Best Practices for Creating a Smarter Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy

-By Christina R. Fritsch JD, Founder and CRM Success Consultant and Stefanie Marrone, The Social Media Butterfly

What can you do with one piece of content? If you guessed turning it into 11 other pieces of content that you can use to build your brand and business, you guessed right!

Content marketing can be a cost-effective way to promote and engage audiences through tactics such as e-newsletters, YouTube videos, short-form social media videos, blog posts, social media posts and podcasts.

For example, this article originated from a webinar that we co-presented a few months ago. We turned it into a blog post, several video clips, an infographic, social media posts, including videos, quotes and more.

Use this to create strong evergreen content for your organization that can be repurposed for months to come. In this article, we delve into how to turn one piece of content into all these different things that will help you further build your business and brand.

Educational Seminars

Hosting educational seminars – whether in person or virtually – is a great way for lawyers to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise while engaging with industry colleagues, clients and prospects to strengthen relationships and create new ones. To increase attendance, offer CLE credits as well as networking time to give your attendees a break from educational material and providing them with more reasons to attend. Encourage them to share photos from the event and a recap of their favorite sessions – which is a win-win for everyone involved.

Webinars

For those who were unable to attend the seminar, you can repurpose the same information and slides into a webinar. Webinars allow professionals to connect with a larger percentage of their audience without geographical limitations. They also enablle professionals to share their knowledge in an engaging manner by interacting with their audience through different formats including Q&As, panelist discussions or thought leadership webinars. You can use the chat from the webinar for follow-up emails, blog posts, social media content and personalized sales outreach.

As mentioned above, encourage participants to post photos from the event and highlight their favorite sessions. This benefits all parties involved.

Webinar Recordings

After you’ve hosted a webinar, your work is just beginning. Here’s how to maximize the webinar recording into multiple marketing pieces.

Download and Distribute: Obtain the recording file and email it to both attendees and those who couldn’t make it. This allows them to share the content with colleagues or to revisit specific sections of the presentation.
Segmentation: Break down the webinar into smaller segments or topics, allowing viewers to easily locate and watch specific portions in which they’re interested.
Create a Q&A Session: Based on the questions received during the webinar, host a follow-up Q&A session or produce a dedicated FAQ video. Share this with all the registrants.
Infographic Recap: Create an infographic summarizing key points and statistics from the webinar. This visual format is shareable on social media and can be included in newsletters.
Interactive Quizzes: Design a short quiz based on the webinar content, allowing attendees to test their knowledge and retention. Share the quiz link in your follow-up email.
Blog Posts: Write a series of blog posts expanding on the key topics discussed in the webinar. This provides more in-depth information and can attract a larger audience to your website.
Feedback Loop: Send out a feedback form to gather insights on what attendees liked, what they felt could be improved, and topics they’d be interested in for future webinars.
Engage on Social Media: Share clips, quotes or key insights from the webinar on your social media channels, encouraging attendees to engage, share, and comment.
Transcribe and Share: Convert the webinar audio into a text transcript, making it accessible for those who might prefer reading or for those with hearing impairments.

By offering a variety of ways for attendees to engage with your webinar content post-event, you’re ensuring maximum reach and impact for your efforts.

Podcasts

Podcasts are all the buzz nowadays, and you can create your own by repurposing the audio file of the webinar. Turning your webinar into a podcast will extend the shelf life of the content, keeping it fresh and present in your listener’s minds.

You don’t need to be tech-savvy to do this. There are many easy-to-use, free software that can separate the audio file from the video file. From there, you can upload it to various podcast-hosting sites, add it to your site or promote it on social media.

Transforming your webinar into a podcast episode not only extends the shelf life of the content but also exposes it to a new audience that might prefer audio consumption over video.

Here are some specific actions you can take to turn your webinar into a podcast.

