By: John D. Barber, Marketing Coordinator, White and Williams LLP
On January 16, 2014, the Legal Marketing Association – Philadelphia Metropolitan Chapter met to discuss content-focused marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The featured speakers were Meg Charendoff, Principal and Founder of CREATE: Communications – Media – Marketing, Burkey Belser, President and Creative Director of Greenfield/Belser, and Michael Idinopulos, Chief Marketing Officer of PeopleLinx.
While the three speakers presented separately, their presentations worked toward a collective narrative of how content should go from conception to publishing and every step along the way. Meg explained the importance of, and what traits make up, quality content. Burkey explored SEO and how to make sure your content can be found in web searches and doesn’t cause your website to be “dinged” (penalized) by Google and other search engines. Finally, Michael discussed how social media, the plumbing of content marketing, can serve as the delivery mechanism for law firms’ content. A theme that arose again and again throughout all three presentations was that creating quality content, content that people want to read, should always be priority number one.
The Power of Content in Legal Services Marketing
Meg Charendoff’s presentation focused on content production. Some of her key points were:
- Content-Focused Marketing is important for law firms because more and more in-house counsel are turning to new media for information. Specifically, they are turning to blogs authored by lawyers in law firms just as much as they are turning to blogs authored by journalists.
- The sheer amount of noise being targeted at a law firm’s target audience makes attention to quality and relevance a high priority if there is any hope of reaching that audience. Over 70% of business-to-business content never gets consumed by the audience it was intended for.
- A law firms’ audience is sophisticated and is not looking to be advertised to; they are looking for information that is going to help them solve a problem or fill a need. Simply put, they don’t care about you, they care about them. The primary goal when producing content should be to acknowledge that fact and write content your audience would want to read.
Content Powers SEO
Burkey Belser continued with the value of good content and discussed how through good SEO habits, you increase the chances that someone searching for your content will be able to find it. His pointers included:
- Write for your audience, not for Google (or any other search engine for that matter).
- Practice good SEO Hygiene.
- Practice good link building.
- Encourage practices that lead to people linking to your site.
- Don’t pay for links.
- Don’t participate in too many link directories, or have irrelevant sites like to your site.
Burkey also discussed key points to remember when creating easy to digest reports for management:
- Include an executive summary explaining the basics of what site traffic goals you’re hoping to see. The summary should also demonstrate some correlation between marketing efforts and site traffic.
- Traffic report trends should track traffic month-to-month, but compare each month to the same month of the previous year. This keeps short-term attention focused, but also keeps long-term strategy in perspective.
- Traffic reports should also track traffic sources, most popular pages, and popular traffic paths.
Why Social Networks are the Key to Content Marketing
Michael Idinopulos spoke on the importance social networks in the distribution of the content in Content Marketing. Michael called social “the plumbing for content” and explained a three step “dance” that forms the framework of social media marketing:
- Profile creation and maintenance - It’s important to have a strong profile presence if you want to be taken seriously on social media.
- Cultivating relevant networks - By growing networks of individuals that are relevant to the content, you will be sharing you grow the audience for any potential content you share.
- Feeding your networks – By frequently sharing relevant content, you portray yourself as engaged and knowledgeable about your area of expertise. It’s also a best practice to share content that may be produced by a third party. This shows you don’t only share your own content but other related content as well.
Links to PowerPoint Presentations:
Persuasive Power of Content - Meg Charendoff
Content Powers – SEO - Burkey Belser
Why Social Networks are the Key to Content Marketing - Michael Idinopulos