Research has proven that content marketing is the most effective way to get new clientes online. There are a number of ways to create your content, but smart lawyers think about it from a journalistic perspective. 

If you've ever taken a journalism class, this should be familiar to you -- the five W's: who, what, when, where, why. (We covered WHO and WHAT in 2 Surprising Approaches for Your Website Content). Now let's focus on:

WHEN

When do your potential clients want the answers? Typically that means right now -- people are very impatient about information delivery. They expect to type a query into Google and get an answer right away. But there's some nuance to that. In some cases, this is an immediate decision -- i.e., someone who's been arrested today and has their arraignment tomorrow. Or it might be a long-range decision -- estate planning, tax planning, for example. Potential clients may come back to your website multiple times to learn more and more about a particular subject.

WHERE

Where are they at, geographically speaking? Geography is often important to what people are searching for. So if you're practicing in one state, don't make your content so general that it doesn't focus on the state. If you're doing EP in California, you don't want to just stay “estate planning,” it's not likely to attract the right searches. Integrate your location into your content. There are a few ways to look at this -- for example, does the location matter to the question? For example, if a potential new client is going to a search engine and asking “What do I do at my arraignment in Seattle Municipal Court this Friday,” that's a location-specific question.

Conversely, they might ask what the statute of limitations is in Washington state. The fact that they're in a city in Washington doesn't matter to the question exactly, but the location can matter to the answer. So once the person is on your website after searching a general concept, it will make a difference how you frame that concept, and then explain something that matters at a local level -- a local rule, a nuance, a local reference. Not only will this attract people to your website via search engines, but it will also show you care enough to give that specific information. So think about how your location works into all this.

WHY

Why should they listen to you among the sea of voices of other attorneys that are out there, trust you, and hire you?

• What makes you persuasive to that particular potential client?
• What makes you unique?

Think about this before you start writing -- don't just copy what other attorneys are saying. There is a way to frame or re-frame the issues so that you talk about it in a way that is unique to your particular firm, that captures your personality and that resonates with a potential client or referral source.

HOW

The last question about all this might be how -- how do you plan all this content out? For that, we recommend checking out our free on-demand webinar series about growing your law firm website and ultimately dominating your market. And if you need a hand creating all your content, visit Content Marketing For Lawyers on the LawLytics site.