinking you have to be producing four pieces of content a week in various formats.

Well, Julie, thank you for being on our first Ask Me Anything. I know that you love content, and honestly, I love content too. Content production’s a big part of what we do, so I’m glad that we had a minute to talk about it today with our clients and prospects. Thank you for joining us, everybody who is watching the livestream, catching the video later, or listening to us on our podcast. We are multi-platform now. So check in with us regularly on Fridays for our LinkedIn livestreams. Check out our website for the other content we’re producing, or follow our podcast or follow us on LinkedIn, which is where you can get all of the information about all of the things that are going on here at LISI. Thanks, everybody.

Julie:

Thank you. Have a good day.

Taryn:

Yes, have a great day. Bye.