“I know we said we would do an online marketing activity every week,” Sally said to partners, Dick and Jane sitting across from her at the oblong walnut conference table of SDJ Law, LLC, “but, it seems impossible. We have to serve our clients, manage our administrative responsibilities, maintain our continuing education and meet the billable hour requirements we set for ourselves.”

Finding time for social media

“I know,” Dick said, “but if we don’t market there will be no clients to serve and no reason to worry about billable hours. I’ve come up some ideas.”

    SDJ Law is not starting from ground zero. Their website and each of their profiles are up to day and their new video “About our Firm” is ready.

        The major problem for SDJ Law is keeping up with their other Internet sites—the blog on their website and their Facebook and Twitter presence.

The Blog 

        Effective blogs that attract clients and potential clients offer quick and useful information are posted regularly. But, how often to post? 

        Establish a schedule you can keep. Once a month or once a week or once a day—the secret is consistency. Once you decide frequency, help yourself stick to your resolution by scheduling time to research and write on your calendar. Topics are not a problem in law. Every week, the SBM e-journal posts important case decisions and the SBM NewsLinks publishes legal news daily.

        Dick and Jane decide to share the writing duties each writing one blog post a month. They pull up their electronic calendars and set aside the time for writing and posting. Sally, who prefers the social network, will use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and an e-mail blast to announce the posting.

The Social Network

        The social network is a more frequent task. Set aside a time on

your calendar for daily or twice weekly postings, whichever fits your busy schedule. Since you could be posting on Twitter, a Facebook Page or LinkedIn, it could mean a daily task. Remember, it is consistency that counts.

Sally, Dick & Jane were always busy.

        Sally decides she will post to Twitter and the Facebook Page twice a week and weekly to LinkedIn. She adds the times to his calendar. SDJ Law will also want to know how effective the new marketing commitments are working, they agree to keep track of:

       1. The number of people reading their blog,

           2. The number of new followers and shared tweets on Twitter, 

           3. Whether people are contacting them mentioning something they published.

         Sally, Dick and Jane, like you, are busy lawyers. They realize,however, the importance of setting aside time to market their business. Putting it in their calendars like all their other important dates will help.

        Feedback will determine if their plan is working. They will change course as necessary or, perhaps, reaching more people is not as important as reaching people who are really interested in what they have to offer.

The conventional wisdom among bloggers is that short posts are better than long and the shorter the better. Recent research, however, suggests that longer articles—those of 2000 plus words—actually rank higher on Google searches. As a matter of fact, the top ten positions for keyword searches are long articles.  

Assuming the study is accurate, does it mean that you must drop conventional wisdom and write only long posts for your clients? Or, should your long post be divided into a series of posts meaning a 2500 word post should be divided into five 500 word blogs. 

There are benefits to both forms. A long article is appropriate when the material requires in-depth analysis. If your practice leads to complicated litigation, onerous tax matters where readers need more information rather than less, long is the right choice. And, your readers would probably like it all at once, not in little dribbles. 

The fact is that long posts are easier to share making it more likely readers will spread the word through the social media. Information that is interesting, of good quality and useful gets shared—a lot—good for you and your firm. 

Some topics, however, are better served in a series of posts. There are times when you need to cover points that are supportive of the main topic and are necessary to help your readers better understand the whole picture. A series of posts can explore those topics in depth where a single long post might restrict your ability to clearly inform the reader. Having a series of posts also brings your readers back to read the latest installment, increasing traffic to your blog. 

I think there is room for both long and short posts. The basic consideration is to create content that is specific to your clients and your practice. While it is often easy to write long, the most important consideration is deliver your message in the best way possible; and in a way that is useful to your readers. Length shouldn’t be the controlling factor. Short or long, there is room for both forms of content. The secret is to choose the best form for your topic.