Choosing a law firm is not all that different to choosing any product or service such as a hotel, plumber, or even a new brand of shoes. When potential clients are looking for a law firm that is a good fit for them, they may start with a recommendation or referral or they may just turn to Google as they would for anything else. If searching online, they will most often land on the websites of firms that have a good reputation in the area, catch their attention on social media or industry websites, or rank highly in their internet search results. Whether they are searching specifically for your firm, or find you through a search, once a potential client reaches your website, they will judge you, and likely decide whether or not to contact you based on what they find there. Your content strategy can make or break the conversion from potential client to client so it is important to pay attention to every stage of this conversion process to maximize the reach and effectiveness of your content.
Here, we look at maximizing the impact of your content every step of the way:
Make a Plan
A wise person once said, “Plan your work and work your plan.” Approaching your content creation with a well-thought-out plan will save you time in decision-making and delegation in the long run, and will allow you to coordinate your content with other external and internal events. Your content pieces can align with, and bolster, firm activities such as an in-person conference, a holiday card campaign, or a major charity event, as well as with external events such as a cause awareness day, week, or month. Your content plan should include the topic, the type of content, the responsible person, and how and when it will be distributed.
Planning your content in this way makes your content creation process more efficient and maximizes the impact of your content and other firm activities.
Create Valuable Content
This may be the single most important factor in creating content that effectively converts a potential client into a client. Your content should be valuable to your clients or potential clients. It should answer their questions, inform them about relevant issues, and present you (truthfully) as the lawyer that they want on their side. It can be difficult to find the time or inspiration to regularly produce valuable content. If you are looking for ideas for your content, check out our blog article Content Writing for Attorneys: 5 Idea Starters. Some lawyers also choose to work with dedicated content writers, such as our attorney-writers at LISI, to help with this process.
Content is not limited to written blog articles and legal updates. Your content can and should be produced in multiple media to reach potential clients in the way that they interact with content in their daily lives. Video content is becoming increasingly important in legal marketing and should feature in your marketing plan. Podcasts, F.A.Q.s, infographics, and even hard copy marketing materials may also be incorporated into your content plan.
Regularly producing content that is valuable to your audience is a crucial factor in increasing your ranking in internet search results. The Google algorithm prioritizes websites that users want to read. Therefore, websites that contain valuable, regularly updated content gain higher rankings in internet search listings.
Distribute with a Purpose
Once you have created your valuable written, audio, or video content, you need to maximize its effective reach. It is not enough to post a blog article on your website and sit back to wait for the calls to come in. Your content should be shared on platforms that are appropriate to the type of content and to your target audience. This may be TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, J.D. Supra, or even an old-school mail-out. On many of these platforms, you can also limit who is shown your content based on characteristics such as age, place of residence, or membership of certain groups, so that you focus your marketing efforts and budget on people who are true potential clients.
It takes effort (and non-billable time) to produce content so it should be used to its full potential. One piece of content can be shared and repurposed to reach different audiences in different ways. For example, a lengthy article posted on a content aggregator site such as J.D. Supra could also be the basis of an abbreviated post on LinkedIn and an infographic on Twitter. You can also share your content with current clients or contacts in a client email blast or firm newsletter. When sharing content with known contacts, an effective C.R.M. will help you to refine your distribution list to appropriate recipients. Use the tools that you have at your disposal to expand your reach, not your budget.
Be a Thought Leader
We hear a lot these days about thought leadership. A thought leader is someone who has established themselves as an authority in a particular area, and provides guidance and inspiration in that field. Becoming recognized as an authority in your area of practice can massively increase your visibility and your attractiveness to new clients. Who doesn’t want to hire the lawyer that other lawyers look to for answers?
Becoming a thought leader takes effort and consistent content creation but it can pay off in the long run. There are no prerequisites or professional requirements. You simply take the first steps to put yourself and your content out there and stick with it. There are also opportunities to outsource some of this burden to external marketers or writers, such as the team at LISI. Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent platforms for professional visibility – use them. Legal content aggregators such as J.D. Supra are useful for lengthier content. Sign up for some speaking engagements. Host a podcast. Engage with your audience. There are no rules. Be passionate about what you do and share top-notch content that garners attention and respect. The rest will follow.
Master the Machines
Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) aims to optimize the ranking and ultimately the visibility of your content on internet search results pages. It is well known that websites listed on the first page of Google search results are statistically much more likely to be visited than websites on later pages, so improving the ranking of your content should improve your click-through and client conversion rates.
The Google algorithm that determines a website’s ranking in search results is highly secretive but one known factor is the value of the website’s content. Changes to the Google algorithm in recent years have all refined the algorithm’s ability to discern what content is valuable to a human audience from what is just a page stuffed with keywords. Therefore, your aim should be to produce content that people will actually find useful in order to improve your Google ranking.
There are other ways to optimize your visibility in search engine results including improving your domain authority and marking up your schema. A website’s domain authority is increased when other websites link to it. For example, if you produce a particularly helpful summary of product liability law which multiple consumer rights groups reference and link to on their own websites. Once again, the goal is to produce valuable content that other organizations want to reference. Marking up the schema on your website allows your content to feature in highly visible sections on Google search results such as “People Also Ask.” You can find out more about marking up schema in our blog.
Mastering the machines can get technical and is best done with professional help, but it will give your content the best opportunity to reach potential clients and multiply your efforts in content creation.
