Why your company needs an editorial board (and how to go about forming it)

Apr

Why your company needs an editorial board (and how to go about forming it)

April 22, 2014

by: Michelle Calcote King in B2B , Marketing strategy , Content marketing

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Editorial boards are an age-old tradition at newspapers. Back when traditional media wielded more influence, these groups held enormous power, dictating the tone and direction of a publication’s editorial policy and its stand on various community issues and political races. In today’s digital world, with fractured media and citizen journalism, editorial boards aren’t quite as influential, but still serve an important role in critically analyzing important issues and the newspaper’s approach to them, as well as providing a formal avenue for the community to influence editorial direction.

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Feb

Why every blog needs an editorial calendar

February 25, 2015

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Many of the clients we work with understand the benefits of having a blog. Most, however, haven’t embraced developing an editorial calendar. That’s a huge mistake.

Assigning bloggers to specific days, thereby creating an editorial calendar, makes many bloggers nervous. You want the freedom and flexibility to write when it’s convenient for you – we understand that. However, an editorial calendar has benefits that cannot be overlooked.

Ensure frequency

An editorial calendar ensures you have a minimum number of posts per week. According to a study by HubSpot, companies that post more than 15 blogs per month receive five times more traffic on their website than companies that don’t blog at all. If you have a smaller team of writers — or maybe it’s just you — 15 posts per month might not be a reasonable goal. However, the same study showed companies that increase blogging from three to five times per month to six to eight times per month almost double their leads.

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Jan

8 common mistakes lawyers make on their blogs [updated]

January 15, 2019

by: Michelle Calcote King in Law , Content marketing

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(This post has been updated from our original 2014 post.)

The legal industry has embraced blogging like no other. Blogging and lawyers are a natural fit — lawyers love to write, have niche expertise and need to demonstrate that expertise in a non-salesy way.

However, succeeding at blogging isn’t as simple as putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). And unfortunately, many lawyers are failing.

Below are eight of the most common mistakes we see lawyers making on their blogs.

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Apr

7 ways to overcome content marketing’s biggest challenge: just getting it done

April 24, 2018

by: Michelle Calcote King in B2B , Content marketing , Architecture, Engineering and Construction

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We’ve all heard it before:

“I just can’t get my subject-matter experts to give me the information I need.”

“We would do content marketing, but we can never find the time — we’re too busy focused on billable work.”

I get it. Content marketing takes time. It’s the reason I have a viable business, after all.

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Sep

7 steps to developing a law firm content marketing strategy

September 27, 2017

by: Michelle Calcote King in Law , Marketing strategy , Content marketing , Lead generation

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While law firms are prolific content generators, very few firms have a documented content marketing strategy.

According to Greentarget’s 2017 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, 96% of in-house counsel say that there is content overload, while 81% of law firm marketers plan to produce more. And a measly 26% of law firm marketers say they have a documented content strategy.

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Jul

9 reasons your content marketing isn’t working

July 20, 2015

by: Michelle Calcote King in B2B , Content marketing

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More marketers are spending time, money and resources on content marketing than ever before. In fact, 42 percent of businesses now publish new content at least weekly. However, the majority of these efforts continue to fail. Why is this? While the reasons are wide-ranging, I see some mistakes happening over and over again:

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Jul

8 common mistakes lawyers make on their blogs

July 10, 2014

by: Reputation Ink in B2B , Content marketing

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I’m an attorney, and I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years. I’ve started several blogs over the years, including ones on law school, the Atlanta Braves, the business of baseball, career advice for aspiring sports professionals and the business of college sports. Now I work with attorneys and law firms on blogging and social media strategy as part of my job as a content marketer, and I find many legal blogs have the same common mistakes.

You aren’t writing for a specific audience

I have a law degree, and I practiced law for four years, yet I still don’t understand many of the law blogs I read. For most of you, your audience is clients and potential clients. No matter how sophisticated you think your clients are, if they’re not attorneys they aren’t going to understand legalese. In fact, even if they are attorneys, if they don’t practice in your area they likely still won’t understand you.

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Jun

Growth hacking: what established companies can learn from startups

June 19, 2014

by: Heather Kingry in B2B , Marketing strategy , Content marketing

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As previously outlined, content marketing isn’t a fad. Times have changed for marketers and will continue to do so almost daily. Following the successes of startups like Pinterest and Twitter, today’s savvy (or just plain broke) marketers are turning to growth hacking instead of traditional marketing techniques.

Growth hacking is defined as using conventional and unconventional tactics to grow a user base startup-style. Some examples you may be familiar with include Twitter’s “Who to Follow” prompter and Dropbox’s rewarding more storage space to users who invited friends to use the platform.

But these tactics aren’t just for startups. They’re actually the new MO of marketing. And at the core, they’re all about knowing who your customers are, where they reside on the web and what motivates them.

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Mar

How to build your speaking strategy before this year’s conference season

March 26, 2024

by: Eric Pesale in Law , Marketing strategy , Lead generation

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Legalweek. ILTACON. American Bar Association (ABA) section seminars. Sector-specific conferences.

These eclectic events share two things in common: potential clients in attendance and invaluable speaking opportunities to reach them.

Leaders and professionals should consider joining the legal speaking circuit to amp up their profile and build their clientele. After all, speaking engagements are more than just additional CV bullets; they demonstrate authority and expertise to prospects.

However, lawyers and business leaders cannot expect panel invites based on reputation alone (unless they are U.S. Supreme Court justices or Fortune 500 CEOs). The average professional plebian can avoid the submission slush pile by approaching conference season like litigators: building a robust case with strong evidence of prior engagements and accomplishments.

Fortunately, a competitive submission does not need to feature a laundry list of prior speaking engagements — or any at all! What matters more is whether a speaker candidate made an effort to establish their expertise. Establishing third-party credibility through article writing, podcast appearances, smaller speaking engagements and more can give organizers the confidence and social proof they need to gamble on accomplished professionals with valuable insights.

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Dec

Contributor networks and bylined article opportunities: What lawyers and legal professionals need to know

December 2, 2022

by: Eric Pesale in Law , Marketing strategy , Content marketing

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There are many ways to secure a byline in a key media outlet. While working with a legal PR agency is a surefire method to get in front of the right editors and reporters, it’s just one pathway to publication. Joining a contributor network can be an alternative way to break in — and your PR agency can help with that too.

Think of a contributor network as a bullpen of subject-matter experts a publication relies on to provide one-time articles or ongoing columns. Outlets usually open their doors to contributor network writers to offer practical, boots-on-the-ground stories and opinion pieces that supplement their staff-written stories. Once accepted into a network, lawyers and professionals usually have broad discretion regarding what they can write about, so long as they meet the outlet’s editorial standards and publishing cadence requirements.

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