It’s not always easy to develop a steady stream of strong content to engage with your clients, prospects and other target audiences, especially when there’s so much competition out there from other firms that are content powerhouses and so little time to capture the attention of your audience.
You also don’t want to be the firm that posts content just for the sake of posting content – you always want your articles and posts to be meaningful, targeted and client-focused – remember, always think quality over quantity. You can also use what you do have more efficiently to give you much more bang for your buck.
With that in mind, here are a few ideas to help your content work harder and smarter for you regardless of your firm size or budget.
- Craft strong headlines for every social post, blog post and client alert – this means be short and succinct, and don’t be too clever or “cute.” Use big numbers if you can and tell the reader off the bat why they should care about the content they are about to read.
- Use visuals to accompany every single post. They bring content to life and make the reader stop and engage. If you learn how to use canva.com you’ll become a graphic designer yourself!
- Use hashtags on Instagram and Twitter (the jury is still out on whether hashtags on LinkedIn will catch on, although it seems they will be worthwhile. For help finding the most relevant hashtags for your posts, check out hashtagify.me.
- Repurpose and reuse what you have – don’t just post a piece of content once – turn one content format into another content format.
- Maximize the time you spend at an event/sponsorship by writing a key takeaways piece.
- Take photos at every event and then repurpose them on social media.
- Use a combination of evergreen and timely posts and highlight a combination of earned and owned media.
- Make owned media part of your content strategy: Create posts highlighting your lawyer bios, case studies, practice areas and industry groups (bonus: your lawyers will think you’re a hero!)
- Weave in holidays and other milestones (such as office openings and firm history) into your content strategy. Read how to do it in my JD Supra article, “How to Use Holidays Throughout the Year to Drive Engagement on Your Firm’s Social Media.”
- Pay it forward by promoting the content and accolades of key contacts, clients and referral sources. This will build stronger relationships with key individuals in your network.
- Use a mix of platforms to engage with your target audiences (video, written content, podcasts, etc.), but make sure you are focusing your time, effort and money on where they are or you are wasting your time, money and effort.
- Consider using paid social for certain key practices/campaigns.
- Look at the data behind your own content – figuring out how to track and use data can greatly improve your content marketing efforts. In fact, if your firm uses a content syndicator like JD Supra, you can obtain some really amazing analytics on your firm dashboard on who has read your content on an individual and firmwide basis. I meet with various practices each month armed with this information and I can’t tell you how powerful it is in motivating other lawyers to write.
I hope this article has given you some ideas on how to supercharge your content – try them out and let me know how it goes!