Content Marketing Strategy for Law Firms: Part 2 Good2bSocial Digital Academy

Last week we went through the basic tenants of inbound marketing and client journey mapping for law highlighting part 1 of Good2bSocial Academy.    Good2bSocial developed an integrated program designed after 10 years of providing training to law firms to provide legal marketers with a baseline of knowledge of digital marketing concepts in a cohesive format that can be done at the student’s own pace while producing measurable results.  The Academy is divided into eight modules, and we’ll be going over module two outlining the core principles and goals of content marketing and how to develop a strategy for finding your law firm’s audience, engaging them, and moving your prospects closer to the conversion stage of the business development pipeline.

Content strategy aligns your business goals with potential clients needs and uses thought leadership as a primary means to achieve those goals.  Per Guy Alvarez, Founder and CEO of Good2bSocial and the course instructor, “in essence lawyers sell their knowledge and know-how, so what could be a better way of not only demonstrating that the lawyer knows their stuff, but also helping the lawyer become known for a particular area of law and from an SEO standpoint having certain legal concepts become associated with the attorney and law firm’s name.” 

Content Marketing for Law Firms – Where to Start – Are We Doing it Right?

Hubspot estimates over 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing, so having a concrete starting point and plan to understand the process so your firm stands out in a crowded market is key.   Things to consider:

1. Who will be reading your content or who is your target market? 
   Law firms with varied practices can’t expect to reach all potential or current clients with one piece of content, so not only do you need to tailor content to your buyer persona, you need to consider where the readers is in the buying process: awareness, evaluation or ready to engage to the firm or attorney.

2. What problem is your thought leadership solving for your audience? 
   A sound content strategy helps buyers in the early stages of figuring out if they have a problem and how serious or urgent the problem is.  A solid content strategy can help buyers determine if they are ready to engage an attorney, and what questions they have for potential attorneys. Additionally, a targeted thought leadership program can help a prospective client see if an attorney is the right person or see if the law firm is the best firm to handle their matter.

3. What makes your attorneys and your law firm unique?  Why you? 
   How to demonstrate that you’re worth listening to and why would a client consider engaging your firm?  How does your firm’s mission or philosophy solve the client’s problem?

4. What content format and what channels will you use?
   Blog posts, guest posting, videos, podcasts, third-party syndicators:  various distribution channels can include owned properties like your website, blog, and social media channels and/or evaluating reputable syndicators or industry groups to broaden your reach. Figuring out a strategy for content channels and where your firm will dedicate resources are all discussed in the module.

5. The Who What When and Where of managing content creation and publication. 
   Having a strategy for content marketing involves formalizing who’s creating what, when it’s due and going live and where it’s being published and promoted, so your firm can repurpose and plan to update the content down the line, if beneficial.

Good2bSocial’s content marketing module helps legal professionals begin to ask the right questions so they can develop a comprehensive plan such as developing client personas to figure out who your law firm’s ideal clients are and how likely they will they buy from you. Buyer personas and client journey mapping were discussed in detail in section 1 and module 2 is applying this introspective journey to help your firm put pen to paper.   Per  Alvarez:  “By considering the challenges and questions your client persona may have, you can target content to address those needs and understand what types of content to create for each stage of the buyer’s journey.”

Thought Leadership Tools Curated for the Legal Industry 

Module 2 Content Marketing of the Good2bSocial’s Digital Marketing Certification provides meaningful examples, tools, and roadmaps for both legal marketers who may already have a robust content marketing creation machine and want to rethink and retool their processes. And the program helps attorneys or firms beginning or not heavily invested in the thought leadership world.  The course cuts through the outdated or irrelevant to law firm advice out there and hones in on practical and applicable topics including top content marketing tools for law firms, social media scheduling platforms, applications that help analyze headlines and provide feedback about word choice and tools to find key influencers and trending or breaking topics. 

Good2bSocial provides a deeper dive into the how of differentiating your law firm from the 1000’s out there by exploring business storytelling.  Business storytelling creates alignment between your firm’s value and mission or connecting with your prospect by explaining the why- in the words of Simon Sinet “People don’t buy what you do they buy WHY you do it.”  The course details how to communicate your firm’s brand where your prospect or existing customer is the main character of the story and how to weave this through your content marketing and branding to connect with your audience.  It’s a challenge in the professional services context to communicate in a genuine, organic, and effective way that leads to standing out and not blending in. “Using different case studies and real-life examples throughout the training really enabled me to visualise how things would work in practice within our firm.” Holly Maxwell, Squire Patton Boggs

How to Get the Most out of Your Law Firm’s Investment in Thought Leadership?

As frequently seen, only 20% or so of your content will bring the vast majority of your readership.  Managing attorney expectations around content creation, and communicating realistic content goals can be crucial.  If you’re in a niche law practice area, reaching the right 500 people maybe just the ticket, but how do your attorneys know the value of the investment in producing content, if you don’t calibrate and communicate results and when you have a high performing piece of content, you don’t explore multiple avenues to get it out there to the largest pool of potential clients possible?  Good2bSocial ‘s Digital Certification provides details on best practices for republishing your content, from looking for quality legal sites or industry-specific sites to pick up select content to finding broader-based publications like Forbes or Huffington Post or other syndicators like LinkedIn or Reddit, and also provides formatting tips on how to make it pop across different platforms.

Most professional firms struggle with creating content but this course helps with getting the content you create in the hands of the right people, by helping your firm define who those buyers are and considering what’s important to them.  The whole cycle of taking the messaging from a blog post and creating a guide or video series or doing the opposite and taking a video or podcast to a written series is discussed with the end goal of getting your message out there to where your audience is living, whether on  YouTube or in  Becker’s Healthcare.   Additionally, building trust and familiarity via repetition and having various touchpoints with a client are taken from an abstract concept to a concrete process in the modules included in Good2bSocial’s Academy. 

To learn more about the Good2bSocial Academy and the law firm-focused topics covered please click here. 

Stay tuned for more details on the topics and key takeaways included in the other seven modules of the Good2bSocial Academy.

To Read Part 1 Good2bSocial Digital Academy for Law Firms – Inbound Marketing and Client Journey Mapping, click here.