Brand Your Podcast: Consider giving your podcast series a catchy name that aligns with your brand and the topics you cover. This way, listeners can easily recognize and search for your content.
Enhance with Intro/Outro: Add a professional touch by integrating a brief introduction and conclusion to each episode. This can include background music, a summary of the webinar topic and a call-to-action.
Interact with Listeners: Encourage podcast listeners to engage by posing questions or inviting them to submit topics they’d like covered in future episodes.
Leverage Guest Speakers: If your webinar featured guest speakers, highlight them in your podcast description. Their credibility can draw more listeners.
Promote on Multiple Platforms: While uploading to popular podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, ensure you also embed episodes on your website’s dedicated podcast page.
Transcribe Episodes: Offer written transcriptions of each episode on your website. This can aid in search engine optimization and cater to those who might want to read the content.
Podcast Artwork and Thumbnails: Enhance visibility and attract listeners by creating compelling artwork or thumbnails that reflect the essence of each episode.
Collaborate and Share: Collaborate with other podcasters or industry experts for cross-promotion. Sharing each other’s episodes can bring in a diverse listener base.

With a few additional steps, turning your webinar into a podcast can provide an ongoing content strategy that is accessible, engaging and appealing to a broad audience.

Articles

You can summarize the main speaking points from your webinar and create long-form articles and distribute them through your e-newsletter, and post them to your website and LinkedIn Publisher.

Use the chat from the webinar for article ideas as they may contain useful questions that are top of mind to your audience. Turning these topics into articles enables readers to gain more knowledge all while driving traffic to your site.

Website Bios

Highlighting speaking engagements and published articles on your website bio can help enhance credibility and establish your lawyers and firm as a thought leader in that respective area.

LinkedIn Profile

Enhancing attorney branding can contribute greatly to the firm’s brand image. To help establish your professionals as thought leaders in their respective practices, use the content you created from their presentations or webinars and post it to their LinkedIn profiles. This can enrich lawyers’ portfolios, enable professionals to draw traffic to their pages and content, and support further business development opportunities.

Content Syndicators

The unfortunate truth is that not everyone will see your content even if you share it through your newsletter or LinkedIn. To reach a larger audience, many firms rely on content syndicators that disseminate an individual or organization’s content through their publication sites and newsletters.

The use of these tools, such as JD Supra and the National Law Review, can further help establish lawyers as thought leaders in their respective practices and contribute to the attorney’s personal brand as syndicators circulate their content to a larger audience.

Multiple Blog Posts

Going back to the long-form article you created, you can repurpose it into short-form content and distribute it through your newsletter and syndicators.

Short-form content better engages readers who may not have enough time to read a 2-3 page article. If you have four to five main speaking points summarized in your article, you can break these into four or five blog posts allowing you to dive deeper into these topics offering greater insight for readers.

Personalized Emails

Prospective clients constantly reach out to attorneys and firms with questions about certain legislature or general practices. If a client or contact reaches out to an attorney about a new law that may affect their business, lawyers can send them the blog posts, articles or videos created from their presentations on the issue.

Including content in individual emails helps attorneys stay top of mind for these clients and prospects for future business development. If someone asked a question during the webinar, it can also be a good idea to follow up with them and share content to further answer their inquiries.

Videos

All of your written content – blogs, client alerts, slides – can be turned into short video segments featuring your lawyer breaking down key concepts they may have covered. These videos don’t need expensive budgets or fancy cameras. Oftentimes lawyers can record themselves on Zoom or on their smartphones and have their marketing team edit the video, which can then be posted on YouTube or social media.

Final Thoughts

If done right, you can create tons of content from a single presentation or webinar. This can be done at a low cost and provide a favorable ROI all while engaging your audience in different ways and reaching professionals who have never heard of your firm.

As many firms are switching to a digital-first strategy, it is crucial to incorporate a content marketing strategy as well to establish your firm’s brand and to establish your lawyers’ individual brands.

For almost 20 years, the team at CLIENTSFirst Consulting has been helping professional services firms and other organizations improve Data Quality and successfully select and implement CRM and eMarketing systems to maximize value, adoption and return on investment. If you need help with CRM Success, please contact us at 404-249-9914 or Info@ClientsFirstConsulting.com.

Stefanie Marrone advises law firms of all sizes, professional service firms, B2B companies, recruiters and individuals on the full range of marketing and business development consulting services designed to enhance revenue, retain current clients and achieve greater brand recognition. She also serves as outsourced chief marketing officer/marketing department for small and mid-size law firms.

Over her 20+-year legal marketing career, she has worked at and with a broad range of big law, mid-size and small firms, which has given her a valuable perspective of the legal industry. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, sign up for her email list and follow her latest writing on JD Supra.