Humanizing legal brands

CURATIONS OF LEGAL BRANDING

PURPOSE

The purpose of this post, humanizing legal firms with digital community, is to provide our knowledge of community-based messaging in a digital fashion.

Most particularly, how legal firms can achieve digital-organic growth through the realms of humanizing digital content.

IN THIS CURATION

Here’s what we are going to explore:

• Common problems that we’ve seen at Curations.

• Hyper-focus on one legal scope of content.

• Staying current with modern reality.

• Ask your audience for content suggestions with consistency.

• Conduct a Q&A with another expert in the field of law.

• Ahh, a legal disclaimer.

CURATED INSIGHTS

COMMON PROBLEMS WE’VE SEEN

Legal firms jumping to the quick and impulsive beliefs that, in order to achieve a great online presence, more marketing money needs to be spent on: digital advertisements, media buys, quick SEO schemes, hiring ghostwriters for their blogs, buying fake online reviews, and so forth.

OUR BELIEF

We believe force-fed marketing, the type of marketing where law firms are swayed into buying nuthouse marketing agency tactics, damage a law firm’s reputation.

We further believe that younger generations, ones that are now in need of legal services, have the digital awareness to identify if a legal firm has participated in scheme-based tactics.

WHAT WE BELIEVE SOME MIGHT SAY

We believe nuthouse agencies, ones that deliberately use improper tactics for the mere purposes of profit, will sway law firms away from humanistic approaches, some of which we have curated below.

Nuthouse agencies will try to keep you in their portfolio with this hard sell: ‘we have provided you results in the past, or, ‘look at what your website is doing with the SEO implemented.’

We believe this is digital manipulation: the idea that creative agencies can take advantage of a law firm’s budget to continually buy (likely month-to-month) a scam-based relationship with those legal firms.

We also believe that many creative agencies do not know how to properly implement search engine optimization. We feel there is a common belief amongst creative agencies that, because many within the agency grew up in a digital age, the agency now has skillsets and capabilities to say they know digital marketing.

LEGAL FOCUS

Many firms practice legalities that are, ‘dual-scope.’ An example can be found within employment and labor, where firms represent individuals that could be in two separate categories: employers and employees.

In these types of practices, where a firm’s audience can inadvertently cross over, it is important to be hyper-focused when writing your blog content. Being hyper-focused, from a general standpoint, is important in any realm of the law.

For example, employee rights.

There is a heaps amount of worthy blog content within the area of employee rights alone: discrimination, harassment, safe-work environments, whistleblowing, toxic substance, and so forth. Just pick one of these topics to write about, and focus on that particular topic for three months. Nothing else.

Being consistent, with a frequency of content, in a hyper-focused area is appealing to Google. This is why we recommend three months of hyper-focused and consistent content as Google can index your content appropriately. This practice will also enable Google to look to your firm’s content as a more trustworthy source, which leads to better rankings.

Better Google Rankings might lead to the acquisition of Google Knowledge Panels, which we will talk about in a later series.

And lastly, a focus on legal content could also help refuel one’s passion for law.

STAY CURRENT

Provide your briefcase of writings with landmark cases and current cases within the media.

Referencing well-known or current briefcases will curate the organic opportunity to backlink (link to another source) and most importantly, have other firms backlink to your website/content: it should be good content as you are hyper-focusing on an area for three months. You must not pivot.

ACTION PLAN

After your first quarter of hyper-focused content, ask your audience what content they would like to see next and collaborate.

….And then focus on that legal content requested for the next three months.

You can call it a topic series for your blog, whatever you wish, but inform your readers ahead of time that you are hyper-focusing on another area of law for the next upcoming series.

It is important that your audience has a clear understanding of what you are doing as you are simply requesting feedback for your next legal series: what is it that you, the readers, want to read about?

We recommend asking readers for their feedback during the second month of your current series as this should give you enough time to prepare the suggestions of content.

Being upfront, in that, you are asking for reader feedback is also preventive: readers will understand that your firm practices more than just this one hyper-focused area of law that you are blogging about.

Collaborate with your readers using very simple tools, like Google Forms. You must also push content to outlets that have engagement features (like buttons, share capabilities, commenting…).

Beehiiv is a very engaging platform that we use here at Curations.

The more outlets your content reaches, the better: remember to always post on your firm’s website/blog. Do not get caught up with other outlets to where you forget to post on your firm’s website. After all, the reason you are curating new content is to drive folks to your legal firm’s website.

CONDUCT A Q&A

CONDUCTING GUEST EXPERT Q&A

This could be the perfect opportunity for young lawyers, firms that are rebranding, firms just launching, or to help a lawyer reignite their passion for law. And the obvious: better Google Rankings.

Bringing on another lawyer will establish more merit for both you and your firm.

Guest lawyers are unique in that your readers have the opportunity to partake in some sort of virtual symposium. This is valuable as you can also capture the guest lawyer’s audience as the guest lawyer is likely to share your content within their circles and platforms.

When you bring in a lawyer from another firm, you generate another organic opportunity to backlink, this time with one another. Backlinking helps Google Rankings over time. And the more guests, the more Q&As you curate, the better.

Furthermore, conducting Q&As will naturally boost your online presence when the name of your guest lawyer, after publication, is searched. With that said, chose wisely.

[email protected]

DISCLAIMER

AHH, A DISCLAIMER

Curations is a creative community that builds brands in public. Some of the brands we build in realtime are legal firms. All messaging within this post is for marketing only.

Our Curators understand that you could have come here for legal advice, or to retain a legal firm. However, our creative community cannot provide any legal advice.

Please identify a legal outlet for any personal or professional legalities, such as a Google Search.