When we start off in the social media/blog or website news, we tend to think that creating the great content is enough to bring in the masses – alas, we are mistaken, that is only the beginning and boosting the effectiveness and spreading the word are what makes us the money.
As lawyers, I know your content is going to be good and it will be well written – my only word of warning here, is that you write with your potential client in mind – they are the ones you want to impress – simple terms and get to the point.
Visual Elements
Whenever you post new topics, be it social media, blogs or your news on your website – add a graphical element to illustrate your point. A tweet about an opinion your wrote will pull people in, but for most people a graphical interaction will attract them – use a graphic to help pull the readers in.
Create an Infographic if you can, these get a powerful message across in a graphic representation – you can use Powerpoint to create one.
Happy Birthday Fred in an email looks much better if it has a fireworks birthday card image attached. Plus Fred will notice it.
e-Books
If you want to pull in new subscribers into your email newsletter, the best way is to offer people an e-book or white paper of a topic that will interest them. Not easy in law – normally warning points or 1,2,3 step understanding of a difficult subject.
Industry Expert Input
When writing your content, invite input from industry experts – not only does this improve your content and make it more interesting, but those people you include in your articles or posts will also spread the word and so will their network. Also, you will build a better relationship with that expert. For example, get a school principal to comment on school bullying in your article titled, “Your legal standing when your child is being bullied at school”.
Promote
Content is the beginning, once posted make sure you promote this new content to all your channels.
Don’t stop there, when writing your content, make sure you cross promote other articles or posts you have written, so that they promote each other by default. They call this Internal linking, and we could all do more of it on our sites and social media.
Lighter Side
If you want a funny part to your social media channels, create Memes on current high profile topics, they are easy to create using a tool like Meme Generator (www.memegenerator.net).
4-1-1
When posting to social media like Twitter, use the 4-1-1 rule, promote 4 external topics related to your market, then 1 from your own content and then 1 promotional communication.
I’m sure you realise now why a lot of firms have dedicated social media staff, this takes constant work, not difficult, but regular posts and promotions. If you don’t have somebody doing this at the moment…get somebody soon.
