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Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 52: How to Become a Content Creation Machine with Russell Knight

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host is always Jan Roos, and I am here today with Russell Knight. So Russell has a very interesting quest, which he may have achieved and we'll get into that a little bit, but it is to be the most visited. Family law practitioner in Chicago.

Jan Roos: Just based on our pre call, we have a lot of stuff to talk about. We'll get into that in a little bit. So thanks for coming on the show, Russell. Thanks for having me on. All right. So I'm really excited to jump into the meat and potatoes, but just as far as a quick background of how you ended up getting here, what kind of led you to the point where you're having such an interest in content marketing and what really led you to become an attorney in the first place?

Russell Knight: I became an attorney because I always [00:01:00] jump on the wrong bandwagon, and I was a computer programmer in the 2001 crash, and then when that didn't work out for me, I went to law school, and then promptly graduated in 2006, where there was no Law jobs, or I like to say that I was in the last, I got one law job.

Russell Knight: I was like, I say, I'm the last chopper out of Vietnam, just hanging on. At any rate, I worked for a small firm in the West side of Chicago, not a super nice place. And I, my boss did all the criminal work and he wanted me to do everything else. So I learned how to do bankruptcies, divorces, all sorts of like crazy stuff.

Russell Knight: And I. Taught myself Spanish in the meantime, because I noticed that during the recession, those folks always still had cash on them. And I was a really fun project to do. And then I want to put up my own firm in 2009, and I wish I had started with content marketing or content creation years and years ago, but I only really got into it as of maybe three years ago.

Russell Knight: [00:02:00] And it will, it's an amazing thing. Because I'm a lawyer. I'm solving people's problems. Normally, I'm solving the problem by writing something out. after I write it out, what should I do with it? Can I just repurpose that, that memo, that motion, that email into a article? Yes, you always can. So that's what I do with almost anything that comes across my desk is sooner or later, I turn it into an article and it's become more and more fun and more and more challenging where now I was like everybody else where I did 600 word articles that barely touched the surface.

Russell Knight: And now I've got 000 word articles about everything you'd want to know about what a summons is in an Illinois divorce or everything about how to deport your wife is one of my favorite ones that people love. And so I'll just write down everything I know and then people will, when, before the crisis, people would come and see me [00:03:00] with the article printed out.

Russell Knight: So I knew the articles were working, already showed that I was an expert on that subject. And what my theory is that once you get beyond a hundred articles, and I'm at like 130 for my Florida website, I also have two web law firms. I travel between Naples and Chicago. My Naples website has 130 articles.

Russell Knight: My Chicago website has 235 as of yesterday. And. I'm convinced that people, if they read one article, they'll probably do another search for and find a second article and then they'll realize it's the same guy writing everything that they read. Because family law is the most researched type of law, period.

Russell Knight: It's a lot of tire kickers. And so instead of having them come in and kick tires, I have them come in and read articles.

Jan Roos: That's really interesting. And I was going to say, it's cool to have this sort of wizard of Oz effect, it's if they end up seeing you in a couple of places, it's like the equivalent of having the billboard on every direction and like the main drag [00:04:00] in town.

Jan Roos: And I'll also say this, it's very impressive that you don't really consider, I know certainly Florida family law and Chicago family law are both. Extremely competitive places, but I think in the grand scheme of things, I know three years might not sound like a short time, but to have dominance over the search in that time period certainly is more than a lot of people with a lot really big budgets have been able to do with kinda like link building, SEO and that kind of stuff.

Russell Knight: I'm a

Jan Roos: lunatic,

Russell Knight: , I literally go home and then I will wonder, like yesterday I am like, can you get sued for something that your wife did? And I'll look it up and be like, oh, you can. And then I'll just write it out. While I'm watching TV or winding down for the day and then in the morning I flush it out And then I have something there.

Russell Knight: So yeah, it's a lot of work and I'm just trust me there's nobody in my rearview mirror because you'd have to be have some sort of combination of Obsession and words smithery to do this, but I'm it works. I hope it works. I wish it worked better I get a lot of researchers. I get a [00:05:00] lot of people who are curious, but I don't know if it's helping people then I'm happy

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jan Roos: And I'll also say this too have you ever experimented with other forms of marketing and had something to compare it to in terms of what people look like when they come in? Or do you, would you, yeah,

Russell Knight: that's a great question because I bought a massive Facebook package where an agency, very nice guy, it does work. The idea is it's like a funny little cartoon or image. And then it keeps appearing on the people that watch the video. And then sooner or later, they call you. This did bring in clientele. It brought in clientele that likes to watch videos and the type of clientele that likes to read long articles is completely 100 percent different.

Russell Knight: The article people are almost always educated, with enormous educations, and they always have money and assets. The video people, [00:06:00] sometimes, but usually is, to be honest, a lot of times it was more trouble than it's worth. So I think I learned that social media is a wonderful compliment to a really amazing website, but I don't think it's the meat and bones of what marketing is or should be for a professional services like a divorce lawyer.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong though. It's interesting because you have this traffic mechanism by all the clicks that are coming in from people who are searching these different topics, but it's also it's a conversion mechanism as well, right? Because through the process of engaging with your content, they're, getting demonstrated your expertise.

Jan Roos: If they have this situation where you have this the whole wizard of Oz effect, when they're seeing multiple ones that, you look extremely prolific. And then ultimately on some level, they're getting to see how you think, right? So it's they already know what they're dealing with by the time they walk in your office.

Jan Roos: So I want to ask about your process too. So I'm doing my math, We've got a hundred articles in the Naples office. We got 230 in the Chicago office. So that's about 330 articles over a [00:07:00] three year period. So we're talking about a hundred articles a week. That's sorry. A hundred articles a year ish and Two a week, right?

Jan Roos: So tell me about your process. So I know you mentioned this is stuff that's coming through your, your day to day musings and stuff that's happening to you. Tell me a bit about what does that process look like? What kind of time are you putting into it?

Russell Knight: If you're doing something that is where remotely involves research, like looking up a law, then you're answering a question.

Russell Knight: What is the question? That's just what you started with. What happens if you're renting and you're getting a divorce? It's that simple. So you looked it up there. You already know the answer. You described the problem. To the person who has the person's only reading it because they have that problem They're only reading it because they want an answer to that problem.

Russell Knight: You describe what the answer is you quote the statute If article people are always smart enough to read quotes, I don't do citations because it's hiding the ball. Instead I just do raw quotes from case law and statutes and relevant rules. Always quotes instead [00:08:00] of just a script saying, just doing like Wizard of Oz and being like, don't worry about what's behind the curtain.

Russell Knight: That's because I don't think that's fair to the reader or to yourself because I read these things too. Like years later, I'm like, oh man, what does happen if you have a gun? And you're getting divorced, if your Foyd, is your Foyd card determined who the owner is? And then I'll like, oh yeah, I look it up.

Russell Knight: I'm like, oh yeah, I answered this to myself two years ago. So it's better to just do it. You should be your first audience because you're researching it. And then that's what I think. And for me, I don't know. It's just fun. It's like doing a Sudoku puzzle. That's the whole point. Lawyers like to have a little challenge.

Russell Knight: Then answering a question is essentially a challenge. That's what we do.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And as far as the time investment, we're talking about three or 4, 000 word articles. Have you seen, I guess for the people who might be considering this, and I'm sure that was probably a little bit more daunting when you got started.

Jan Roos: Do you know I don't know if you have this on your memory, but how long did it take you to write one of these things when you're starting out? Or what does it take you these days?

Russell Knight: Oh, it probably took the same amount of time, but they're three to four times longer now.

Russell Knight: And it generally takes, it takes an hour.[00:09:00]

Russell Knight: to write. It takes more than an hour to write 3, 000 words, but it takes, for 1, 500, it's probably the median. And then that takes an hour, and then there's usually a half an hour of cleanup afterwards. So it's the same amount of time that you, I'm sure everyone spends to read the newspaper in the morning or to flip through their social media.

