More attorneys than ever are learning the importance of blogs and other content marketing tools for business development.  That means more lawyers are writing more posts, competing in your space for the clients you want to attract.

Content marketing is a critical component of a comprehensive law firm marketing program, and there are many avenues you can use to spread your content to potential clients, including your website, blog, online directories like Avvo and JDSupra, and social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

With all these venues craving constant feeds, how do marketing-savvy attorneys feed the beast? Here are some tips:

1. Plan ahead. Brainstorm a list of topics that would appeal to your target audience (start with answers to their top 20 questions). Reviewing your website analytics to see what pages of your site are getting the most visits can also help stimulate ideas. Dig up speeches and presentations you’ve made over the last few years and repurpose those for blog posts. Subscribe to blogs and news feeds that cover your practice area for ideas.

2. Make it interesting. Nielsen research shows that most people spend about a minute on any given web page, so strive to make your posts easily digestible in that timeframe. Use short paragraphs and subheads to keep readers’ attention. Punch it up with references to current events or pop culture to make your content timely. Include client success stories (not using real names, of course).

3. Optimize your content. Be sure to optimize your content for search by including your keywords and keyword phrases in your title, subheads and image file names.

4. Socialize.  Promote your videos, posts, articles, press releases and other content on all your social network channels – not only on your own Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter page, but also through submissions to the discussion pages of groups you’ve joined.

The folks at Siege Media developed this helpful infographic to show you how to structure your blog posts and other content in a way that will leave your competitors in the dust: