Developing Your Law Firm’s Content Marketing Strategy, PART 2

Last week we walked you through the importance of creating a client insights profile. This week I am going to tell you about how to use this profile to make the real marketing magic happen. Let’s get to it.

Once you have the profile created, now is the time when you are ready to extract some keywords and phrases to use when creating your editorial calendar. Using the example above, we feel that the following keywords and phrases will work well in reaching this audience:

• Child support
• Child custody
• Divorce with kids
• Community property, house
• Trustworthy divorce attorney

These keywords/phrases are important because when your targeted audience will go online to search for answers to their questions, they will likely use some combination of the terms above. These same keywords can then be used to create titles for your content:

• How child support is determined when divorcing with kids
• Child custody, who gets the children when divorcing your spouse?
• “Do I get to keep the house?,” this and other common questions for people getting divorced
• 3 things every divorcing parent should know about child support

Titles are one of the most important pieces of content you’ll ever generate so it’s worth spending some time on. Your content titles should not only contain your keywords and phrases, they should also be engaging and tell the reader exactly what the body of your content will contain. Also remember that your titles are the first thing your audience will see and if your title isn’t clear or engaging it will just be ignored. Out of the titles list above, I would guess that “3 things ever divorcing parent should know about child support” would get the most click throughs from our targeted audience. However, if your blog contains too many of those, “3 things,” “5 things” and “7 things” then you will just come across as spam. Instead, you want to come across as authoritative but approachable. Titles to your content will be a key role in how you appear online. Try to come up with about 8 titles in one sitting. It’s worth the time and you won’t have to do it for another 2 months. I explain why below.

Once you have your titles chosen, this will serve as the roadmap for the content that you will be generating to place on your blog or for others that may wish to publish your content on their site. Order the titles in a way that makes sense and that doesn’t overwhelm with one particular topic should a reader be following your blog regularly. As to how often you should create a blog post now that you have titles, well that is really up to you. I will tell you that I HIGHLY recommend you write a blog post once a week.

Here’s why; Google will typically crawl your website (blog) at least once every 7 to 10 days. It is widely accepted that Google rewards websites that publish high quality content on a regular basis with higher rankings in search. If you are pushing out a new blog post every time Google crawls your site than your site will come across as dynamic and helpful to your targeted audience. I should also mention that your blog posts should be at least 450 words for them to have an impact. So, deliver your audience at least 450 words once a week and you will see an increase in your website traffic in a short while.

Of course if you are taking the time to generate content for your law firm on such regular intervals, you should also take the time to make sure that your blog has your law firm’s contact information or a contact form that a reader can use to reach out to you. Oftentimes your content will not only answer a question in the readers mind, it will also prompt a course of action or resolution to finally take the plunge and deal with the legal issue that you are well prepared to handle. Making it easier for people to contact from that point of inspiration is a critical next step in using your law firm content marketing for lead generation.

What I described here may come across as a pain that you would rather avoid. Just remember that suffering through lulls in business and client acquisition is more painful. Like anything, the first time you sit down to do this will be challenging. However, keep a steady pace and commit to a regular schedule and you’ll find it easier and easier to do. You can also ease into the process. For instance, instead of 4 blog posts a month you can start with 2. Whatever pace you decide to commit to the recipe for your success will be specificity, quality and consistency. Follow that recipe and you’ll find that your law firm content marketing will deliver you leads regularly independent of any paid advertising you may be doing. Finally, if after reading this 2 part series you’ve concluded that you haven’t the time to commit to an effort like this one, I encourage you to reach out to us. We have attorney copywriters and digital marketers that can develop and implement a highly successful content marketing strategy for your law firm.