Content creation is a highly effective way of adding value for existing and potential clients, while also demonstrating knowledge and expertise in a non-boastful way. However, not all content is created equal. Check out our easy steps to help you improve your law firm’s client alerts and insights, making sure your content reaches its ultimate goals of educating and attracting leads.
Language
Make sure your content is comprehensive and understandable. Always aim to write in your clients’ language, explaining in a clear and commercially focused way why a certain topic should matter to them. Everyone can post about the latest change to a certain piece of legislation. However, not everyone will translate it properly into practical terms.
Avoid legalese and too much technicalities as they add no value. The real mastery is in converting legal terms into commercial ones, making your content accessible to a larger portion of your existing and potential clients (and not just to their inhouse counsel).
Formatting
We live in a time where information flows incessantly, causing an extreme level of saturation and an further shrinkage of our attention spans. So for people to actually take the time to read your content, you need to format it in a way that makes it easier on the eyes and brain.
Keeping alerts and insights as short and succinct as possible is the first step. If you can say something with two words, don’t use five instead. Quantity should always give way to quality. Shorter paragraphs are also helpful for retaining the readers’ focus.
People generally tend to scan a text before they actually decide to read it, so they know whether it’s worth their time. Make your content scannable by using subheadings, bold font and bullets.
Essence
A common misconception when writting alerts and insights is that they have to start with an introduction of background information. But this approach cuts down the chances of the reader going forward. Instead of a traditional intro, cut to the chase and briefly lay out the main points first. This will grab the attention of the reader, and even if they don’t continue with the whole piece, they will have taken away the content that actually matters to them.
To help you keep your pieces to-the-point and focused on the essence, build them around these two questions:
What happened?
How does it affect your clients?
Analytics
Tracking and analyzing the performance of your client alerts is key to having a successful overall content strategy. Look at which pieces perform the best (number of clicks, time spent on a particular page) and find similarities (recurring topic, type of headline). You can then replicate the successful features in your future content.
If you’d like to track the performance of blog posts or any content uploaded on your website, Google Analytics is your best shot. LinkedIn and other social media have their own tracking tools. And if you’d like to see how your newsletters perform – Mailchimp and other similar apps provide a great range of analytics.
Studying your competition can also be a good source of analytics. Check out what type of content is trending among your competitors and try to give a different and improved take on recurring industry topics.