Legal content marketing : Information overload or lack of engagement?

According to the recently released Digital and Content Marketing Survey, corporate lawyers often feel overwhelmed with the amount of content being produced by law firms today.

The implication being that law firms need to focus on an editorial strategy, curation, and corporate journalism techniques, among other things, to stand out from the crowd.

More than a couple times in the last week I’ve heard law firm marketing professionals referencing the “information overload” in the survey. Perhaps painting with too broad a brush, they’re questioning whether it’s worthwhile for law firms to publish content with so much already out there.

This is the problem when people confuse content marketing with “networking through the Internet for business development.”

If your goal is to produce content, get it distributed, hope people read it, and hope that you leave a favorable impression — all good things — then you can run into the overload issue. You are competing with every firm at “Level One Content Marketing.”

If your goal is to build relationships and a word of mouth reputation via networking through the net, then you are not apt to run into this issue. You’ve reached Level Two.

How so? You’re using content as the currency of engagement. As the currency of relationship building.

Think about what you are currently doing with blogging.

• Do you feature in-house counsel on your blog?
• Do you welcome in-house counsel whose companies you do not represent to guest post on your blog, a blog you have built to have an excellent reputation and readership?
• Do you engage association leaders, reporters, and other bloggers in your blog so as to build your influence?
• Do you discuss companies by name and the issues they are dealing with in your blog so that the companies take notice?

If you are, you’ll find yourself nurturing relationships. Relationships that go from digital to face to face. Relationships that enhance your word of mouth reputation.

If you are using your blog in a strategic way for business development, information overload won’t be an issue. It would be like say building relationships with people in a real and sincere fashion is getting to be popular.

Don’t get me wrong, publishing content with an editorial strategy and deploying a corporate journalism approach is worthwhile. It will help set your content apart. There’s just another level you’ll want to reach for the most successful business development.

The survey released by communications firm Greentarget, ALM Legal Intelligence and consulting firm Zeughauser Group is an excellent resource for law firms on all aspects of social media including blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipeadia.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Sara Lando