Have you ever visited a social media page and thought, “This feels cold and disconnected. I have absolutely no desire to continue reading”? Yeah, us too. This happens all too often, especially when dealing with law firms, and is generally due to the “creative” marketing company hired to do the copywriting not creating any semblance of a brand strategy.

In polite terms, they weren’t worried about quality, but rather the overpriced check you sent them last Wednesday.

QUALITY VS. QUANTITY

Though it sounds like a legal case, neither party should lose in an ideal situation. You can have your quality, and quantity too. You just need to find the right people. A company primarily focused on producing large quantities of any given item has to offset the cost by lowering the quality, provided they aren’t a huge multibillion-dollar organization properly staffed for such ventures. The same is true for content. When you hire a marketing company that acts as a content mill, you inevitably lose that all-important personal touch. Website blogs and social media posts need to sound authentic, in order to resonate with your audience and prove your firm is unique to your competitors.

Generic content is so vividly rampant through all web platforms, that people can sniff junk from a mile away. Junk content is not a good smell. Many of these cheaper content mills still charge a decent amount for their content, which exudes the notion that they aren’t a generic content mill. In many instances, you could be quoted at upwards of $1,500 a month, for content not even worth a single Ben Franklin. These places claim to be superior because they specialize in marketing law firms, while what they actually specialize in is making every law firm look the same as the previous firm they undertook.

Even if their product was reputable, business is all about competitive differences and strategy. Do you want to be the same as the firm down the street? We’d say that’s a losing strategy.

With many “specialized content” companies, you’ll run into situations such as these:

The work they produce for you will be re-used

Some of these agencies will at least make an effort to rewrite the information, but we’ve come across many that don’t. Content that is identical to that of your competition is not beneficial. Even worse, it could discredit you if a client discovers another firm with identical content, not to mention the fact that duplicate content is also a major red flag in Google’s eyes.

They don’t know you or your values, and thus have no choice but to craft neutral posts

At Keenability, we know our clients well. We have open and frequent communication with each of our clients, which allows us to write posts based on the information they provide us, the brand image they’re attempting to portray to clients, and the overall essence of their firm as a whole. We craft original, unique content specific to you. Not the firm down the street or the one next to them. You.

To increase efficiency, they’ll schedule a post to be shared through all of your social media sites simultaneously

Sure, it’s efficient. It may seem to work if you don’t study the effects of social media marketing. A few likes here and there, maybe even a follow. The content company you hire may tell you that you’re doing well, though their process and “generic post theory” are dead wrong. Different social platforms work in different ways, and how people engage through the several platforms varies considerably as well. You need to adjust your writing style, images, headlines, and postings to the platform you’re using. So no, that Twitter post shouldn’t be identical to the caption on your Facebook link. But hey, you usually get what you pay for. Content is no different.

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