Building Your Digital Marketing Plan in the Time of Social Distancing Part 3: Share Your Content

This is the third post in our series, Building your Digital Marketing Plan in the time of Social Distancing. Make sure you read the other two posts in the series, Create Content and Establish Yourself as a Subject Matter Expert.

After you have spent the time creating your blog posts, videos, or longer form content, and you’ve established yourself as a subject matter expert, now it is time to consider how you will share that content. This is where the rubber meets the road in digital marketing.

Social Media

The quickest and easiest way to disseminate your content is via social media. (This is the 30% of the 70/30 rule from our second post, Establish Yourself as a Subject Matter Expert.) This establishes you as an expert in your field and gets your content seen. Because of how social media feeds aggregate, a client or prospective client may not see your post or may be too busy to read it the first time they see it. Over several weeks, schedule a couple different posts about each piece of content.

There are plenty of free apps that allow you to schedule several posts at one time, to be shared later. Think about which platform makes the most sense to use. Generally, it is LinkedIn but Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others may be valuable depending on your practice area and target client. Also, consider what might be the best day or time of day to post content. Are you a corporate lawyer whose clients are on LinkedIn and likely to check it during normal business hours? Or are you a DUI attorney who finds Facebook on the weekends to be the best time to reach out to potential clients?

An easy way to create a post is to pull a quote from the article, give a (very) brief summary of what you discuss in the post, and include a link to the post, article, video, or white paper. Or ask a question that your post answers and that may resonate with your audience. Adding a CTA (or call to action) is also a good idea to encourage your audience to do what you want them to do. “Learn more,” “sign up now,” or “watch the video” are basic examples – but feel free to be creative. Don’t forget to follow up with and respond to comments on your posts. (This is the “social” part of social media.)

Email

When producing your content, you likely chose the topics based on what trends you were seeing, what questions you were getting, or what information you think would provide the most value to your target audience. Take a few minutes to craft a custom email to clients and prospective clients that could benefit from what you have to say. This is not license to spam, or spray and pray, every contact in your address book. Rather, each email needs to include a greeting to the first name of your recipient and an introductory paragraph that demonstrates you understand what is going on in their specific business/industry – or personal life – to warrant sharing your content with them. When sending these emails, the focus is 100% on the specific recipient and their needs.

Give to Get

This is one way to pursue a digital marketing strategy where you might not be sharing your content or talking about what you can do. But it is one of the most important. Think of it as the “be human, be kind” strategy. We are in unprecedented times, with new challenges popping up all the time. Check in with your clients and your top prospects. See what they need – what problems they are dealing with right now. Help where you can. It may mean sharing one of those pieces of content you just created. Or it might be something completely outside of your practice area. But you may know someone who can help or have seen an article from a reputable source on the topic. For instance, maybe you are an environmental lawyer, but your client is the CEO of a small company whose workforce is suddenly remote and has some labor and employment questions surrounding that. Make the connection with a reputable attorney you know who could help. You look like a rock star to your client and to the attorney you referred the work to. It might not result in new business for you today but likely will result in referrals down the road.

Clean Up Your Contacts

On the topics of email and referrals, now is a good time to clean up your contact list. Remove old contacts, update any contacts who have changed positions, and input any new or missing data for your clients, prospects, and professional contacts. It is a project that we never seem to find time to do in the hustle and bustle of our “normal” lives. But, as stated above, we are dealing with new and different issues every day now. Knowing who to contact – and how – will save you time and effort down the road.

There you have it. Your comprehensive guide to using digital marketing to grow your business while staying six feet away from your prospects and clients.

Let’s get started. Contact LISI today to learn more.