Two for Tuesdays

Subscribe to Two for Tuesdays via RSS

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

I’m still facing massive jet lag (for me, it’s roughly 3:30 in the morning at the moment), so today’s Two for Tuesdays will be brief and to the point (and hopefully make sense!).  We’re still focused on content marketing for our Tuesdays’ posts, and today, I’m piggybacking off an excellent post from Forbes, The Only 6 Content Marketing Tips You Need for 2015. 

From the title,  you can tell that Drew Hendricks, the author, looks at six tips – we’ll check back in on a couple more next week, but for today, there are two that I want to examine as they relate to the legal industry. 

Tip One: Learn to Curate

This is my absolute favorite tip, since I’ve seen it be the most successful for lawyers and legal professionals. 

What does Hendricks say? 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Tips for 2015

As you read this, I will either be in Shanghai, or on my way there (my brain is currently too fried from conference prep, getting ready for a blog launch, and a variety of other projects to calculate the time/travel difference!). And that’s actually a perfect segue for this week’s Two for Tuesdays, in which we look at the biggest challenge that you’re going to see to content marketing in 2015. 

The inspiration for this post comes again from Business 2 Community, with a post from Asaf Rothem, "3 Major Challenges Your Content Marketing Department Will Encounter in 2015." Admittedly, I chuckled at the title, because for the most part, none of us will have a full blown content marketing department.

Even more to the point, for the legal industry, clients and potential clients really want to hear from the experts – lawyers. They don’t want content from a "department." They want it right from the source. So even if you have help with distribution, editing, etc., the original words must be coming from you, the lawyer, to be most effective. 

With that being said, what struck me about this article is the first challenge – it’s one we hear all the time when it comes to content marketing, so it’s one that bears discussion here: Not enough time.Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Tips for The Biggest Challenge to Content Marketing

Staying with our theme of content marketing, today, I want to look at what happens once you’ve produced your content. It’s not enough just to write, present or produce something smart and insightful – you’ve also got to promote it. 

That may feel a little bit icky, but it’s important – it’s not about tooting your own horn; it’s about making your content available to those who may not be able to find it otherwise. And there are ways to do it without being pushy or obnoxious (which is very important). 

Through my RSS reader, I found a great website that offers a number of posts related to content marketing. Recently, there was one focusing on this very idea – "The Three Step Plan to Increase Your Content Marketing Reach" from Samantha Ferguson. 

Because it’s two for Tuesday, we’re just going to focus on the first two – but also because I think the third point might be pushing it a little bit for this audience. Let’s not reinvent the wheel just yet! 

Before we get into the tips, I want to start with the why. Ferguson does an excellent job of explaining why promoting your content is so important: Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Promoting Your Content

I’m rather liking this theme of content marketing for our Two for Tuesdays posts, so we’re going to be sticking with that for a while!

Since the post I linked to last week offered us four mistakes to avoid when doing content marketing, and we touched on two of them, it only makes sense to revisit it to look at the final two in this week’s post. As a reminder, the post was by Amanda Jesnoewski, owner of Velocity Media + Communications, on Startup Smart, who discusses "Four content marketing mistakes you need to avoid." Let’s dive in.

Tip One: Write Your Own Content…But Use Others for Inspiration

This is a fine line – the best bloggers out there are the ones who are able to find inspiration in someone else’s content and put their own spin on it (and subsequently create relationships with those amplifiers and influencers whose content they’re linking to). 

But it’s a delicate balance.

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: More Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Focusing on content marketing for last week’s Two for Tuesdays worked so well that I’m doing it again this week. Today, we’re looking at mistakes that you want to avoid making in your content marketing. I found this great piece by Amanda Jesnoewski, owner of Velocity Media + Communications, on Startup Smart, where she discusses "Four content marketing mistakes you need to avoid." 

Her piece is excellent, but all of the marketing speak may scare of some lawyers – I’m here to tell you that her advice applies to you too. We’re going to focus on two tips today. 

Tip One: Think Like a Publisher, Not Like a Lawyer

How many times do you watch a medical show on television, and see someone ask the doctor to "tell it to them straight," meaning  give them the diagnosis in layman’s terms without all of the medical jargon? Lots, right? 

It’s not because the person isn’t smart enough to understand what a subdural hematoma is, it’s just more efficient to tell them that it’s a brain bleed. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid