Content Marketing, Part 2: Are You Creating Valuable Content? A Checklist for Law Firms
By Leslie Richards and Jennifer Simpson Carr
It is no secret that valuable content is critical to the effectiveness of a law firm’s website. It is also key to engaging your target audience(s), building brand awareness, and generating interest in your law firm and its services. However, creating content that supports your business goals and truly resonates with your audience(s) can be a challenge for any law firm.
In this article, we discuss how your law firm and lawyers can strategically approach content generation that makes an impact on your website and with your audience.
Audit your Current Content
A content audit will help law firms identify gaps in content, improve user experience (UX), and increase their website’s search engine rankings. For a step-by-step guide to auditing, read “Have You Audited Your Law Firm’s Content Lately?”
Create a Content Plan
Before your lawyers put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards review the following checklist to ensure that each piece of content is crafted in a way that adds value to your website and your audience.
- Identify your target audience
Before you can develop a piece of content that resonates with your audience, you need to identify who that audience is by answering the following questions:
- Are you targeting individuals or businesses?
- If your firm is targeting businesses, what positions within organizations are you trying to reach? (e.g., In-house counsel, C-suite executives, etc.)
- What are the primary concerns of your audience? What problems do they face in their role and how can you help solve them?
- What services, industries or niches are you focusing on?
- What are the key legal issues that impact your clients?
- How does this topic impact your client, their industry or organization?
- What, if any, other information about your audience(s) should you consider?
- Determine your goals regarding online search
Some content is developed specifically for the purpose of helping a website place higher in online search results. If you are developing content for this reason, be strategic about keyword selection. Do research to identify the keyword volume (how many people actually search for this word or phrase), and the keyword difficulty. Knowing keyword difficulty will help you determine the amount of content you will need to produce to be competitive. Tools like Ubersuggest, www.SEMrush.com, and www.Ahrefs.com can help you identify relevant high-traffic keywords. Content marketing strategies focused on search should start with:
- Keyword research to determine keyword volume
- Keyword research to determine keyword difficulty and the amount of content necessary to be competitive
- Review of online competitors who rank for similar keywords
- Develop a content strategy
In addition to defining your audience, your content strategy should also understand business goals for your content and the way in which people use your firms website to evaluate your services.
Are you developing content to create brand awareness? Perhaps your goal is to have the website visitor pick up the phone or fill out a form. Content focused on brand awareness should present a broad overview of the firm, whereas content created with the goal of sparking a phone call or a form submission should provide more specifics about what it is like to work with your team.
Your content strategy should also consider how and where your target audience goes to consume content. Do they rely on social media, industry publications, or podcasts?
Based on your answer to this question, outline the type(s) of content you will create, such as a blog post, article, whitepaper, infographic, video, LinkedIn campaign or a combination of these and/or other forms of content that meet your readers where they are and maximize your time spent on this effort.
Last, be sure to conduct a thorough review of existing online content for your topic. Identify gaps in information so you can provide insights and perspectives that are unique and valuable. If the existing online content is superficial, you have an opportunity to provide depth and true thought leadership.
- Develop content that is informative and engaging
Your content should be informative, well-written, and engaging. Writing should avoid legal jargon and use language that is easy for your audience to understand. Speak directly to the impact to your client, their industry, or organization and how they can utilize this information in their role. Seek to answer questions your audience regularly poses or problems they need to solve. Whenever possible, use examples to illustrate your points and keep your content concise and to the point.
If time and resources allow, consider a few interviews with members of your key audience so you can hear, first-hand, the way in which they articulate their needs and concerns. This will allow you to create content that uses a tone of voice, and specific language that resonates with this group.
By creating valuable content, law firms and lawyers will begin to forge connections with important constituents and develop a powerful online presence.
For more information on content creation, see our 3-part series:
Content Marketing, Part 1: Have You Audited Your Law Firm’s Content Lately? A Step-by-Step Guide
Content Marketing, Part 2: Are You Creating Valuable Content? A Checklist for Law Firms
