In this guide, we explain why content can be a powerful persuader and how to devise a content strategy that delivers real results.

Why content matters

If someone wants to know about your firm, the first thing they’ll do is visit your website. So the content on your site has to work incredibly hard. It has to be compelling, clear, up to date and informative. It must answer all their questions. And ultimately, it must reassure, convince and impress them — so they choose you over your competitors.

The good news is that good quality online content can achieve all this and more. Guides, blogs, newsletters, testimonials — even the about us page — all this content, done well, can convince would-be clients that your firm is the best of the bunch.

In addition, content can work even harder — extending your influence and bringing in new business.

For instance, blogs and other valuable content from your website can be shared on social media — giving you something credible to talk about in social spaces and also driving more traffic to your site.

Google rewards those that post fresh content regularly — so by posting new content regularly, you can improve your search ranking position. You can also reach out to your target audience by sending an email newsletter.

Above all, by publishing useful content and sharing your expertise widely, you can increase your visibility and boost the reputation of your firm as well as the standing of individual lawyers.

Key types of content marketing for law firms

Personal profiles

Creating effective personal profiles is the quickest win of all. Here is a key fact: research consistently shows that lawyers are perceived by the public as “intimidating” and “unapproachable”. This explains why personal profiles tend to be by far the most read pages of any law firm’s website. People want to deal with lawyers who are easy to get along with. (In contrast, when choosing between two law firms that offer the same type of legal service, legal expertise tends to be taken for granted.) So first impressions are vitally important. Create personal profiles on your website — with good photos — that portray your team as both approachable and skilled.

Testimonials

Sharing positive feedback from delighted clients is the second quick win. Testimonials provide the evidence that people are looking for when choosing a law firm. These testimonials should demonstrate clients will receive fast, friendly, hassle-free service from your team. Law firms are often criticised for not keeping clients informed, so make sure your testimonials deal with this and other common issues. Gather client feedback and make testimonials a prominent feature across your entire website.

Blogs

Well-written blogs can grab attention; they entertain as well as inform; importantly, they can further reveal the personality of your firm and its people; and they encourage website visitors to come back time and again. A regular blog also shows that your firm is switched on and engaged in the issues of the day. Most law firms can’t be bothered to write a blog — what impression does that give?

Guides, white papers and books

Sharing your expertise widely can be daunting, but being generous with your knowledge online can pay real dividends. When prospective clients find in-depth advice from you in the form of guides, white papers or even a book, they know they are in the right place. This kind of content positions you as the leading authority in your field.

Email newsletters

The great thing about a newsletter is that it gets into people’s inboxes and reminds them of all the help and support that your firm offers. A regular email newsletter can strengthen your relationships with clients and prospects — provided you are sending something of real value. Create compelling content that is genuinely useful and that addresses the needs of your target audience. Also, use the newsletter to flag up your latest blogs and posts on social media.

Videos and podcasts

Video and audio have the power to grab attention and engage visitors. For law firms, short videos can be an effective way to show that you are people that your clients can do business with — providing a personal touch and conveying complex information in an accessible way.

The ten golden rules of content writing

1. Use a direct and friendly tone of voice. Put the emphasis on what your clients need and how you can help them. If you use the word “you” frequently, your web copy will engage your audience.
2. Write about the subjects that interest your audience by focusing on issues that often come up or responding to new developments.
3. Write often — draw up a schedule so that you maintain regular content creation habits.
4. Make your words easy to read by breaking them up with sub-headings and bullet points. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short.
5. Grab attention by giving your content a compelling heading.
6. Keep your writing simple — avoid jargon and acronyms and explain any special words or terms that cannot be avoided.
7. Use appealing images — such as photos and illustrations — that will bring your words alive. Publish good photos of staff members to help put faces to names.
8. Research the best keywords and phrases to attract visitors to your website and use them on your content and when you build new web pages.
9. Share your knowledge and be seen to be helpful on social media, for instance — your generosity will be rewarded over time.
10. Measure your content — use Google Analytics to find out which content is most popular on your website. Also use testing tools to analyse response to your email newsletters.

Four years ago.

Just think how much our lives have changed. A friend came back from a year’s sabbatical and said “No one speaks to each other in the office any more. They just type messages and emails, even if you are six feet away.”

It’s all Twitter this and Twitter that.

So what has changed in the world of websites, apart from the importance of social media?

In a word, search.

Five years ago, when we thought we might invest a pile of our precious cash into a set of Donut websites, we consulted a lot of clever people … and we asked them all how they thought online search would evolve. Put simply, they said that Google would gradually find a way to identify genuinely good content.

So we’ve never tried to trick Google. Instead, our focus has been on making it easy for Google to see how brilliant (if I may say so) the Donut content is.

