Content Marketing

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twofortueToday’s Two for Tuesdays is coming to you from Taormina, Sicily, where I’m preparing for our Annual Meeting, which officially begins on Thursday (for our delegates – I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the details tomorrow!).

But for now, I want to focus again on content marketing – specifically a couple of categories that may be useful to lawyers producing content.  Content marketing can sometimes seem daunting, and some of the ideas suggested too “new-fangled” or “out there,” but in this post, I’ll be bringing you a couple of ideas for blogging or videos (or any other creative means of delivery) that I promise you’ll be comfortable with.

Tip One: Use Case Studies – But Make them Compelling

This may be something that you’ve already adopted into your content marketing mix, but just in case you haven’t, case studies are an excellent place to look for content. Obviously not every case will be a good candidate, but some will provide interesting stories that will highlight your creativity and expertise, as well as your ability to advocate for your client. And even better if you can get them to co-author the piece with you.
Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Compelling Content Marketing Categories for Lawyers

Last week, we focused on how to freshen up your content marketing through curation and focusing on being mobile-friendly. Today, I’m using that same post from Entrepreneur as inspiration to encourage you to think differently about content marketing with these two tips.

(And, as a side note, you’ll want to keep an eye on this space late tomorrow for some big Zen news!)

Tip One: Use Rich Media

It sounds like buzzwords, but don’t panic – I’m talking about things like video, and that’s no reason to be scared. Video is an amazing way to add depth to your content, and even repurpose a lot of the work you’re already doing. 

For example record, or re-record, a presentation that you did on a substantive topic and break it up into manageable pieces that you can post to your blog and share via social media. Bonus points for getting your firm to include these in your firm bio to give visitors even more insight into who you are. 

Take a piece you recently wrote on some new legislation and distill it into a 2-5 minute soundbite that you record and upload to Vimeo or YouTube and share. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Think Differently About Content Marketing

As I was doing some reading on content marketing, I came across this post from almost a year ago, which is, ironically, about staying current with your content marketing to avoid becoming a dinosaur.

And while it’s true that it’s important to stay on top of the trends and "hot" ideas in content to make sure that what you’re producing is being consumed and shared, there are some excellent tips in there that lawyers, firms and law firm professionals will find of use in their own content marketing strategies, and are actually still fairly current. 

Today, let’s look at two of them. 

Tip One: Make your Content Mobile-Friendly

It was true in June of 2014, and it’s even more true now – people are accessing content from their mobile devices. Some statistics for you: 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Freshen Up Your Content Marketing

I know, I know, I should probably change this regular feature to Two "Content" Tips for Tuesdays. I may get back to adding in other tips at some point, but for now, content is such a meaty and worthwhile topic that I’m happy to continue to use the Two for Tuesdays platform to opine on it. 

Today, I want to talk about digestibility. 

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle of what makes content successful, and one of those things is how easy you make it for your audience to read it. We’ve talked about things like writing in their language and not using legalese, but in this case, I’m referring directly towards how the content appears on the page (for our purposes here, we’re focused on written content, though it can be blogs, articles, or what have you).

This morning, I was reading (okay, skimming) the Content Marketing Institute’s "Who Killed the Content?" piece, and zeroed in on their section about making content clean and skimmable. 

You may think "this doesn’t apply to me – I’m a lawyer, writing on important subjects that my clients really care about, and they will both want and need to read every word."

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Make Your Content Easy to Digest

I’ve still got content marketing on the brain (not surprisingly), and I’m seeing more and more discussion about it in legal circles lately. Remember when Lance Godard of Fisher & Phillips told us that 2015 would be the year of content marketing? 

But just because we’re excited and focused on it doesn’t mean that it’s without it challenges. Last week, we looked at two from this WordStream post, and today, we’re going to tackle a couple more. 

Before we get started, you may want to read a couple of excellent articles – both shared by Adrian Lurssen, and one that he authored: 

Challenge One: Signal vs. Noise

This is something that Adrian talks about in his piece, which is why I suggest that you read it before diving into my comments. When WordStream talks about this challenge, they look at it as the challenge of maintaining an ambitious publishing schedule. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: More Challenges to Content Marketing

It feels good to be getting back into the routine after being away at LMA15! You’ll still be seeing a couple more recap posts from me (two, perhaps three), but today, we’re back to our regularly scheduled Two for Tuesdays, and yes, we’re still looking at content marketing. 

As expected, content marketing was the buzz of the LMA too, and it’s not going away any time soon. Lest you start to panic, law firms have been producing content long before it was "cool" to do so – we’ve just now got a name for it. 

But there are still challenges to doing so, and I see the results of them all the time. Let’s look at two of these challenges today, and how to overcome them, in our latest Two for Tuesdays. Thanks to The Wordstream Blog and their "11 Big Content Marketing Challenges (and How to Overcome Them)" for the inspiration! 

Challenge One: Competition

What’s the old adage? There’s nothing new to say, just new ways to say it. As The Wordstream Blog’s post points out: 

Whether you’re blogging about your small needlecraft business or enterprise-level IT hardware, someone else has already been blogging about it for a long time. To make matters worse, there has never been such intense competition for your audience’s attention."

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Challenges to Content Marketing

Today’s Two for Tuesdays is really going to put you to work – it’s about measuring your content marketing. 

While it is true that there’s a lot of subjectivity when it comes to content marketing, and that it’s not often easy to measure or track where business comes from ("I just *feel* like things are happening since I started blogging!"), there are some things you can do to keep an eye on your efforts and to see where your time is best invested. 

Tip One: Identify Your Goals

It makes no sense to try to track any metrics before you identify what your goals are. What is it that you want to achieve with your content marketing? Start with a vague idea of what it is that you want, and then get very, very specific so that you have something that is measurable and actionable. 

Some ideas for possible motivation behind content marketing include: 

  • Becoming better known as a thought leader in X specialty area. 
  • Bringing in new clients. 
  • Getting more speaking opportunities in a niche practice area. 
  • Bringing in more of a certain kind of work. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Metrics

Supposedly, spring is coming here in the northeast, though with snow and continued single-digit temperatures, it’s hard to believe.

But April will start tomorrow regardless, and if you’re spring cleaning your house, why not "spring clean" your content marketing as well? (It’s a cheesy metaphor, but bear with me). 

Last night, I was reading a post from Practical ECommerce that offered some content marketing ideas for April, using April holidays as a springboard. I was ready to discount this right off the bat as being not applicable to the legal industry, but it turns out that it may actually be quite useful…which serves as yet another good reminder as to why we’ve all got to stay open-minded when it comes to marketing and business development ideas. 

Of course, there are some suggestions that won’t be practical for lawyers. Although I’d love to see some content marketing pieces created around April Fools’ Day jokes, I doubt it will happen. Although…employment lawyers! How about creating some posts on April Fools’ Day jokes in the workplace gone wrong? I could see that working very well!Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Unique Content Marketing Ideas

Another Tuesday, another opportunity for us to focus on content marketing! But today, there’s a twist! We’re looking at visual content marketing today. 

Now, it may seem like this isn’t something for law firms or lawyers to think about, but I promise you that it is. I was just reading an excellent article over on Business 2 Community on The 10 New Rules of Visual Content Marketing from Paul Bingham, who says: 

It used to be OK to have a static website gallery, post text to your social channels, and use corporate photos and videos online. Now, readers depend on visuals to figure out whether your content is worth their time."

Expectations of consumers have changed too. They no longer have time to click through to an image or link to see what your content is about. They make split-second decisions based on the visual content provided."

That’s not just true for your average consumer – it’s true for clients, potential clients, influencers and amplifiers as well – we’re all busy people, quickly scrolling through our feeds looking for what grabs our attention the most strongly to determine whether we invest any time in it. Visuals can help someone to decide to make that time investment in your valuable content. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Visual Content Marketing

Last week, we looked at two of six content marketing tips from Forbes for 2015, and this week, I want to focus on the two others in their article that I found to be of value for the legal industry. 

Tip One: Focus on Social

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to regular readers of Zen that I picked up on this tip, and I stand behind it as a valuable one. Social media continues to be a valuable means of engagement, and helping to disseminate content – both yours and others. 

In last week’s post, we talked about becoming a content curator – for me, content marketing is about more than sharing what you’ve written or developed; it’s about identifying what’s of value to the audiences you serve and sharing that with them, so that they don’t have to do the work of finding it. 

Social media can be used to help you find that content, as we discussed last week, but the second piece of that is about sharing it – you don’t want to put together all of this valuable information for your audiences and then leave it somewhere, hoping that they discover it, You want to make it easy for them. So you tweet it out, share it on Facebook and LinkedIn, talk about it on YouTube, etc. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Tips for 2015 Part 2