Opinion: Creating know-how online

Publishing updates and thought leadership online is an effective way of showcasing your firm’s know-how and building your brand, but when it comes to article structure and format, there are certain rules that apply. James Tuke discusses how to make the most of such opportunities – from engaging the target audience, to applying basic journalistic principles to sustain their interest.

Law is a knowledge-based discipline, and law firms live or die by the expertise held within their organisation. Law firms that boast key lawyers or partners in a particular area are more likely to enjoy a lofty reputation and stronger client relationships as a result. Furthermore, the ‘rainmaker’ culture that exists within some larger firms and barristers’ chambers is becoming more influential as the market gets squeezed by the recession. However, most firms don’t have the luxury of stellar industry names to lure clients in, so have to rely on collective knowledge. How well do firms and chambers of all sizes use their thought-leadership as leverage for marketing and business development purposes, and do they understand its importance in the online world?
Intendance’s latest piece of research, ‘Online Publications Best Practice’ seeks to answer these questions by examining the process of creating and presenting know-how online in a number of different ways: analysing data from legal news aggregator Linex Legal, drawing on the experiences of a number of different people involved in the process, and showing good and bad examples of article presentation.

Too much, but not enough
Before going any further, it must be acknowledged that the amount of legal knowledge published online is mountainous, and part of the problem itself. The never-ending output of case news, e-bulletins, opinion articles and legislation updates from any practice area and firm you care to name creates a mass of information that can be detrimental to all involved. End users can struggle to find the exact content they need, while those who are targeted by information directly – such as in-house lawyers – can be put off by too much material that is irrelevant to them, difficult to read, or out-of-date. The corollary of this is twofold: ultimately, firms’ carefully constructed know-how might never be read by their target audience; and if wrongly distributed it could have a negative impact on a firm’s brand. If just one of these consequences occurs then those involved in the creation of the content – often time-poor lawyers – will have wasted valuable time. Of course, it can be argued that many a marketing scheme has little or no measurable return-on-investment, but ultimately, if articles are not being read or are being sent to the wrong audience then it is the firm’s bottom line that takes the hit. In hard times, improving this is imperative.

All in the presentation
When we looked into the data from Linex Legal, it became clear that there was a significant disparity in the way that information was presented online. Publications varied greatly in:

Length;
Format;
Tone;
Layout;
Headline;
Design and/or branding;
Call to action;
Availability of contact details, and so on.

This list demonstrates the extent to which articles can be altered to make them stand out from the crowd.
We found that headline and article length were particularly important – and simple to rectify – aspects of article presentation. We looked at all the articles registered on Linex Legal under the ‘employment’ practice area across all jurisdictions and firms. We compared the five most popular articles – according to the amount of click-throughs – against the five least popular. The results were intriguing. The five most popular were all relatively short in length, around the 400 to 800-word mark, and the five least popular were longer, usually more than 1,000 words. In one case, an article was nearly 2,500 words, which would test the most patient and voracious of readers. Although the sample was small and not definitive, the correlation between short article and high popularity is worth heeding when implementing article presentation. This does not necessarily mean that firms should write less. Instead, articles should be broken up into more manageable pieces. If lengthy articles are a necessity then they should be split into chapters and put in PDF-format with links to each section at the top.

Drawing the reader in
A first-rate headline is just as important for a legal bulletin as it is for a newspaper article. Basic principles of journalism apply across the board: headlines should be succinct, catchy and relevant to the subject matter and the prospective audience. Unfortunately, in a number of cases we saw from the Linex Legal data, the headline was generic and had not been written specifically for that article. A typically bad headline was ‘UK employment update’, or worse, ‘eNews’. The latter is particularly poor, and it is highly likely that an article presented in this way will be ignored by most readers.
A good example of a headline is: ‘Changes to maternity leave – How does this affect pensions?’ Not only does it inform the reader of recent developments in maternity legislation, it also presents a topical question about a closely related subject. A reader with an interest in either of these legal areas is much more likely to have their attention grabbed by this title than a generic one, as outlined above.
The interviews we conducted were instrumental to our research. Representative of opposing sides of the information coin, they gave valuable insights into the motivation behind those who write the articles, and the preferences of those who read them.
Though a significant part of a firm’s target audience will be legally trained, a key point to arise was the need to write in simple language, keeping legal jargon to a minimum to make it suitable for as wide an audience as possible. Furthermore, articles are often adapted slightly to suit a particular publication with a specific audience. But herein lies a problem: these articles are written for print media not online, and though certain principles, such as good quality writing, apply across all media, publishing offline content on third-party sites like Linex Legal requires some adaptation. For example, when someone searches on Linex Legal, they will be presented with a list of results that show date, source of article, headline and summary. Users will choose an article purely on these criteria, so the headline and summary should be optimised to draw readers in, the latter presenting a particular opportunity to inform and attract traffic. The responsibility for repackaging content usually lies with the marketing and/or business development teams, not lawyers.
When choosing an article, the readers – mostly knowledge managers – who were interviewed agreed on one aspect above all others: relevancy. Within content covering the same subject matter, timeliness was the overriding variable, proving that being informed about legislative developments is crucial to high-quality legal work. Other factors, such as the source of the article, popularity and format were considered less important. Another significant issue that emerged from the interviews was the value of content delivered via e-mail. These e-alerts are often seen as a nuisance, clogging up inboxes, rather than a useful form of communication.
In the current economic climate and shrinking legal marketplace, the ability to make this know-how count is more important than ever. Having enjoyed years of unchallenged fees, the market is becoming more favourable for legal buyers. Clients are in a position to be able to demand better value for money – often through fixed fees rather than the billable hour – creating stiffer competition for work. Thus, optimising the creation, presentation and distribution of your know-how online is a cost-effective way for firms to add to their ‘rainmaker’ capacity, enabling them to build stronger client relationships, as well as attracting new ones.

James Tuke is head of Intendance Research. He can be contacted at james.tuke@intendance.com