The tactic law firms and lawyers must incorporate into your marketing strategy… publish client alerts and blog posts.

They are one of the most effective ways to engage with clients and prospects. They can lead to new business as well as media and speaking opportunities.

In addition, they help keep your firm and lawyers top of mind with clients and prospects, which is so important today.

They also help your Google search results so that when someone is looking for a lawyer in your area or niche, you have more clout.

In-house counsel say that the marketing efforts that work the best by law firms is providing value-added content that helps to educate them and help them do their jobs better.

That means you should be focusing more on writing client alerts/blog posts and staying top of mind with your clients/prospects and other key audiences.

A good alert or blog post can often rekindle a relationship or lead to a discussion about a new matter.

But there are a lot of really bad law firm client alerts and blog posts.

So what makes a great client alert or blog post?

Great content starts with a point of view – your unique point of view.

It’s taking a perspective, not just regurgitating facts, and it’s showing why this topic important to your audience.

It’s being succinct in your writing as well as writing with your audience in mind and in language that resonates with them.

Here are some tips on how to craft stronger alerts and blog posts.

Client Alert Strategy Tips

• Always write in your clients’ language and stay away from legalese.

• Remember that many clients are reading alerts on their mobile devices, so shorter is better.

• Use bullets, section headers and short paragraphs to break up text.

• Send an alert or blog post with a personal email pointing out the relevance to clients. It shows you care and want to make their life easier.

• Write short/concise headlines that quickly get to the point – bonus points if you can use numbers in the title (such as “Five Reasons to X” or “Three Things You Need to Know About X.”

• Write timeless “Why” and “How-To” “evergreen” pieces that you can republish “What to Do When X Happens” or “Why You Need X.

• Get to the point – fast. If readers can’t figure out why they should care within the first paragraph or two, they won’t. Don’t waste time with lots of background information.

• When drafting an alert, answer the following questions:

  • What happened?

  • How does it affect me or my company?

  • What should we do about it?

  • Why should clients care about this issue?

• Regularly track what your competitors are writing about and ask yourself how you can bring a different perspective to it or make it better.

• Create and distribute content while the topic is hot – a good piece of content today is better than a fantastic piece three days from now. Make efficiency part of your content strategy. PS – Your good is good enough!

• Regularly study the analytics on your blog posts and client alerts. Look for commonalities on why they did well (was it the headline? Structure? Topic?). Then creatively replicate those posts.