Many attorneys do no content marketing. No blog, no newsletter, no articles or videos or podcasts. The two primary reasons they give are (1) They don’t have enough time, and (2) They don’t have enough to write about.
As someone who initially resisted creating content for those same reasons, I do have something to say about this subject.
“No time” does not compute. If writing a blog or newsletter brought you twice as much new business as you get now, and it could, or brought you bigger cases or better clients, and it could, you’d find the time. Or hire someone. Or both.
Content marketing works—if you work at it.
Besides, if you follow my “system,” you can write something people want to read in under an hour.
One hour a week to double your client intake? Even if it “only” brought you one additional client or case a month, would that be worth it?
Now if you don’t want to do it, fine. But if you do want to, you do have enough time.
What about not having enough to write about?
That’s also a non-starter. As long as you’re practicing, you’ll never run out of things to write about.
Write about your practice. Your cases, your clients, the laws you work with every day, problems, solutions, questions and answers. Write about what you say when you give a presentation, what you tell people who ask about what you do and how you can help them.
You want ideas? Go through your email. Think about the last case you settled, the last brief you wrote, or something opposing counsel said or did that made you roll your eyes. It’s all fair game. It’s all something your clients and prospects, readers and followers, want to know.
Besides, there is a never-ending parade of new people finding and following you who haven’t seen anything you wrote before. That means you can write about something you wrote before.
You might have noticed that I do that, in spades.
I use different words and different examples, at least I think I do—I can’t remember what I wrote months or years ago, can you? New subscribers don’t know, old subscribers don’t remember (because if I can’t, they can’t), but even if they can, good ideas are worth repeating.
Good ideas are worth repeating. (See?)
So, re-read your old blog posts or articles and update them, re-write them, or say something different about the same subject.
Now, if by some miracle you really are fresh out of ideas, the Internet is your friend. Go see what other attorneys have written about in their blog or newsletter and steal their idea. (The idea, not the words).
Yes, but what I run out of attorneys? Are you serious? Okay, you can do the same thing with business blogs or consumer blogs and anyone else who said something that might interest your readers.
The world is awash with ideas you can write about. Too bad you don’t have enough time.
