Content Curation For Lawyers

Originally published by Stacey E Burke Blog.

With millions of informational sources in the digital sphere today, the amount of available content can be overwhelming. For a law firm managing its own social media channels and blogs, sharing relevant digital content can establish the firm as an authoritative voice on specific topics – even when the firm is not creating the content itself. Finding that content, however, requires content curation.

What Is Content Curation?

When you engage in the curation of relevant legal industry content, you collect blog posts, videos, images, and really anything related to a topic, practice area, or niche. This process lets you sort through the massive amount of online information, pick the best pieces, and compile them. Once all of your content finds are sorted and arranged, select the best and most relevant items and share them – accompanied by your own unique commentary – on social media, on your blog, in an e-newsletter, or elsewhere.

I have always done my content curation manually, as I think it is important to really look through each item selected to be certain it is applicable to the overall theme and appropriate for the law firm to share. However, there are apps and tools that can make content curation quick and easy, including Scoop.it, Themeefy, Paper.li, YourVersion, ContentGems, Trap.it, Storify, and more.

Where To Find Great Stuff To Share:

With having an audience (or trying to build one) comes the responsibility of having something worthwhile to share. You can’t just throw up a list of links and say, “read these, they’re great.” Finding content to share is only the first step in a content curation strategy, but you can’t really do anything until you find it. Here are some recommended locations for scouting out and acquiring interesting and relevant content of all types:

• Communities (e.g., LinkedIn Groups)
• Curators
• Data Aggregation Sites (e.g., Hacker News)
• Feedly / RSS Tools
• Google News Sources
• Medium
• Newsletters
• Research
• SlideShare
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• YouTube

Why Should Lawyers Engage in Content Curation?

1. When cultivating connections online, it is important to establish an appropriate balance between sharing your own content and sharing others’ content. Content curation enables lawyers to demonstrate they are not totally self-centered and can identify other good content besides their own.
2. Because there is so much information available, finding what is important and/or credible can be next to impossible. Curating content does the heavy lifting for busy folks who follow you on social media or other platforms – you pick through the content that’s out there to find what is most valuable. Therefore, your audience only has to read a prescreened segment of available information from a trusted source, saving them time and establishing your firm as an authoritative voice for any future questions.
3. Sharing others’ content helps to build relationships with other users you might never meet in real life and encourages them to re-share your content since it promotes them. You should share others’ content on Twitter, making sure to tag the account of the author using Twitter’s @ feature. You should share others’ content on Facebook and LinkedIn by tagging the individual profile or Page associated with the person or entity responsible for the original content creation.
4. Sharing engaging content with your followers keeps them coming back for more. An individual lawyer or a law firm as a whole can become an industry thought leader by sharing content that a large audience finds valuable. Content curation can have as big of an impact on your overall success on social media as the creation of original content.

Don’t Have Time To Curate Content?

If you’re like most lawyers, you are too busy working to find time in your schedule each day for content curation. That’s ok – we can do it for you. We have curated content related to natural disasters, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, motor vehicle safety, and more, as it relates to the practice of law and/or how it can impact a particular geographic area or other population subset.

Curated by Texas Bar Today. Follow us on Twitter @texasbartoday.

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