Content marketing is a clever and proven strategy for solo practitioners and law firms alike to extend their online reach and grow their virtual presence. Simply put, online content can increase business.
Using content to market your practice involves much more than posting the occasional blog post and sharing on your social channels. With so many online platforms and outlets, content marketing comes in many forms. The result is multiple benefits for law firms that know how to harness the power of content marketing strategies.
However, to increase website traffic, convert more leads, and sign more clients, you need to know how to leverage content marketing to your firm’s advantage.
Creating new, compelling, and informative content can help law firms grow their business in a variety of ways. Some of the most notable include:
- Attracting new traffic to your site
- Establishing your firm as a thought-leader in your practice area
- Building an email list by offering downloadable assets like e-books or other lead magnets
- Expanding your reach on social media
- Improving your rank in the SERPs for your relevant keywords
So, How Do You Actually Do It?
While it’s easy to talk about legal content marketing, actually executing it is a different story. Below are some of the essential steps involved in creating an effective law firm marketing campaign.
Identify Your Potential Clients – and Their Pain Points
The first thing to do is to figure out exactly who you are talking to. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, your target clientele is people who have suffered injuries in accidents. Similarly, if your practice is bankruptcy, you should be creating content for people who are experiencing financial distress.
But the process doesn’t stop here; you need to identify what immediate problems these potential clients are facing and what you can do to help them. For example, a car accident victim doesn’t want to read a treatise on the finer points of comparative negligence vs. assumption of the risk; they are almost certainly more interested in how long it’s going to take for their case to settle, or whether they will have to go to trial. Likewise, potential bankruptcy clients are likely worried about whether they will be able to keep their homes or obtain credit post-bankruptcy.
Identify these pain points and you will be in a good position to create content that your potential clients are actually interested in reading.
Create the Content
Once you have identified who you are creating content for and what they care about out, it’s time to get to the task of actually creating your content. A good place to start is brainstorming several topics on which to write about. Online tools like AnswerThePublic or WordTracker Scout can help you determine what people are searching for in order to better inform your ideation process. Then, create content that directly addresses the issues your clients are having.
Optimize for Google
While you should always create content for humans, it’s also important to optimize your content for search engines in order to ensure that it ranks well. Optimization involves establishing authority, using keyword phrases and appropriate density, using header tags for your headers, linking to other pages in your site, linking to outside sources, and a few other factors we will discuss in more detail in subsequent articles in this series.
Publish and Share
Now that you have an informative, compelling, and optimized piece of content, it’s time to publish it on your site. The process doesn’t stop there, however; you need to promote your content by sharing it on all of your social channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and wherever else your potential clients spend their time online.
