Pandemic Accelerates Reading of Legal Blogs, Other Digital Sources, By In-House Counsel and C-Suite Members
The pandemic accelerated readership of legal blogs by in-house counsel and C-suite members.
This from the 2022 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey conducted by Greentarget and the Zeughauser Group.
…[T]he pandemic also accelerated the digital shift documented in our previous research, as COVID-19 disrupted in-person networking events and pushed more interactions online. Most notably, LinkedIn’s popularity has surged among the executive decision-makers who are the intended consumers of content from professional services providers. In-house counsel and C-suite members are also increasingly visiting websites and blogs and maintaining heightened interest in webinars and other types of virtual events, a trend many expect to continue.
And from Casey Foss, chief commercial officer at digital services firm, West Monroe, cited with the survey.
When COVID hit, we couldn’t be in the marketplace with our clients. Pumping content out into the market was a very clear switch, and it hasn’t stopped. I’m looking for ideas on what we could be doing differently to break through that. For example, we’re leaning into this concept of digestible content that can deliver value to a client and tell a story without it being a five-page case study, because nobody has time to read that.”
By the numbers, and as I blogged yesterday, the digital acceleration during the pandemic elevated the value of thought leader websites and blogs for business and legal executives to seventy percent of in-house counsel saying these online outlets were a valuable source of content in 2022, up from 57% in 2019. Among C-suite members, 63% cited them as valuable, compared to 50% before the pandemic.
While legal professionals feared the pandemic would have a negative impact on business, the opposite turned out to be true. Business, on the back of a strong economy, continued to grow.
In order to compete, without leaving their homes, law firms reached and networked with clients and prospective clients via digital information and commentary.
Blogs, easy to update, brief and timely, became a central piece of this networking attack.
As law firms saw that niched blogs launched during the pandemic worked for business development and in-house increasingly took to blogs for information and insight, the use of legal blogs continues to grow.
LexBlog saw good growth in the number of legal blogs published on our platform, as well as the number of blogs in the Open Legal Blog Archive.
Who knew that something as awful as the pandemic would lead to further change in the way we engage people. Blogs being a continuing part of this engagement and networking.