Family lawyers have numerous ways to market themselves and their family law practice online. These include social media, PPC advertising, and SEO, to name but three. However, there is one kind of marketing that might not grab the headlines in the same way these do, but which many expert digital marketers believe is not only highly effective but essential.
The marketing we are referring to is content marketing, and it first begs the question, “What is content?”. Arguably, anything you publish online could be considered content which would include everything from a 100-page eBook to a 10-word post on Facebook.
However, when it comes to genuine content marketing, there are specific forms of content that are used, and they are used for different purposes. That being said, your first task is not deciding what content you should use but answering an even more crucial question.
The First Question Is Not “What?” But “Who?”
The mistake many businesses make, including some family lawyers, is that they decide what content they will publish first before considering who the content is for. This brings us to the crucial first step you must take when starting a content marketing strategy: determining what audience your content is targeting.
As a family lawyer, you should already be familiar with the demographics of the majority of clients you represent. We suggest it is not going to be singles aged 18 to 25, but more likely to be people over 25 and married. Some further research should allow you to be even more specific about your target audiences, including their locations which will influence your content too.
It is only after you have determined your audience that you can start considering what sorts of content you will create for them, and it follows that it should be content that you can be sure they would want, will be searching for, and would appreciate.
Popular Forms Of Content
Whilst identifying the demographics of your audience will help you to determine what subjects your content should cover, the form in which you present that content will tend to follow that which is tried and tested. By that, we mean that, regardless of what subject any single piece of content is discussing, the medium by which the person is consuming that content should be proven to work repeatedly. These include:
- Blog Posts
- Articles
- Reports
- Case Studies
- Images
- Infographics
- Social Media Posts
- Audio
- Podcasts
- Videos
It is a safe bet, given that all of these are known to be liked by those online, that if you present your content using one or more of these methods, then it should prove to be popular, assuming the content itself is useful and informative.
Importance Of Great Content For Family Lawyers
The content you create has many roles, with several applicable to those who consume your content and others relating to the search engines, in particular, Google. For the latter, your content is how you can let Google know what keywords you are trying to rank for as part of your SEO. Without knowing this, Google has no way to determine what searches it should show your website in the results for, nor in which position to place it.
How you use content to assist with SEO covers many tactics. Some of the basics include optimised titles, keyword density, links to and from content, and more technical SEO, such as alt text in images and metadata in your blog posts.
As for creating content for the benefit of your audience, this is where you are seeking to publish the highest quality content you can and content that you know is going to resonate with your audience. If you can achieve that, you build all-important “know, like and trust” within your audience, which hopefully helps them decide that you are the family lawyer they will contact when they need one.