Recently, several GNGF team members attended the Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland to stay updated on the latest trends in the industry and to see what changes apply to legal marketing. Here are our biggest takeaways:
- Help over hype: The major trend in marketing today is giving the customer useful information rather than promoting a product or service. This sounds somewhat counterintuitive, but think about it: people use the Internet to find help for their problems. Offer helpful, informative content that answers all of the questions a person facing a difficult legal issue may have. After you’ve helped them, they are more likely to enlist your services in the future or recommend you to someone else.
- Build your authorship: This is something we’ve been doing for GNGF clients for a while, and its importance was reinforced at Content Marketing World. Create a detailed and attractive Google+ profile, then set up rel=auth on your blog. In the near future, we expect that the higher-quality author will rank better than an unknown name, especially within an industry. And right now, having authorship set up puts your image next to some of your content in search results, which encourages people to click.
- Be interesting: Pretend you’re a potential client in your community. In your Facebook newsfeed, you see your spouse’s complaint about traffic on I-74, a link to the latest Ohio DUI law news from an attorney, and your best friend’s photo from last night’s rock concert. Get the point? You’re not competing with other businesses here. Social media has changed B2C—business to consumer—to B2P—business to people. You have to post content more interesting than a person’s spouse and best friend to earn a click. The competition is tough, but quality content will prevail.
- Videos are a must: And to take that a step further, quality videos are a must. You need a well-produced video, not a webcam clip, on your home page telling why your firm stands apart from the rest. Studies show that consumers are eighty-five percent more likely to engage on a site if videos are present.
These are just a few of the major points from the conference. The landscape of content marketing is changing—and GNGF is doing all it can to be sure you’re ahead of the times.