Content Strategy: Don't Just Write About the Law...

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My friend and colleague Adrian Lurssen has a mantra you may have heard him utter over the years at various conferences and on webinars to do with content marketing:

Don’t write about the law; write about how the law impacts the people you serve.

Adrian began saying this around the time he put together an LMA conference presentation on what makes some pieces of content more popular than others. He looked at all of the legal writing we published on a particular change in the law in 2013 to do with the United States patent system (from ‘First to Invent’ to ‘First to File;’ about 80 articles produced by about as many lawyers/law firms), and found that one article in particular did really well, far and above the others.

I won’t go into the detail here (I have a fresh example, below), but can send you a video copy of Adrian’s study if you’d like to see it. Suffice to say, in the list of content marketing takeaways was included this one directive, paraphrased by me here:

If you want to stand out in a very noisy crowd, even if you are writing about legal matters for in-house attorneys, frame your writing by talking about how the law impacts your clients. In short: be specific, be helpful, focus on what matters most to your readers.

All of this sounds great in theory, and whenever I was in a room listening to Adrian offer this advice, I would see the pens come out and the note taking begin. However, as much as everyone seems to agree with this type of thinking, it still seems hard to actually put into practice. It takes editorial skill. How to do it? What follows is one good example.

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The Test Case

Earlier this year, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided a case in which it became clear that employers can be required (in some circumstances) to allow telecommuting as a reasonable accommodation per the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We knew quite quickly that this was a hot story – with three clues: 1) lots of firms began writing about the decision; 2) the topic became one of our most popular with our readers at the time; and 3) the mainstream press began writing about the decision (and, more importantly, its impact on employers).

...employers will always be interested in the answers to evergreen questions.

Most law firm articles had the very legal terms “reasonable accommodation” and “ADA” in the title. Others titles also directly mentioned the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In other words, starting with the title (the first thing most prospective readers see as they are inundated all day, every day, with lists and lists of possible items to read; often the only thing prospective readers see before moving on to other titles, looking for whatever grabs their attention and compels them to click) …starting with the title, most of the articles and alerts focused on the law, the change in the law, not the impact of that law for employers, in plain and simple terms.

(In contrast, I just searched on this topic on Google and found a headline from a recent, updated story on a business news site that reads: “Work from-home policies for disabled employees need review…”)

Now, I want to be clear: all of these legalese-focused pieces were well written by experienced attorneys. I’m not going to directly reference any of the pieces here because my point is not to call out any one writer or firm for producing sub-par work. The analysis was excellent in every case. My point is simply about using editorial best practices to stand out in a noisy online landscape so that your excellent analysis actually reaches an even wider, worthwhile audience.

We decided to use this hot topic to test out our “Don’t write about the law…” theory.

Given the immense interest in the decision, we planned to publish our own piece, with insights from the very same attorneys writing those initial alerts on the decision. And so we asked several contributors with experience in this area: “given the reasonable accommodation ruling, what is the one thing every company’s telecommuting policy must include?” We asked for no more than a paragraph answer from each writer.

With the insights we received in response, we published an article titled What’s the One Thing Every Company’s Telecommuting Policy Must Include?

While the title above suggests a different focus, we did include the following in the opening:

...a recent court decision has found that, in some cases, working from home might be exactly what the doctor ordered. Last month, the Sixth Circuit determined in EEOC v. Ford Motor Company that employers may need to allow employees to telecommute as a reasonable accommodation for a disability, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (read background and analysis of the decision here). Which begs the question:

If, under certain circumstances, employers are required to accommodate remote work, what essential elements should be included in any company's Telecommuting Plan?

In other words, we included news of the recent court decision (and even included a link to the initial analysis), but the piece primarily focused on trying to answer What now? for employers, since the decision was a fait accompli.

Write about these important rulings through the filter of how they actually affect your clients. Don’t just include a “client takeaways” paragraph at the end of your initial analysis. Make your entire article the client takeaway...

The Results

We published the policies piece alongside all others on this hot issue, and then waited. A month later, we checked analytics and learned:

Our piece on the essential elements of company telecommuting policies had four times the readership of any of the other articles and alerts on that initial court decision. What’s more, at the time of writing this, almost half a year later, our test piece now has five times the readership of any of the others.

I mention this last data point because it is, I think, another important editorial takeaway when trying to maximize a good audience for your expertise online. With our new framing, we turned news of a court decision from a moment fixed in time earlier this year into an evergreen topic --  “evergreen” because employers will always be interested in the answers to such questions. (“What belongs in my employee policy documents?”)

Conceive of it entirely from the point of view of your readership, and what they really need to know today, tomorrow, six months from now...

Once news of the court decision had been digested, interest in the analysis dwindled. However, the evergreen piece continued to draw interest, expanding from four times the readership when the decision was hot news, to five times the readership since then.

They call it evergreen for a reason.

So, what’s the point? What are the takeaways here? A few:

  • I’m not suggesting to stop writing initial analysis of the important decisions that matter to the clients and industries you serve. Continue to do that. It is an important digital record of your expertise and knowledge.
  • However, do also return to the subject at hand and write more. Write about these important rulings through the filter of how they actually affect your clients. Don’t just include a “client takeaways” paragraph at the end of your initial analysis. Make your entire article the client takeaway.
  • Another rallying cry you’ll hear from us: one update is good, several are better. Yes, it’s a noisy landscape. You need to work hard to earn your readers. When you write more than one article on a matter, you greatly increase your chances of being noticed for your expertise. What matters most in this experiment is not that your article got four or five times the readership of others, but that, in total, all of the work – all of it – amounted to a large readership.
  • Look at which of your publications are getting the most traction. Use those articles as springboards into new work on the same subject. Now that you have written one piece on the matter and readers are showing you that they’re interested, what’s the next piece you can write on the matter? Conceive of it entirely from the point of view of your readership, and what they really need to know today, tomorrow, six months from now.
  • Don’t just write about the law. Write about how it impacts the people you serve.

*

[A shorter version of this article appeared in the LMA Virginias September 2014 chapter newsletter. Robin Oliver is global director of business development at JD Supra. She can be reached at robin@jdsupra.com.]

 

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