Blog / Seven important content marketing channels for law practices

If you want to generate awareness for your law firm, demonstrate expertise in a specific area of law, and attract more clients, adding content marketing channels to your marketing mix is the way to go. By creating targeted content, including a keyword-rich corporate website, regular blog posts and a strong social media presence, you can position your firm as thought leaders in your field of law. By paying attention to major trends, current cases, recent legislation, events and issues of the day, you can produce regular content to feed your content marketing channels.

While every practice has different marketing goals, there are seven content marketing channels to which you need to pay close attention. We'll talk more about each one in future posts, but we'll begin with this overview of seven important content marketing channels for legal professionals:

• Your website: Think of your website not as a digital brochure, but as an opportunity to educate clients, potential clients, the media and potential referral sources about your area of expertise and the specialities of your partners.

• Microsites: Microsites are websites that live apart from your main website that are dedicated to a particular service, product or niche. For example, if your firm had a new practice area for which you want to generate business, you could create a separate, content-rich microsite focused on that area.

• Blogs: Blogs showcase your subject-matter experts, your experience, perspective, and your position on current legal issues and current events. Not sure what to blog about? Make a list of the most common questions your clients ask about, the issues you are passionate about or hot topics in the news. Then blog about them.

• Content aggregators: Many busy business professionals have discovered a new way to get their business information, news and updates in one place: content aggregators. These services allow them to search for and subscribe to the specific content they need. By contributing your firm's content to a well-known, respected legal and business content aggregator, you benefit from a putting your content in front of a ready-made audience of active subscribers who are actively seeking specific legal information.

• Newsletters: Unlike the printed newsletters of days gone by, digital newsletters are scheduled, recurring messages, typically distributed via email to a list of opt-in subscribers that usually has a web page counterpart. Like blogs, newsletters are great for demonstrating subject matter expertise, sharing perspective, and driving traffic back to your website. It is worth noting that many content aggregators, including Lexology and Lexology Navigator, facilitate a newsletter service, where their subscribers are in control of the type of content they receive.

• Social media: Google "most popular social media sites" and you'll find hundreds. For your practice, the social networks that work best for you to connect with potential and current clients will depend on what social networks they use on a regular basis. Twitter and LinkedIn are good places to start.

• Public relations channels: These include press releases, articles in third-party publications and websites, webinars, speaking opportunities including panel discussions and presentations, and television and radio interviews. Some may consider these 'traditional' forms of marketing, but yesterday's print articles and broadcast programmes are today's digital magazines, streaming television networks and YouTube channels.

In our next post we'll talk about finding the right channels to launch your successful content marketing programme.