Legal vendors content marketingContent helps to promote your brand, establish expertise, and build trust. Whether you’re a tech startup or a mature organization serving the legal community, potential customer and industry leaders use content to find and validate you, what you do, and the products and services you offer.

Here are top ideas and formats to throw into the mix when devising your content strategy and plan.

1. Website – You need a website. It’s your calling card on the web. A place to showcase your company and demonstrate your product and speak to the problems of your potential customers.

2. Microsites – Does a particular problem your customers face keep popping up? Do you offer a feature or solution? Have you designed an interactive form that tells a story? You should consider creating a simple site addressing just that issue, solution, or interaction. These sites can be housed on their own domain or a subdomain of the main site.

3. Blogging – This is a no-brainer. “I don’t have the time” is simply not an excuse for not blogging. This is where you produce content that is helpful to your current and potential customers – usually, lawyers and law firms. This is also where you create original content that can be repurposed to other formats, including lead-generating content.

4. Social Media – You must have a social media presence. It’s today’s word-of-mouth and one of the first places potential clients look to validate and engage. Social media is useful for building meaningful relationships with industry leaders. It’s also become a help desk of sorts for many companies.

5. Webinars – Put on a quarterly webinar on topics and trends relevant to your prospective customers. Create Vimeo and SlideShare accounts for your presentations. Get a current customer or industry leader to co-present. This is an effective lead generating activity so remember to closely align your topics with the service, tools, and solutions you offer.

6. Ebooks & White Papers – Creating ebooks and white papers is not as burdensome as you think. Repurpose the content you’ve already created such as blog posts and webinars. This is also a great lead-generating tool. Early-stage companies can go a bit broader with topics to generate awareness, referred to as top of the funnel leads.

7. Videos – Get one of your product experts or customers to talk about problems they encounter and how you solve them. Build a “resources” page to house your webinar recordings, which, after a bit of post-production work, you can “gate” – require an email address to view – to generate quality leads. Sit down for an hour and produce ten 2-minute video clips. Write a blog post about each and embed the related video. That’s one blog post a week for 10 weeks. Include mobile video. Your content plan is starting to come into shape.

8. Email Newsletter – Your webinars, ebooks and white papers have helped you grow your email subscriber list. Now it’s time create a weekly or monthly newsletter which provides useful content for your subscribers. It’s also an opportunity to keep top of mind with potential clients – folks who downloaded your content or attended your event.

9. Case Studies and testimonials – Other voices – actual users – proclaiming the value of your product speak volumes. Ask your customers for testimonials. It’s an advantage for them to show they’re up on the latest technology and productivity tools and services. Don’t get hamstrung by the “perfect” case study format. I’ve seen this happen way too often. In fact, the old tired format could do with a refresh. Avoid marketing speak and let the customer’s voice lead the way. Case studies and testimonials are essential for repurposing to other marketing collateral.

10. Podcast – It’s the golden age of podcasting and there’s a reason for it: convenience + quick, actionable takeaways from thought leaders. You can listen at the gym, during your commute, or when you have a few free minutes. This does take some effort to produce. Focus on a specific topic. Don’t try to appeal to everyone in an effort to get more downloads. A focused, loyal following is what you need. If you don’t have the time, reach out to do guest spots on other podcasts. The Legal Talk Network has an ever expanding library of podcasts. Get in touch with them.

Get your content found

“Build it and they will come” does not work with digital properties. In addition to creating useful content, you must let people know where it is and how to find you. You do this by optimizing for search so that when someone is searching for answers to a problem which your product or service helps to solve they’ll find you.

Updated and republished February 2, 2018.

Legal vendors content marketing

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