Russell Knight: It's, So if you're looking for something to distract you, write an article.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So yeah, just flip yourself over to the production side rather than the consumption side. I don't know if you're comfortable with sharing this, but as far as the, not like a dollars and cents figure, but for the two hours of time you're now putting in per week to get these out, what kind of phone calls do you end up getting on an average week from the sum total of

Russell Knight: these efforts?

Russell Knight: It's tough to say because the crisis changed everything. I think it's made the researchers more hesitant, but prior to that, it's really tough because the two markets are very different. There's almost no competition in my part of Florida. I'm in Naples, Florida. [00:10:00] I don't want to say no competition, but it's so extremely limited compared to Chicago.

Russell Knight: I'll get three or four contacts a day that end up turning into two to three paying clients. In florida in chicago pre crisis It was always very consistent at almost like four contacts a week Good contacts and then two hires a week, but the crisis has changed everything I think the massive people are just putting it off.

Russell Knight: I've already done the math in chicago because we have significant numbers Filings are down by 25

Jan Roos: Yeah, I think there's always that hesitation where like people even if they haven't looked it up or just like one of the Courts even open right now.

Russell Knight: That's one of my articles

Jan Roos: You

Russell Knight: Yeah.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Okay.

Jan Roos: That's awesome. And then it's just to bring this full circle for anyone who isn't paying attention. If you've got a couple hours to pick up a couple of clients, then maybe this is something that might be worth looking into. I'm also in the, in kind of the grand scheme of things. It's funny.

Jan Roos: It's I feel like on every day somebody is making the declaration at X, Y, Z. Form of marketing is dead. [00:11:00] And I bet in 2017, there were people saying, Oh man, I wish I got into this in 2014. And then all the way back down to I guess what the first blogs that were being done, probably Ernie Spenson actually back in 2005.

Jan Roos: But

Russell Knight: I remember I was reading that. I wish, cause I remember signing up for helper reporter out in 2008 and I wish I had stuck with it because now I do it all the time. Yeah. And that's, so that's who you never know what's going to happen. But I see some people on tech talk and maybe that's going away.

Russell Knight: Maybe that's the future. I don't, you don't know until so do something that you like, hope that it sticks. They always say one guy for Lee Rosen says, whatever you do in marketing, if you just keep doing that one thing, you'll get results. And I found that to be very true.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So switching gears a little bit.

Jan Roos: So we've got the content production stuff, which and honestly, thank you. These have been like super actionable tips that I hope people are taking a heart. And again, Three years from now, this could be you. So let's think about that. So we got it a [00:12:00] little bit of this. And so we've got the content, but we've also got the promotion angle.

Jan Roos: So let's talk about SEO for a little bit. Have you been tailoring any of these, the titles and the things that you've been getting into? Is this inform any sort of a keyword research or you more kind of scratching your own itch for these?

Russell Knight: No, I do keyword research because I just use Google when you type into something, there'll be the suggestions at the bottom people also searched for.

Russell Knight: So when I typed in Chicago divorce lawyer and there were six suggestions at the bottom, people also searched for. I did articles with those exact words. And included it. What's odd is that like some of them hit and some of them didn't. And I can't tell why I, people always look for affordable divorce lawyer in Chicago.

Russell Knight: So I wrote an article about that. Nobody reads it. I wrote one pro bono divorce lawyer in Chicago, which I don't even do. And it's, I think like number two. If you look up pro bono divorce lawyer Chicago, it's just a list of actual pro bono divorce [00:13:00] services that people in the Chicagoland area can find and what pro bono means, etc.

Russell Knight: So I do that, but I've had more luck with asking other attorneys what gets traffic that works really well because most people stumble on it. And I've had really good luck with targeting a big, fat, juicy phrase and they're just waiting a year. Illinois divorce with a child is gets massive traffic and I wrote it and I added to it and then I waited for a year before it got anything and now it consistently gets multiple hits a day.

Russell Knight: So you it's you've got to be your white whale or you could write about something silly and ridiculous that no one's going to ever actually research and someone will look at it like once every month, but it might be the, there, it might be their problem. Like how to seal a divorce. Hardly anybody seals a divorce, but people hire me based on the one article I wrote about sealing a divorce.

