How to Create Impactful Content for Your Law Firm
The legal industry is often eclipsed with the unfortunate reputation of being stuffy, strict, and inaccessible to “your average Joe.” Legal content can be confusing, and many lawyers don’t do it justice by using legal jargon and complex concepts. At WDW, we know clients deserve better.
We envision more impactful, engaging content that wows clients and feeds their appetite for valuable information. Rather than “legalese,” we encourage content creation that answers clients’ burning questions in language they can understand and appreciate.
This vision leads us into today’s topic: How to create impactful content for your law firm.
Below, you’ll learn that legal content doesn’t have to be boring or inaccessible but can be engaging AND drive outstanding results for your firm. So let’s dive into it.
What is “Impactful Content”?
Impactful content is content that makes a difference for both your audience and your business. It’s content that provides value to users while driving awareness traffic and leads to your law firm.
Legal content shouldn’t be one-dimensional. Instead, it should work to accomplish many goals at once: providing accurate information to readers, showcasing your expertise, and serving your larger marketing goals.
An impact-driven content strategy requires putting users first by focusing on what they want to know and how you can help. Then, your content marketing plan will work to get this content in front of the right users on the right platforms.
Why Content Matters for Your Law Firm Marketing
“Content” is more than just words on your website – it’s the vessel through which you communicate the value of your brand. Content encompasses your web pages, email campaigns, social media strategy, video marketing, and more; all work to tell potential clients about your law firm.
Content marketing brings many benefits to your law firm. Content can:
- Help you rank higher in Google search
- Drive organic traffic from search engines
- Improve engagement on your email campaigns
- Encourage clicks, shares, and comments on social media
- Grow your social media following
- Improve your website’s authority and expertise
- Showcase the results you have generated for clients
- Add value to your paid advertising campaigns
- Offer information to your client base via articles and posts
This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding what content can do for your law firm. “impactful content” aims to achieve several of these benefits at once, so you earn the best return on your content marketing efforts. In addition, impactful content woos your clients and helps grow your business.
Creating Impactful Content: Start Here
Impactful content starts with understanding your target audience and what they look for in legal content. It means uncovering their common questions, concerns, and struggles. And it means creating content that offers value beyond what they can find at any other firm.
The following strategies offer the best place to start when creating impactful content:
1. Conduct Audience Research
Many law firms miss the mark with their content strategy by creating content they care about, not what their clients care about. This can result in confusing content that’s hard for readers to digest or content that doesn’t meet their specific interests.
A better content strategy puts your audience’s needs front and center. But to create this content, you need to know what your clients care about.
There are a few ways to conduct valuable audience research:
- Surveys: Use a Google Form to ask your audience (on social, via email, etc.) what questions they have about the legal process and what content they’d like to see
- Past clients: Ask past clients about their experience working with a lawyer, navigating the legal system, and finding information online
- Network: Ask other legal professionals about what their clients ask for most and what struggles they often face
- Direct: Ask your audience directly (i.e., on social via direct message) what topics they are interested in
While far from being robust market research, these methods will set you on a solid path to creating content based on user interests, not what you assume users want to know.
2. Plan Your Content Topics
“What gets measured, gets managed” – this adage applies to content marketing in that if you don’t have a strategic content plan, you will struggle to publish great content consistently. This is why we encourage lawyers to plan their content.
Keyword research tools like SEMrush can empower you to generate hundreds of new content topics based on what users are searching for on Google. And free tools like Google Sheets offer a great place to organize your content schedule.
In planning your content topics, consider:
- Is my audience interested in this?
- Is the topic relevant to my business and/or services?
- Are users searching for this (i.e., search volume)?
- Is this a topic I know how to write about?
- Finally, what’s my strategy for distributing this content?
Map out your content strategy to enforce consistency and accountability. Having a plan will make it easier to publish content regularly and drive impactful results for your business.
3. Diversify Your Content
While your blog is a great place to publish content, it’s not the only home for your content strategy. Diversifying your content strategy means using different mediums – video, social media, and email – to distribute your content.
You can repurpose your content in the following ways:
- Turn blog articles into new video scripts
- Pull excerpts from blog articles to post on social media
- Download Facebook Live videos and upload to YouTube
- Repost blog articles as LinkedIn articles
- Break up long-form content into an email campaign
- Use existing content as paid ad copy
- Embed YouTube videos into blog articles
- Turn articles into downloadable ebooks
Repurposing allows you to breathe new life into your content and generate the best bang for your buck. Whenever you create new content, think of ways to diversify your medium to have an even greater impact.
4. Invest in Video Content
Studies show that 54% of consumers want to see more videos from the businesses and brands they support. So why not give the people what they wish to with engaging video content?
Some YouTube publishers like LegalEagle provide a great example of how lawyers can use video to their advantage. This content drives hundreds to thousands of users to the brand’s website every month!
You don’t have to be a video pro to create video content. Even a laptop camera or smartphone will suffice. Then you can use editing tools like iMovie to add titles, images, music, and more. Remember, more important than the visual effects is the value you provide to users. Make sure your content is helpful, accurate, and abides by legal marketing guidelines.
5. Run an Email Sequence
An email sequence (i.e., a multi-phase email campaign) is a great way to generate traffic and re-engage your subscriber list. This is done by offering impactful content, in a drip campaign, over a set period of time.
Here are the steps:
- Log into your email management platform and create a new campaign.
- Choose the topic of your email sequence, write the emails, and then gradually release tips in each email.
- Add links to related content on your website or to your contact form.
- Include images, videos, and other media to encourage user engagement.
A successful email campaign is to get users excited about your upcoming emails. With this in mind, stick to a consistent cadence (or schedule your emails) and provide users with enough information to keep them interested until the end of your campaign.
6. Publish FAQ Content
FAQ content answers the most important questions users have about your service and brings the added benefit of driving traffic to your website. This is because users often search for their queries in Google, so your FAQ content could rank in the search results.
Users love FAQ content because they can find information about your law firm all in one place. This can make it easier to decide whether they want to work with you long before scheduling a consultation.
At the same time, FAQ content (when optimized) can work to improve the Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T) of your website, which is essential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
7. Launch an “Ask a Lawyer” Series
An “Ask a Lawyer” series can be a great content idea for social media because it allows you to engage users in real-time. They get their questions answered, and you can showcase your own experience (without humble-bragging on your website).
You can post about this series on Facebook or Instagram or conduct a Facebook Live session. The latter method works particularly well because you can then download this video and upload it to YoutTube!
An “Ask a Lawyer” session can also be the basis for future FAQ content. Turn the questions and answers into FAQ pages, blog articles, or future videos. Again, better results from a single content idea!
8. Guest Post on Industry Websites
Last but not least, guest posting on third-party industry websites is a smart way to drive more traffic to your law firm. It can increase your visibility with a broader audience and even earn you some authority-boosting backlinks.
Many law firms will allow guest posts from other lawyers. This may be unpaid, but it can work to drive new users to your website. Also, the firm may reshare your content on social media, which can earn even more traffic.
In the legal industry, it’s often who you know that earns you new clients. This method helps get your content out there and allows you to grow impactful relationships in your industry.
Alex Valencia is an influential entrepreneur, marketer, speaker, podcaster, and CEO of We Do Web Content, one of Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing businesses in America. His agency implements game-changing content marketing strategies and produces top-ranking web content for law firms, medical professionals, and small businesses nationwide.