When you look down at the twinkling lights of the houses and cars below you, know that you are looking at your audience. Those are the people for whom you write. You owe them your best work...
Today, the rallying cry of marketers everywhere is: we are all publishers, we are the media. This is true to some degree, but most definitely not a given — especially if your plan does not include an investment in audience.
If you build it, they won't necessarily come.
For some people and businesses the Web 1.0 rallying cry ("If you build it, they will come!") was true to a degree, but it never really was true enough. For the rest, it wasn’t true at all.
Building a website (or a blog) is not the same thing as building an audience. One is mostly a question of technology, the other: a question of people.
I say all of this because time and again we hear law firm marketers say: I built a blog, but nobody reads it. What gives?
Well, yes. You built a blog. You've mistaken having the means to publish with having an audience. They're not the same; your strategy is incomplete.
Three requirements of a successful content strategy: technology, content, audience.
When it comes to strategic planning for content marketers and media-empire-builders-in-the-making, there really are three things that deserve your attention and effort.
Each presents its own challenges and, as such, should be planned for separately. Online publishing works best at the intersection of all three. They are:
- Developing the means to publish (technology);
- Having something to say (content); and
- Engaging an audience of readers (visibility).
Ironically, while lawyers and law firms are reputed for being behind the curve when it comes to technology, you actually stand to benefit greatly from this landscape because you have something to say. Lawyers have a hard-earned, well-studied expertise that guides and informs how we conduct business and live our lives in an essential, need-to-know way. In this age of ubiquitous information, your content matters (if you get it in front of the right people).
What about audience?
We see people address this in many different ways, including: SEO, relationship building, distribution, and so on. (Obviously, audience is what we do at JD Supra - our clients provide content; we provide the readers.)
Whatever your tactic, and there are many, if you're not proactively planning on audience - how to reach, engage, and develop target readers - your strategy remains incomplete.
I had an Aha moment in this regard several years ago while presenting at a conference on digital media and professional services. My co-panelist, a marketer in a large, East Coast-based law firm, took the stage and showed a slide of her firm's total readership for the previous year.
The firm had achieved over a million views for all publications over a twelve month period (and I was very pleased to see that JD Supra had facilitated more than 70% of that). She introduced the slide with: "This is a look at our total audience across all platforms for the year."
Yes! It's such a simple statement but at the heart of it is an approach that does not rely on chance. A firm that can produce a slide showing their view counts on all platforms, with a subsequent grand total at the bottom, is a firm that does not build its content plan upon the wishful thinking: if you build it they will come.
Rather, it's a firm that uses all means at its disposal to take their content to an audience where it gathers.
As you set up your law firm as a publisher know that your strategy requires time spent understanding, perfecting, and connecting all three of these elements. Your means to publish, your audience, and your content all work together.
Your plan should reflect that and not be based on the wishful misunderstanding that if you build it, they will come.
