Content marketing is certainly a hot ticket these days — as evidenced by more than 1,200 attendees from 35 different countries at the recent “Content Marketing World” conference in Cleveland, Ohio, put on by the Content Marketing Institute. The event was packed with sessions on a wide range of topics focused on various aspects of content marketing.
During my years as a marketer in law firms, I always found it helpful to benchmark against our clients’ businesses, and not on what other law firms are doing. Unfortunately, too often lawyers seem to focus more on “doing what other firms are doing” and less on positioning themselves to stand out in the crowd.
Hearing from others who live in the client space and not in the law firm space really helps to focus on providing services and content that clients are interested in learning about — rather than focusing on doing what other law firms are doing.
Mike Gingerich, a social media blogger, summarized some key takeaways from the conference that I thought were worth sharing and may help when you are considering your strategy for content marketing:
- Just be helpful. Clients come to professionals when they are in need of help. Positioning yourself with content that is useful and helpful to a potential client is a key for attracting attention to your practice.
- Make an emotional connection. Engage people on an emotional level — strike a chord. Let people know you care and are really interested in their needs and issues. Demonstrate that you really understand their business issues.
- Focus on four types of content:
- Promoter — content that facilitates a sale such as content on your website
- Preacher — content that answers problems or questions
- Professor — content that teaches or addresses larger issues
- Poet — content that tells a story and makes an emotional connection
- Bigger results, less content. Be short and to the point. People don’t have the time to read long dissertations about a topic. Tell them what they need to know in as few words as possible. They will come to you for the details when they are ready.