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8 types of real and authentic engagement to repurpose for blog posts

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October 24, 2014

All too many lawyers complain that they don’t have time to blog. The wild thing is they’ve got content all around them. Content that they’ve created and which could be repurposed for blog posts.

I am not talking of briefs, memorandums, articles, email newsletters, and alerts. I am talking of content that’s been created by virtue of real and authentic engagement.

Here’s eight sources. I am sure there are more.

Facebook interaction

Despite the perception of most lawyers, Facebook is a great place for open and frank engagement on professional matters. Summarize and leverage that engagement for blog posts.

By sharing on Facebook a third party’s story or blog post, one can generate comments and a threaded discussion. Take that discussion and use it as part of a blog post in which you share the original third party story.

Alternatively, key in a quick post on Facebook with your own thoughts or insight and watch the discussion flow from it. Think of it is a mini-blog post a few paragraphs long that may take 5 minutes, as opposed to a blog post which may take 45 minutes.

Take that mini-blog post and the ensuing discussion and turn it into a blog post, even citing the people involved in the discussion. I talk more about the concept here.

LinkedIn message board and article discussions

Though LinkedIn is not as social as Facebook, LinkedIn is a more comfortable environment for most lawyers.

Respond to questions on message boards in groups. Share third party pieces in status updates. Post a short piece as a “publication.” As with Facebook, weave your copy and the follow on engagement into a post.

Twitter engagement

It doesn’t happen every day, but once in a while you’ll find yourself in a good threaded Twitter discussion on a particular point. That discussion among thought leaders, bloggers, and company leaders evaporates into thin air as the tweets go.

Preserve the discussion, insight, and commentary by archiving the tweets on Twitter. Twitter enables you to grab an embed code so the tweet can be displayed on your blog. The tweet will display the source and the time. Break up the tweets with intros as to subject and the people.

Here’s an example of grabbing twitter engagement from a recent post of mine.

Shared items

Have you sent an article to a client, referral source, business associate, or another lawyer in your firm? If you have, you probably included a note or email explaining why you shared the piece.

Turn it in to blog post. Here’s the piece. Here’s the source. And here’s why I am sharing it, including my insight and commentary.

Great post. Easy. Shows you stay up to speed on the industry you represent. Engages the source (they see you mentioning them). Your audience sees you as an intelligence agent gathering and sharing what you see as valuable information on a niche.

Emails

No brainer here. You’re answering questions all the time. Sanitize an email for confidential info and names. Turn it into a little story saying I was contacted by a business person etc who was asking about such and such. I explained this that and the other thing.

You already have the question, a question 18 other people in your neck of woods probably have. A question that will get searched for and found with your answer on Google. You have the copy already done and with a little cleaning up it’s a blog post.

Comments from blog posts

Once you’ve developed a following and trust with your readers, you’ll get comments which in turn can be developed into blog posts.

Richard Cohen of Fox Rothschild is the king of this at his Employment Discrimination Report. He regularly uses reader comments in blog posts—sometimes as entire reader blog posts. Cohen finds it a good way to engage his readers, which are frequently potential clients.

Examples of Cohen doing this are here, here, and here.

Question and answer sites

Quora is the grandaddy of question-and-answer websites by size. Questions are created, answered, edited and organized by a community of users, which number in the millions. Lawyer directory sites, Justia and Avvo, both have question-and-answer sections as well.

Sign up for an area of the law. On Quora you may get RSS feeds and emails of the questions. Answer some questions.

Take the question and answer and you have a blog post. It’s easy turning questions and answers into posts as you’re not staring at a blank slate when you go to pen a blog post.

Old blog posts

I recently shared how you can resurrect old blog posts.

Update an older post with more current content. Put together a summary of posts on a single topic by listing the posts with an annotation of what is covered in each post. If there are seasonal issues effecting your clients go back and see what you have in posts that’s relevant. All good ways to surface what’s in the archives.

Not having the time is no excuse for not blogging. As a lawyer you have real and authentic content all around you.

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