Over the last year the amount of content being produced by law firms, accountancy firms, barristers’ chambers and patent and trade mark attorneys has mushroomed. The only problem is, with more content comes more competition so how can you improve your content marketing to you maximise your audience and your audience’s engagement?
Here are 5 tips that will help.
1. Create RSVP content
With so much content online, your posts need to give your audience something they can use to their own advantage. We call this RSVP content –
It needs to be relevant.
It needs to be strategic.
It needs to be valuable.
It needs to be practical.
Don’t provide a dry technical update, pick an issue you know is affecting your audience (or a portion of it) and explain how to tackle, resolve or avoid that issue. And do it in plain English and with as many practical steps as possible so people can read your piece and take the required action.
You will be amazed at how quickly your return readership and pass on rate will increase if you get this right.
2. Make your delivery more visual
Many think that content marketing only includes written content such as blogs and articles. However, with so much written content being produced it is also a good idea to regularly produce some watchable content.
Video, motion graphics and infographics allow you to make your key points more quickly and in a more appealing way for those who would prefer to watch than read … and that is a growing percentage of those online.
Similarly, producing an image to accompany your blog posts on your social media promo will also increase traffic. If people can see what your post is about, they will be more likely to click the link.
And this doesn’t need to be referred to a designer, simply building your own branded visuals and saving them as a jpeg is more than fit for purpose.
3. Use questions as headlines
The best-read blogs have eye-catching headlines and questions are currently the most eye-catching headline option.
Think about your own experience online. What makes you click on a link? It is the promise of finding out what the latest update to the Landlord & Tenant Act includes or is it a short, punchy question that appeals directly to you and promises to provide the answer you need?
However, not only do questions provoke more clicks, they also improve your SEO friendliness. Questions are how people search (more so now that voice options like Siri and Alexa are becoming more popular).
This means if you choose them (which shouldn’t be too hard if you are regularly talking to your clients), use them, and optimise them this type of blog should bring more traffic to your website.
4. Reskinning
When it comes to producing content something else we hear a lot is “I don’t have time”. This is where reskinning comes in.
Once you have a blog, you can easily turn that into a motion graphic or an infographic or even pick out the main points to make a top tips list.
If you have prepared a webinar, you can extract the key points to make a blog (or better still, a series of blogs).
If you’ve written an article, you can turn that into a series of blogs and FAQs.
If you’ve been publishing blogs regularly during the year, you can pull together the best performing pieces to make a PDF annual to send out to clients and contacts.
Or if you have a few blogs that performed well on their first outing, just give them a bit of spit and polish or a quick update using more current reference points and you can repost it.
5. Have a schedule
Posting at the same times of the week creates consistency and, over time, consistency will help you build trust with your audience because they will know what to expect and when.
And if you are concerned sticking to a schedule may prove too difficult with so many other demands, you can always stockpile less time sensitive blogs, top tips and FAQs and pre-schedule the release using an aggregating app like Hootsuite.
If you would like to find out more about how we could help you refresh your content marketing or discuss outsourcing your content production to us, please get in touch and we can find a convenient time to talk.