For those that know us, we are big believers in content marketing for attorneys. And when we discuss content marketing, it is usually in the form of a legal blog. These days, there are tons of “marketing” companies offering direct client leads, promising first page on Google, and other gimmicks. We take the position that these gimmicks may create short-term benefits or the appearances of same. Long-term, they will probably do more harm than good for your business. Therefore, we are doubling down on our push for lawyers to do more content marketing. Content is king and will remain king when search engines change algorithms and fly by night organizations disappear.
Content for Lawyers is Hard
We have been working with lawyers for a long time. As such, we know they have limited time and packed schedules. These facts are a major barrier for lawyers implementing a consistent content marketing strategy. In other words, most lawyers just do not have the time to write effective blogs. In addition to time constraints, most lawyers do not know how to properly structure blogs for optimization purposes. They write like lawyers – surprise surprise. Blogs should be 300-600 words and not be written in legalese. There are also other considerations for blogs regarding optimization.
Solutions for Content Marketing
Because of the barriers mentioned above, you, as a lawyer, may just punt on a content strategy. That is not a recommended plan. But don’t fret, there are other options. One, you can try to just do it yourself. We have seen this approach many, many times. However, we have seen it fail almost every time. It is just not sustainable for most lawyers. You are too busy, and it gets pushed aside.
Option two is to buy canned content from a content provider. This can be helpful as you will get stuff to put on your blog. Doing a pro/con analysis, I think the previous sentence sums up the pros. The cons win the day. Here are the negatives with canned content:
- Most of the time, it is not exclusive to you. This means that the same content can show up on other lawyers’ websites.
- It is not written in your voice. Therefore, it can be off-brand, dry, and just not you.
- It does not get optimized properly for search engines.
- The content is usually super-technical – not practical.
The Best Option
Option three – hire a marketing agency that provides custom content. Believe it or not, there are agencies out there (um, hi!) that will write content based on the trends you are seeing, in your voice, branded for your firm.
As we said earlier, we are big believers in content marketing for attorneys. We provide custom, strategic content. Not only that, but we also work with you to understand your voice and brand. From there, we optimize each post which included proper structure, use of headlines, imagery, links, meta descriptions, and all of the other technical bells and whistles. We will even post to your blog, website, social media pages, etc. And, drum roll, you will be shocked on our rates.
Call us to start your content marketing plans.