A few weeks ago, a sur­vey was released that took a look at the state of legal mar­ket­ing in the U.S. The researchers inter­viewed in-house coun­sel from law firms across the nation and asked them a sim­ple ques­tion — Are you suf­fer­ing from infor­ma­tion over­load? A whop­ping 96 per­cent say that not only were they drown­ing in too much con­tent but it was a huge prob­lem in the legal industry.

What does this mean, infor­ma­tion over­load? Let’s take a look at your law firm’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing — how many blogs, social media posts, and pages are you putting up on a month­ly basis? Would you say there’s a page a day and plus a bunch of blog posts? Or are you post­ing on social every hour? Yeah, that would be con­sid­ered infor­ma­tion over­load. It’s when you have so much infor­ma­tion that a client can eas­i­ly get lost in the mess and aren’t sure where exact­ly your law firm stands.

And don’t put it all on the lawyer’s shoul­ders — many legal mar­keters are the cause. Accord­ing to those law firm mar­keters sur­veyed, although many were aware of the prob­lem, 81 per­cent said they will pro­duce more con­tent this year than last. In fact, 98 per­cent says their con­tent bud­gets have either remained the same or increased from 2016.

Hey, I get it. Con­tent is king as every­one is fond of say­ing. But hav­ing too much con­tent can not only over­whelm but it can hurt as well. Espe­cial­ly if you’re just throw­ing con­tent out there and hop­ing some­thing sticks.

Accord­ing to the sur­vey, only 26 per­cent of law firm mar­keters have a doc­u­ment­ed con­tent strat­e­gy in place for their lawyers, which is an increase over 2015 but still a dis­mal­ly low num­ber. Oh but don’t wor­ry, legal mar­keters, you’re not alone. Accord­ing to Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute, only 37 per­cent of B2B orga­ni­za­tions have a doc­u­ment­ed strategy.

Ok, so we don’t do it and B2B mar­keters don’t do it, so why both­er, right? Well, let me give you a sce­nario to show you why you should bother:

The tax law attor­neys at the X Law Firm is in need of some new clients. It’s pret­ty slow right now — tax sea­son is over and the phones aren’t ring­ing. It was decid­ed the best way of get­ting new clients is to increase their social media efforts. So they began post­ing five times a day across all social chan­nels about any­thing that has to do with the legal indus­try. They post arti­cles from Law360, they put up blog posts that talk about ran­dom legal mat­ters, they add pages to their site about var­i­ous tax codes and IRS mat­ters, they take it to the max. But a few months go by and only a hand­ful of clients. What’s up with that?

Just adding con­tent to add con­tent is not going to have your clients knock­ing on your door. You need to strate­gize and plan, just like you would do before a big case. With­out a plan in place, you’re just spit­ting into the wind.

How does one come up with a strat­e­gy? Glad you asked. All you have to do is answer a few questions:

  • Who is your tar­get audi­ence? Going back to our tax lawyers, they want new clients. But what kind of clients are they look­ing for? Is it some­one who is hav­ing an issue with the IRS? Or is it a busi­ness with a huge tax prob­lem? You got to know the tar­get audi­ence before writ­ing a sin­gle syllable.
  • How are you deliv­er­ing this con­tent? Let’s say the X Law Firm wants to tar­get busi­ness­es. So do a lit­tle research. For exam­ple, Face­book may be a lit­tle too casu­al for a busi­ness own­er, so LinkedIn may be a bet­ter choice to post your content.
  • How will you present the con­tent? Not only is the deliv­ery impor­tant but how you’re pre­sent­ing it is key. A cor­po­rate exec­u­tive prob­a­bly responds bet­ter to pro­fes­sion­al­ly writ­ten blog than a social media meme.
  • How often will you send out the con­tent? Again, this will take a lit­tle research­ing. Take a look at your ana­lyt­ics. If you’re post­ing five posts a day on Face­book and only one or two of the posts are attract­ing atten­tion, step it back a lit­tle. If you’re get­ting some engage­ment, maybe add anoth­er post or two.
  • Is your con­tent engag­ing? This is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant piece of the puz­zle. If your care­ful­ly craft­ed con­tent isn’t get­ting the atten­tion it deserves, then you may have to go back to the draw­ing board and rethink your strategy.
  • Are you telling a good sto­ry with some of your con­tent pieces? You should be. Every­body loves a good sto­ry. Some­thing they can relate to.

And of course, if you need help, then you need a con­tent expert.

 

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