And sure enough Google does seem to love us. It loves Law Donut, Marketing Donut, Start Up Donut, IT Donut and even little Tax Donut  … because people use the web to find answers to questions, and we provide those answers.

Monthly traffic doubled year-on-year to 150,000 visits in January and has continued to grow. So all the experts who have contributed content get more exposure, as do our corporate backers such as Sage and Royal Mail. Phew, it worked.

And all the organisations who license the Donut content from us, such as law firms, are happy too. Their clients/members/customers like the content for the same reason as Google — because it is top quality content.

Business, and the world of websites and content marketing, is never predictable. But we can’t help thinking that Google will carry on favouring the best content. I can almost hear the slogan now. The future is ROUND. The future is … DONUT!

But how can law firms attract more visitors to their websites? Increasing web traffic starts with understanding your own firm’s unique selling points (USPs) and promoting them as widely as possible. In a highly competitive environment, the biggest challenge for law firms today is standing out.

Here are ten ways to attract more website visitors — so that you can convert browsers into new clients.

1 Get the marketing basics right

Before you do any kind of online traffic-building, you need to make sure your marketing basics are in order. This includes the keywords and phrases that best demonstrate your expertise and highlight your USPs as well as your contact information. These valuable assets are the key to attracting more people to your website — giving them both a reason and a means to get in touch. You can use these vital details on your website (so they show up in search results) — as well as on business cards, in brochures, in directory entries and in person.

2 Improve your website content

Is your web content old and tired? Is it too focused on the past and your firm’s illustrious history? Effective website content must be up-to-date and relevant. Above all it must be client-focused — make sure you are using the word “you” more than “we”. Your website copy must clearly show what you do and why clients should choose you over your competitors. Focus on your specialist areas and spell out how you can help. Include testimonials and cases studies as proof of your credentials. Build a website that is people-focused and develop a compelling tone of voice for your law firm — as a trusted adviser.

3 Get ranked in search results

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is about ensuring search engines like Google feature your website prominently when someone searches for relevant words and phrases. If you haven’t done this already, submit your website to Google and Yahoo to make sure you’re on their radar. You can use Google’s Keywords Tool to find out what words and phrases are used by prospects when they are searching for a law firm like yours. These phrases are often specific in terms of the service required (employment disputes, for instance) as well as locality. So make sure your website copy incorporates all the valuable phrases that could help your website to get found — in headings, page titles and descriptions. For a law firm, it’s well worth having dedicated landing pages for each area of specialism — people browsing online are more likely to find you and once they have, they will feel confident they are in the right place.

4 Take advantage of pay-per-click advertising

Another option is to buy traffic through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. PPC allows you to bid for highly-visible top-ranking positions under keywords of your choice. Costs vary depending on the popularity of the phrase but you can set spending limits so that you keep within budget and specific phrases are often cheaper to bid on. If you use the right search terms, pay-per-click advertising can deliver well-qualified traffic as well as improve your rankings across the board.

5 Create an email newsletter

Email is an excellent way to keep in touch with existing and potential clients and drive traffic to your website. An email newsletter is ideal for law firms that want to keep old clients warm until they are ready to return or to turn prospects into new clients. It’s also a great cross-selling tool — an email newsletter can show clients the full range of services you offer so they come back to you time and again. An effective email newsletter should showcase your expertise and be useful and relevant to recipients. Getting the tone of voice and frequency right is vital, however — don’t bombard your mailing list with thinly disguised sales messages. That will be perceived as spam. And give people plenty of opportunities to sign up to your newsletter in order to build up your database.

		Find out more about our e-newsletter services.

6 Write a blog

There are many ways that lawyers can share their expertise in order to raise the profile of their firm and drive traffic to the company website. A blog is a good place to start. It allows your staff to demonstrate their knowledge of important areas of law in an easy-to-read conversational style that readers will appreciate. Guest blogging on other websites allows you to widen your reach and drive traffic back to your website via credits and links.

7 Get up to speed with social networking

Online networking has become an integral part of any professional marketing strategy and your social media profiles are important calling cards for your people. Professional spaces, such as LinkedIn, allow your staff to show off their credentials and give you the chance to drive visitors to your website. It’s worth investigating where your target customer base is active on social media. Facebook may not be right for a law firm but Twitter is fast-becoming an important way for people to share information. Twitter offers law firms the opportunity to build a reputation and develop a large following — and your Tweets can provide valuable links back to your website.

		Find out more about our social media services.

8 Share your expertise

Today’s professional marketing is not about the hard-sell, it’s more about sharing knowledge and building relationships. Sharing your expertise by speaking at and attending events, for instance, is a great way to boost traffic to your website. In addition, a few well-written articles placed on key industry websites can generate traffic. Offer advice and analysis that adds value so that it is widely read and shared and establishes you as an expert. Always include a short bio and a link to the relevant page on your website. The more exposure you get, the more your services will be in demand.