Russell Knight: So I dunno, I would, if you want to go crazy, you could hunt the big words and you could hunt the long tail. [00:14:00] But to be honest, I'd probably recommend long tail. Because it's just really so easy. You could write a 500 word article about something so silly that might be the entire case for someone else, like timeshares and divorce, and they, and someone will find it and they'll seek you out.

Jan Roos: Yeah, and just for the people who are a little bit less acquainted with the SEO, when we're talking about the long tail as this guy says those lower volume stuff that's every once in a while, as opposed to the short head, which would be those keywords like Illinois Divorce with a child, but as far as how you're finding these long tail things is that same kind of google suggestion thing?

Jan Roos: Or do you have any sort of different methods that you're using to find those?

Russell Knight: I use google just google suggestion or sometimes i'll if i'm looking for something if I think I have a keyword I'll try it out and then see what comes back and see what similar suggestions there are. And then I will include the similar suggestions in the article with the keyword that I'm targeting.

Russell Knight: Because I'm convinced that Google looks for things [00:15:00] similarly like that. And I'm quite sure that I'm right because almost every article I write dominates the keyword.

Jan Roos: Yeah, it's also really refreshing to hear this from you, Russell, because it's like a lot of times I feel like people launch into this big SEO quest and they're always looking for, Oh, what's the tool that I need?

Jan Roos: Or what's the, this whiz bang strategy that I have, but literally if you get, he is just using the Google thing and you know what the secret ingredient is consistent work, obviously, but I wanted to follow up on, on the publish weightier thing. Now, was there anything additional you did in that year or was it just the rising tide of your domain as a whole that ended up getting that to the point where it was ranking as highly as it is today?

Russell Knight: I write a lot of guest articles. I don't do that as often. The guest articles on other sites are usually retooled articles I've already read where I eliminate the Illinois law and I make it in general. So I'll write plastic surgery and divorce. But then I just eliminate the specific Illinois law related to that, and then I'll submit it.

Russell Knight: You can shop it around. [00:16:00] Someone sooner or later will publish it and give you a link back. That is more of a Sisyphusian quest than writing articles because you have no idea what the links do. But Google has specifically told us if there's quality relevant backlinks and you're creating quality content, Google will send you traffic.

Russell Knight: And that is absolutely true. My traffic has doubled in the last three months. Anytime I've just because I've been on a tear because of the crisis got me inside, but even before then traffic regularly increased so long as I got relevant links and I've got and I put in quality content. I have tried non relevant links.

Russell Knight: It doesn't do anything.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's interesting though. Cause it's I feel like a lot of the times that we've had people, just friends I've discussed SEO too. It's there's two approaches as well. All right. So what can we do to make your site look like a site that Google would want to show people?

Jan Roos: Or you can actually just in your instance, it looks like you've actually just made a site that [00:17:00] people want to look at. So shortcut straight to the end. Now, as far as I wanted to talk about other forms of content. So we've talked about writing a lot so far. A little bit of that guesswork.

Jan Roos: Posting also definitely helping. But have you ever ventured into, obviously we're doing some audio stuff right now, but audio, video, any kind of alternative content things.

Russell Knight: I have not, but I have, I'm sitting next to a box with a big light cause I'm planning on doing videos. Google says that they reward videos.

Russell Knight: So I do create videos using in video. io and Lumen videos that turn my articles into videos because Google says that if you have videos pointing at your site, it gives you some sort of boost and it's true. Because it was marketed when I did it, I would try that, but I'm always skeptical because when I go on YouTube and I see a competitor or another divorce lawyer who has a big speech about divorce, YouTube shows you how many people view it and it'll be like 17 and the video will be [00:18:00] like a year old.

Russell Knight: I have some articles that get that many views a day. So I am, to be honest, I'm skeptical, but maybe an article doesn't sell and a video does sell. So maybe there's a difference there. I don't know.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And there's also the idea of maybe there's some sort of a off page benefit that's improving the domain, but I've actually tended to see the same things too.

