As of March 2024 we have renamed Apexchat to Blazeo. We are excited to share the next part of our journey with our customers and partners.
The name ApexChat implies that we are primarily a chat company, which is no longer true. Now we have many offerings, such as call center services, AI, Appointment setting, SMS Enablement, Market Automation, and Sales acceleration (Q2 2024), that go beyond chat. The new name will not only allow us to convey the breadth of our offering but will also better convey our company’s mission and values.
Blazeo, which is derived from the word Blaze, evokes a sense of passion, speed, and energy. A “Blaze” is captivating, illuminates, and represents explosive growth. Blazeo encapsulates our mission to ignite such growth for our customers and partners by delivering innovation with passion, speed, and energy.
The legal industry wrestles with an unfortunate stereotype: the content marketing they put out is rather bland. Lawyers and firms alike can find it hard to create engaging content that adheres to their industry guidelines AND encourages prospective clients to hire them.
Luckily, there are many different ways to spice up the content you publish online and generate more inbound leads. Content marketing takes a bit of creativity and strategy, as well as an understanding of your target audience.
For clarification, content marketing for law firms is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a firm but is intended to stimulate interest in its services.
As you can probably tell, content marketing consists of a number of different post types and mediums to target specific platforms where audiences reside. In the end, it works: Engaging content that answers real questions your prospects are asking will establish your firm as a thought leader and set the foundation for relationships with future clients.
A case study by the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) found that on a scale of 1-10, firms ranked content marketing as the most effective for meeting their digital marketing goals.
So how can law firms and attorneys spice up their content marketing strategies?
When it comes to creating content, your clients are your best resource. Ask them what they want to read! Content written by lawyers, in particular, is a valuable source of information that your clients will likely appreciate.
The best way to do this is to use Google Forms or SurveyMonkey, which allows you to create a survey that you can include on other social networks or in email marketing campaigns that you send to your readers and clients.
You can ask them questions like:
Once you hear back from your audience, you can use the feedback you get and schedule content centered around your audience's responses.
Content marketing for law firms doesn’t happen on its own, you need a good strategy to help you succeed.
How about some motivation? The content marketing industry is said to be worth $412 billion by 2021 and has been experiencing an annual growth rate of 16 percent. It’s important that attorney content marketing has a clear strategy to capitalize on this exciting space.
Before you create your strategy, you need to define why you are creating content in the first place.
Some question to consider about your content might be:
It’s important you have a definitive strategy in place before jumping into content creation. Your time is valuable and expensive, so stick to a consistent posting schedule and adjust your plan accordingly.
Social media marketing is by far the most adopted digital promotion method currently.
Nearly all law firms (97 percent) share content and curate other relevant content for social media. In order to reach prospective clients, you need to use the channel they’re on most often.
To get the most out of social media in your content marketing strategy, you’ll need to implement both paid and organic social media individually. What’s the difference between the two?
When promoting brand awareness, organic interactions will showcase your brand’s personality and values.
Paid social ads will reach out to new customers and bypass your existing followers.
Utilizing both of these methods will help you reach a larger audience of prospective clients.
The main reason why you should start blogging and publishing content is to attract more visitors to your website. SEO content draws potential traffic to your site, primarily from search engines like Google. Ultimately, you want readers to become clients at some point.
Focus on creating content with a clear call to action that provides value to your readers, then optimize that content later following (SEO best practices). As long as you're providing content that readers find useful and are consistently engaging with, chances are Google will reward you.
Legal content can sometimes come off as boring to a reader without the proper context. So how do you spice up your writing to make it more relatable?
Try telling a story to connect the topic to the reader’s everyday life. For example, you could include an excerpt about how you’ve helped a past client overcome their legal obstacles.
Your writing can help connect often complex legal issues and show how they relate to your clients or the general public.
While you may know your content is informative and worthwhile to read, it can’t hurt to include other attention-grabbing elements when you publish your work online.
Simple things like adding in high-quality photography, small video snippets, informative graphics, or even the occasional GIF to your blog content or social media posts help grab the reader’s attention.
In all seriousness, the goal is to make your content more shareable online. Adding media not only makes your content more engaging, but it increases the chances your work gets shared with your readers’ social media channels.
A good content marketing strategy focuses on placing your law firm in front of as many potential clients as possible. To generate more traffic from search engines you’ll need to be writing and publishing content on a consistent basis.
We recommend using a content calendar to help you plan out your content creation for the long term.
Writing quality law firm website content for your readers takes time, so having definitive deadlines can help you plan your schedule accordingly.
Trending topics are a great resource for creative content ideas. You can cater to potential customers by providing relevant information to their questions.
For example, if a trending topic fits a legal issue your firm specializes in you can build content around that concept.
You can write a blog post about the trending topic, then detail how the story or issue applies to your readers. You can then share the content on social media or other relevant forums when you see someone asking about the topic.
At the end of the day, your content marketing strategy is only one strategy. You’ll likely need to optimize the plan depending on what kind of content works and what doesn’t.
Sites like Google Analytics are a great start for tracking all kinds of information like organic search engine traffic, audience trends and much more. You can keep tabs on different articles you publish to see what articles get the most traffic.
Keep in mind, it takes a few weeks for Google to index and track your article after you publish it, so give it some time before you decide to make changes.
We live in a time where paying for advertisements online is the new norm, especially for the legal industry. In order to run Google Ads effectively, you’ll need to monitor your analytics and different keywords you want to rank for on Google’s search engine.
Here are a few different advertising methods to try and experiment within your strategy:
Are you ready to spice up your legal content marketing strategy? Remember to create content that your readers will want to read and layout a plan to get more website traffic, generate better leads and get more clients.
Want to get more leads from your marketing efforts? Learn more about live chat for law firms.