 9 Ask others to spread the word

There are lots of ways to get others to help you spread the word about your law firm. This starts with including testimonials from satisfied clients on your website. You can also encourage word-of-mouth by prompting readers to share and pass on the valuable advice on your website, in your blogs and within email newsletters. Another great way to boost traffic to your site is to collaborate with a strategic partner. For law firms, collaborating with other professional service firms, such as accountants or estate agents, can help to spread the word about your services to new audiences.

 10 Analyse, test and refine

Use a free web analytics tool such as Google Analytics to find out more about the traffic you are getting from different sources. By testing and refining your SEO and your email marketing based on the results you are getting, you can significantly increase traffic to your website.

Find out more about our products and services for law firms.

Talk to us about how we can help you with your marketing.

Those who completed the survey were automatically entered into a draw, with a spanking new iPad Mini available as a prize. The winner was Jackie Beard, owner of Gloucestershire-based florist and flower arranging business Jessabel Flowers. Many thanks to sponsors Sage, as well as Jackie and everyone else who took the time to complete the survey.

1. Focus (because leader firms are more profitable)

Leader firms are those with a big reputation in profitable client sectors. Their reputation means they are automatically in the running for new work from clients in their target sectors. That work gives good margins. There’s plenty of it. And leader firms can do it better (and at a lower cost) than less focused firms because they’re geared up to. Look for emerging areas, which your existing expertise can take you into. It’s the old maxim about being more likely to hit the bullseye with a rifle than a shotgun.

2. Adapt fast

Every firm has a strategy, whether formal or not — a consensus on the sort of clients it wants, the reputation it needs to develop in order to get them and to differentiate itself, and what it’s going to do about it. But when circumstances change unexpectedly — as they’re always doing — good firms adapt fast. Be alert to developments that affect your clients, reputation or activities, and make sure your people, structure, culture and processes will help you adapt faster and better than competitors when you need to.

3. Get your good people in front of clients

A priority for marketers has always been to get your good people in front of clients at the right time (when the client needs legal help). You used to be limited to face-to-face contact at seminars, networking and hospitality events, but social media sites like blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter allow fee-earners and clients to have conversations all day, every day. Get out there, and get heard among all that online noise. And if you can’t tackle this yourself, get help with your social media strategy.

4. Know how clients choose

There are certain things that affect what a client “feels” when they instruct you — elements that contribute to their experience of your firm. They don’t consciously score you on each but if you get one of them wrong (for that client), it jars, and they’re less likely to come back. Here’s our top eight. Have we missed any?

• Your services.
• Your people (not just fee-earners).
• Your structure.
• Your pricing.
• Your processes (including your use of IT for admin — such as billing — and for client work).
• Your accessibility to clients (physically and electronically, off and online).
• Your promotional activity (not just to clients, but also to the people you’d like to work for you, and referral sources).
• Your “joined-upness” (if a client is dealing with two departments, do they still feel like they’re dealing with one firm? Is your lack of joined-upness costing them time or money?)

5. Trust your marketers

Solicitors would rather be advising clients 100% of the time than dealing with marketing and management issues. It goes straight to your sense of self-worth and you could fill your timesheets every week. To that end, firms employ (and will soon be sharing ownership with) people with marketing and business qualifications and experience, who have proved themselves in other industries and, often, other law firms. Their input could prove to be invaluable.

Talk to us about how we can help you with your marketing or find out more about our products and services for law firms.

What’s in it for small businesses?

Last week our editorial and production teams pulled out all the stops to produce a bucketload of SME-relevant Budget content for our Donut clients. The Budget haul included:

E-newsletter

• Budget 2013: round-up

News

• Budget 2013 delivers big savings on NICs for small firms
• Mixed reactions to Osborne’s Budget

Blogs

• Budget 2013 summary – key points for businesses
• Budget 2013 response – small businesses have their say

Expert blogs

• Comments on the 2013 Budget from a tax policy adviser
• Budget prediction: the devil won’t be in the detail
• Budget 2013 – my personal wishlist
• Time for the usual Budget bunfight

Social media

• Live Twitter updates from @TaxDonut and @StartUpDonut

For help with your bespoke content requirements,  email Christoff Lewis or call on 0117 904 2224.

Denis is our online communications manager, and very much part of the team.  He looks after the popular and, although we say so ourselves, excellent Donut newsletter, and also manages the build and distribution of our clients’ bespoke legal newsletters, covering everything from real estate law to shipping and transport. This is followed up by newsletter tracking and reporting so our clients can see how each individual article performed.

Denis sums up his working style: ‘Working from home has its challenges and pitfalls; it can feel quite lonely up North when everybody in Bristol is eating Lisa’s home baking. However, with the use of the BHP virtual private network, home workers have access to all the files they need on the company server, and we have continuous dialogue and team meetings via Microsoft Lync, so sometimes it is hard to tell who is in the office and who is at home.  We do also meet up for company meetings and socials, so we get to share the cake sometimes’.

