Love it or fear it, AI is here to stay. While it is not yet ready to take over our jobs, you can harness the power of AI to enhance and streamline your law firm’s overall website content creation process.
In this article, we address the importance of content creation to your law firm’s website, including why high-quality content still matters, how AI can enhance the content creation process and common mistakes to avoid.
At PMP, we understand content creation and why it should be a key part of your law firm’s overall marketing strategy. Our website services team has been helping firms across the U.S. and in Canada grow their firms and get more personal injury cases for over 15 years.
Why Content Creation Is Vital to Your Marketing Plan
Content creation helps to draw potential clients to your website, and it is a crucial component of any law firm’s marketing plan for several key reasons. The content you provide not only educates potential clients about complex legal matters but also builds trust. As an attorney, you need your clients to trust your expertise and knowledge, as well as your ability to win their cases.
Additionally, regularly updating content, whether through blog posts, articles, podcasts or videos, can significantly boost your law firm’s online visibility, making it easier for potential clients to find you.
In short, providing consistent, high-quality relevant content that addresses the legal questions and concerns of your target audience can help grow your firm by:
- Increasing your visibility
- Building trust
- Attracting new clients
- Nurturing existing client relationships
- Fostering long-term loyalty and growth, as satisfied clients are likely to recommend you to others
Five Ways You Can Use AI to Enhance Your Law Firm’s Content Creation Efforts
Knowing that consistent, high-quality content is important is great. However, in the day-to-day process of writing, coming up with fresh, new and relevant topic ideas is anything but easy. There are many tips and tricks to help overcome things like the dreaded writer’s block. Today, AI has quickly become part of that toolkit. When used properly, AI can help your legal marketing team throughout the content creation process.
Topic Research
Topic research, without a doubt, is probably one of the most difficult tasks for content creators. To keep up with your competitors, your legal writing team needs to constantly brainstorm for new ideas that are ranking, relevant and provide useful information to potential clients.
The good news is that whether you need a new blog topic or simply need a clever caption for a social media graphic, AI can spit out new ideas in a flash. Of course, there is a catch, and here it is: The output you get will only be as good as the AI tool you use and how you phrase your request. Additionally, most of these ideas will still need some tweaking by a human.
Keyword Search and Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is another critical part of any SEO and content marketing strategy that can benefit from using AI. The goal of this task is to not only research the keywords potential clients are using to find you, but also the ranking keywords and keyword phrases your competitors are using.
The process is not new, but it can take a while if you do it manually. After determining your keywords and keyword phrases, the next step is to prioritize and group them based on their relationships and intent. Your legal writing team can then generate an outline and create content around these topics that is optimized for SEO.
Using keywords and keyword phrases in your content draws new potential clients and further enhances the visibility of your law firm’s website.
Rather than doing this manually, an AI tool, like KeyClusters or SEMrush can quickly and effectively provide you with the keywords and phrases your potential clients are using to search for your services.
Generating Outlines
Creating unique topic ideas and keywords is just the starting point in the content-creation process. The next step is to create an outline that asks and answers the questions your potential clients are searching for.
There are many AI tools, including ChatGPT that can help your writing team to quickly generate an initial outline for new blog content. That said, it is important to remember that these ideas are merely a starting point. Humans still need to research and tweak these suggestions to determine what is accurate, relevant and useful.
Writing a Rough Draft
It is no secret that AI can write full blogs, but we do not recommend that. The main reason is that AI does not yet do that well. However, AI can be used to generate a rough draft. Again, the quality and “shape” of your output will be determined by how you phrase your request and the information you feed the chatbot.
Mistakes To Avoid When Using AI in the Content Creation Process
There are some key mistakes you will want to avoid when using AI to enhance your content creation efforts. To begin with, and we cannot stress this enough, you should never fully rely on AI-generated content. You can, however, use it as a jumping point for human involvement.
Why AI always needs human intervention:
- Verify facts and data – AI hallucinates, makes things up and may not be accurate
- Customize the content for your target audience
- Add a human natural language flow
- Ensure the content is timely, relevant and there is no plagiarism
One of the biggest determinants of output is the quality of the input. Whether writing a long-form blog, website copy or adding new sections to an older practice area page, ChatGPT and other AI tools can help to make the process go faster.
Should You Use AI as Part of Your Content Creation Process?
You may wonder whether using AI to create content is cheating or unethical. However, many leading companies have already incorporated the use of AI as part of their overall process for enhancing their content and SEO efforts. The key to remember is that human intervention must still be part of the process. It is also worth mentioning that while using AI can streamline your content creation process and make it more effective, it is by no means a replacement for your legal marketing team. Writing high-quality content, even with the use of AI, still takes time to get the results you want.
At PMP, we have been creating fresh, relevant and useful content for our clients for over 15 years. If you want your content to attract more potential clients and help grow your firm, our marketing team at PMP is here to help. Contact us to learn more.