Writing Articles? The Wrapping Matters!

What this episode covers

Lawyers write a lot of articles – it’s just a fact of life. As a result, it’s a little amazing to me that lawyers have basically no training (any many express no interest) in actually having their articles read. You know – the audience, right? They actually matter? Our job doesn’t end when we have the words on the page – it ends when we have produced a useful, beneficial article for a specific audience that ACTUALLY READS IT. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way law firms and lawyers decided that publishing content was something we would do a lot of… badly. In today’s podcast I talk about the wrapping: that is, the aspects of producing an article that gets read when shared on social media. I’m talking about the stuff that never falls on our radar, or we just assume that somebody else will do it. Let me ask you this: if your firm was paying someone $1000 per article, do you think that they would accept an article with a boring headline, no image and an introduction that didn’t capture anybody’s attention? Of course not. And yet this is exactly what’s happening. If you’re going to go to the effort of producing a well researched legal article, refine it to language understood by your audience (hopefully), then why on Earth would you not spend a few minutes putting the polish on? You need to: Get the image right. Your photo is not good enough. Your logo is NOT good enough. Write a headline that will capture people’s attention. Craft an introduction that means something. Resources: If you want more than wrapping, check out 8 ways to get your content read. Images can be found at: Canva – if you only pick one, pick this. Canva makes it a breeze to create appropriately sized images, add some text and tweak them – in minutes. Some images are free, some are $1 DollarPhotoClub – as it suggests, images are $1 each – it’s a great resource. Pixabay – free photos, illustrations and vectors if you need them, in a variety of sizes. KaboomPics – not the biggest collection, but free high quality images. Lawyers write a lot of articles – it’s just a fact of life. As a result, it’s a little amazing to me that lawyers have basically no training (any many express no interest) in actually having their articles read. You know – the audience, right? They actually matter? Our job doesn’t end when we have the words on the page – it ends when we have produced a useful, beneficial article for a specific audience that ACTUALLY READS IT. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way law firms and lawyers decided that publishing content was something we would do a lot of… badly. In today’s podcast I talk about the wrapping: that is, the aspects of producing an article that gets read when shared on social media. I’m talking about the stuff that never falls on our radar, or we just assume that somebody else will do it. Let me ask you this: if your firm was paying someone $1000 per article, do you think that they would accept an article with a boring headline, no image and an introduction that didn’t capture anybody’s attention? Of course not. And yet this is exactly what’s happening. If you’re going to go to the effort of producing a well researched legal article, refine it to language understood by your audience (hopefully), then why on Earth would you not spend a few minutes putting the polish on? You need to: Get the image right. Your photo is not good enough. Your logo is NOT good enough. Write a headline that will capture people’s attention. Craft an introduction that means something. Resources: If you want more than wrapping, check out 8 ways to get your content read. Images can be found at: Canva – if you only pick one, pick this. Canva makes it a breeze to create appropriately sized images, add some text and tweak them...

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