And if Denis had to commute again?  Well, the picture holds the clue to his preferred mode of transport, built by local boy Stephenson.

Since I’ve been away things have certainly moved on at BHP. Not only are we occupying swish new offices (I can’t say I’ll miss the wonky walls and pokey staircases of the Grove Road office) but we’re pursuing exciting new projects, have welcomed new employees and, sadly, said goodbye to others. I’ve been getting to grips with new IT systems and trying to remember old passwords but, give it a week or two, and my poor addled baby-brain should be back on tip-top form.

Royal Mail has opted for a range of BHP products to reach as many small businesses as it can, including lead sponsorship of our Marketing Donut site, and a mix of off- the-shelf business content and bespoke case studies, all of which will be helping to support and promote these great tools and services.  By sponsoring the Marketing Donut, Royal Mail will be associated with an excellent, reliable source of information, advice and regular expert content, currently accessed by over 170,000 users a month from the notoriously hard-to-reach SME market.

You’re hired! Anthony, our BHP apprentice.

When we last reported on the apprenticeship process at BHP, we were still impressed by the charisma and capabilities of Lord Sugar’s Young Apprentice candidates and I was looking forward to running my own selection process. Maybe one that wasn’t so terrifying for the candidates, but I definitely wanted to make sure we picked the right person, someone who would fit in well and understand our values.

Since then we’ve gone through the whole selection process; hiring, induction and training. As hiring an apprentice was  new to me, and to BHP as a company as well, I thought I’d share my experiences and real life observations.

The joys of recruitment

From the moment we made the decision to go with the City of Bristol College as an apprenticeship provider, we were assisted all the way by their own apprenticeship team. It was a massive help that came when we needed it most:  creating the position advertisement and sorting out incoming applications was a small weight taken off our shoulders.

After the application date passed we were provided with a selection of the best candidates that matched our criteria out of which we quickly picked the top five that we wanted to interview.

Every small business owner or HR manager knows how time-consuming recruitment  is, especially when it usually comes at the worst moment – most  companies  leave employing someone til the very last minute, when their resources are so stretched that they can hardly cope. It is at this point that finding time to recruit and train as well as run day-to-day business activities becomes a real challenge.

This was exactly where all the help from the college’s apprenticeship team came in very handy. They not only offered help with the initial selection process, but also arranged the interviews. They would have even conducted the interviews for us, if we wanted them to, but since we are quite picky at BHP in terms of who we employ, we preferred to carry out the interviews ourselves. It was  nice to have the option though.

Take it slowly

As the interviews we conducted weren’t 100 per cent conclusive (two particularly good candidates), we  decided to take an additional step and run an assessment day for the finalists. Why bother you might say? Our reasons were simple:

• to see how the candidates feel, behave and cope in the real work environment within our company
• to test the candidates on a few simple tasks
• to check their ability to deal with what would be expected of them on daily basis
• to make sure the candidate would fit in well in our working environment and have a positive impact on our office culture
• to make sure that after that day both sides would still be happy to proceed with the apprenticeship

Whatever time you need to devote to prepare and run the assessment day will be worth it, as it brings you closer to the decision you need to make.  The commonly known “hire slow, fire fast” approach is at least half true and it really pays off in the long term to devote as much time as you need in order to feel comfortable with your hiring decision. If need be, it is also better to re-run the advertisement and start the recruitment process again, than hire someone who won’t fit in or is simply not right for the job.

Our assessment day certainly clarified our decision for us and was well worth the effort and extra time.

The newcomer

As a result of this very smooth and successful recruitment process, Anthony Stackman joined our team as web & digital communications team apprentice in January 2013. It all happened within one and a half months from placing the advert with City of Bristol College, and that includes the Christmas break… so I think we’ve done pretty well.

Best time to hire?

Generally all year round. Apprenticeships usually last between 18 and 24 months, that is counted from the day the college course starts (one day a week), so if you hire in January, as we did, your apprentice may need to wait till September before they go to college. Is that bad? Not at all, it just means they will be with you full time until then, so you will actually be getting even more out of it.

Is it worth it?

Apprenticeships have become very popular with employers in recent years and, taking our example, the number of apprentices attending IT course alone at City of Bristol College went up from less than ten in 2011 to over 600 hundred in 2012.

If you are considering hiring an apprentice, I have to say it is a very cost effective way to get an extra resource in-house. At the same time it creates a fantastic opportunity for those young people (aged between 16 and 24), who are able to gain work experience while still attending college.

In fact, we are so happy with the way things turned out, the whole process and the opportunity that this apprenticeship has given BHP that we are already recruiting for the next apprentice.

So… the hunt for the next BHP apprentice is on…