Jan Roos: And it's it's pretty easy to smoke out when you see somebody who's just like clearly. Through something in a keyword research tool and found something that was right in the strike zone and just okay, recording it. It's oh yeah this is the deal with the best Pittsburgh divorce attorney.

Jan Roos: Anyways let me tell you a story. It's just like, all right, dude, I see what you're up to right here. And then another thing I wanted to touch upon is that you mentioned getting into different languages. So how has that kind of affected the content? Have you been able to also serve these different markets with the same strategy?

Jan Roos: Are you adapting it yourself? What does that whole process look like for

Russell Knight: you? I speak fluent Spanish and I did a series of articles in Spanish and I didn't get [00:19:00] a ton of, actually I did get feedback from it cause like I just didn't, Do an overwhelming amount of it. I don't have a ton of competitors that I've known.

Russell Knight: Nobody does Spanish content period. And then some people came in and they tell me like, Oh, me gusta sus artículos, which is I like your articles, but I haven't found that's been the massive font. I also do PI referrals that I used to get from a Spanish website I had, but then the SEO changed and I wasn't able to keep up.

Russell Knight: I don't know if content works in Spanish, but here's the thing, content never hurts. So I do have an article that says what's it like to be a Spanish speaking attorney in Chicago? What's it like to be a Spanish speaking attorney in Naples? And obviously that triggers the keyword Spanish speaking attorney in Chicago and in Naples.

Russell Knight: And I do get business from that. But the real advantage is that there's such limited competition for when you're, somebody wants, prefers to speak in their language, in their own. language. So I've had a lot of success [00:20:00] with that. And learning a language is really, I really like a long term project if you can't tell.

Russell Knight: So if you're really into getting a long term project decide to learn a language. It takes about 2000 hours. Yeah. Chicago is the second highest Mexican American population in America. I head of Houston. The Mexican food in Chicago is so superior. To probably any other place in Mexico City. I'm in Florida, where you'd think there'd be this big Spanish influx.

Russell Knight: I cannot get an edible taco within a hundred miles of me. It's a crime. It's, but it's mostly like it's Cuban folk down here and that's not my preferred cuisine.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Russell Knight: Yeah.

Jan Roos: Very interesting. I have to keep that in mind. I've been meaning to make it down to Chicago for a while. If that didn't send you the good tacos, but okay.

Jan Roos: So as far as also like dining on that longterm project thing. So one of the things that I hear when I've been discussing this with people and it's come up, it's like basically this whole objection of I'm not a writer, I'm never going to be a writer. Would you consider yourself having been a writer when you started this [00:21:00] project?

Jan Roos: And like, how has that changed since you've been doing it? Obviously, it's easier now, but did you consider yourself at the beginning? I

Russell Knight: guess so, because I had a blog that was quite popular in 2004 to 2006 when blogs were a thing. And then I actually learned how to write really well by doing it, because if you, then you have a feedback, because you have people comment or Enjoy your what you're writing or like then they don't comment.

Russell Knight: People don't tell you they suck. They just don't pay attention So it's a lot of like really good feedback. So but now I really enjoy writing There's a guy who I really called David Perel. You can find on Twitter. He's quite prolific He's a millennial and his entire thesis is that you don't really know what you think until you've written it down And I think that's correct, and it's also the antidote for a lot of the things that I think trouble society, like how instead of having a conversation or a long, drawn out thought or even a hypothesis, instead we just communicate via memes, via [00:22:00] soundbites.

Russell Knight: That's not thinking. Thinking is writing down. What's an issue? We're all lawyers. What's the issue? What's the rule? The analysis? And what's the conclusion? You can't do that in a comment on Reddit. You can't do that in a tweet. You have to sit down and write an essay. And there's still a lot of demand for that.

Russell Knight: And there's, that is the only way you're going to come up with an intellectual solution to any kind of problem. And lawyers are in the solutions business. So if you can't write, you probably can't solve a problem. And if that's not what you're doing, what did you spend seven years in school for? Just to stand up in front of a judge and ask for a continuance?

