Having high quality content on your website, blog, and social media pages is the best way to improve your Google search ranking and online authority. When people — your prospects — like what you have to say online, you are rewarded by Google as well as by those who are ready to hire an attorney to help them solve their legal problems.
But creating good, consistent content is not easy. Too often, the task of continually pumping out articles and posts for all your online properties falls by the wayside when you get busy doing other things. This is why creating an editorial calendar for your content is so important. It serves as a guide and a reminder to keep putting that good content out there so you can reap the rewards.
If you think you have exhausted your supply of ideas on what to write about, here are five ways you can gain fresh insights that will generate great content:
- Discover what people are asking about online.
Your best content ideas come from questions people are asking about the type of law you practice. There’s a great tool called TextOptimizer that enables you to research these questions in one spot. All you have to do is type in one of your keywords in the Topics Ideas section; in this example, I typed in “child support” and got these results:
This tool has other features to help you really drill down into content suggestions and helping your find combinations that better match search engine expectations.
- Have your intake team record prospect’s questions.
In addition to the standard information your intake team gets from prospects, ask them to start recording questions they are getting from callers. You can use an app like Slack or Google Docs to build a database of all the questions and then you’ll be able to view them easily in one place.
- Take note of seasonal trends.
Include seasonal trends like holidays, back to school, summer vacation travel, Super Bowl, etc., in your content calendar. For example, if you practice family law, you know that divorce and parenting topics are popular around the Christmas holidays. If you practice estate planning, you know that tax topics are popular in the month before April 15.
- Use keyword research tools.
Keyword research tools are not just for SEO; they can also provide you with some real insight into your potential clients’ interests and questions. There are a couple of tools you can use to generate content ideas:
Kparser — type in a main topic idea and this tool will generate a ton of keyword ideas around that main topic. I typed in “divorce” and it gave me a topic that I’ll bet most of you have never written about: divorce in the bible!
Answer the Public — type in a keyword or phrase and get an aggregated view of questions people ask Google and Bing. You can download the results in a spreadsheet or in a graphic format. I typed in “child support” and got this:
- Repackage old content
Create new content by taking some of your best old content and repackage it into an ebook, webinar, newsletter, podcast, video, infographic , or email series. So what is old becomes new again!