Jan Roos: Yeah, would it be safe to say look, if you wipe the blog off the face of the earth tomorrow by some horrendous twist of fate in the Google algorithm, would you still be writing every day for your own sake?

Russell Knight: Yeah, I journal, and I strongly recommend this. I journal for just my own mental clarity and it's extremely healthy.

Russell Knight: I really recommend it [00:23:00] to anybody. Just buy a moleskin journal and write about what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and then you might find in in a month or two that the notes you're taking about yourself are a lot more reflective and are a lot more self clarifying than the notes you took about yourself a month prior.

Jan Roos: Yeah. That's interesting too. Cause it's there's obviously and we always talk about The Law Firm Growth podcast and there's a marketing component to getting this stuff sorted out. But at the same time, all marketing growth is personal growth at the end of the day too. So you're picking up a half you weren't expecting for the beginning.

Jan Roos: But yeah. It on the note of you mentioned Perel as far as somebody that you look to as far as the kind of guidance on this kind of stuff, but are there any other good resources that you found that have helped inform your approach or, writing itself or the actual content marketing aspect of this?

Jan Roos: Like who else do you follow in and who do you? Oh,

Russell Knight: Neil Patel. Does gives excellent SEO advice regarding content marketing. It's real simple. Find out where your competitors are publishing content, [00:24:00] go to that same place and just write, it's a real simple requirement to get the, your content published, just write something better and submit it to them.

Russell Knight: You don't have to say it's better. You don't have to be a jerk. You just set it in and nine times out of 10, they'll say, Oh, we love stuff like this and you'll already know they do because they already published it before. Or you can find other. People in the similar markets to yours that are doing something similar and you can copy, beg, borrow and steal.

Russell Knight: I do that all the time. There's danger that Neil Patel tells you exactly what to do. Don't pay for links, write your own content, submit it to other places. It will drive traffic. He's absolutely right.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And then something just to close it out. So as far as People that might be on the fence about this.

Jan Roos: I'm sure you're talking to people that are people I know. Do you ever get comments from lawyers that are reaching out to you and asking how they can get a strategy like this? What would you tell somebody who's on the fence about this right now?

Russell Knight: I'd say it's a lot

Jan Roos: of work.

Russell Knight: If I could stand outside of myself, I maybe I write this in my journal that it's it's like, it's a lot of work.

Russell Knight: It's a labor of love. [00:25:00] You can't do it unless you like writing about it. You can't force yourself to do it. But I think if you're a lawyer and you've decided to have a specialty, you owe it to yourself to Really dig into it beyond just hoping, Oh, if I work on it enough, maybe enough will stick in my brain and I'll be an expert at some time or another.

Russell Knight: I think you owe it to yourself to have some kind of program to learn. Your specialty, whether it's case law, just the statutes articles that are written in whatever bar journals you have. But if you have a system doing that, why don't you try writing it out as well to solidify what you know in your brain.

Russell Knight: And if you're writing it out, When I put it out there, and if you put it out there, you'll probably have other people finding you. It happens to me all the time.

Jan Roos: Yeah, and that's awesome. I think that's a great note. So if anyone's just on the fence about this, just think about this. And look, it's not for the marketing stuff for your own edification and development.[00:26:00]

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome, Russell. So if anyone wants to find you, what's the best way to get in touch?

Russell Knight: Just find me at my Chicago website. It's easier https://rdklegal.com/. is my website, or just Google Russell Knight. There's me, even though it looks like there's two of me, in Florida and in Chicago, and I'll be happy to talk to you.

Russell Knight: Just shoot me an email any second.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. Thanks for all the awesome tips today, Russell. I super appreciate it. And yeah, like I said, for anyone, best plant time to plant a tree is 30 years ago or three years ago in your instance, second best time is today. That'll be it for The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Jan Roos: And we'll be on with another episode next week on Tuesday at 8 a. m.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth podcast for show notes, free resources, and more head on over to casefuel.com/podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next [00:27:00] episode.