5 Ways to Use Data to Support Your Firm’s Content Marketing Efforts | JD Supra Perspectives

In my recent recap of an Office Hours client webinar with Katie Hollar Barnard and Lauren Michaud Knotts, I quoted Katie’s excellent directive: “The data is there—use it to your advantage.”

In this follow-up post, I’d like to delve deeper into how exactly we can leverage analytics and reader data to improve our content, based on a further dive into Katie and Lauren’s excellent advice during our time together. To whit:

1. Use Data to Improve Headlines and Titles (with AI-Driven Insights)

Katie shared an approach she recently used, integrating JD Supra readership analytics with AI tools to determine effective headlines:

“I took a client who is syndicated on JD Supra, ran the readership numbers through ChatGPT, and said, ‘Help me identify headline trends and topic trends.’ It took about 90 seconds.”

The outcome? Clear, immediate insights into reader preferences, including actionable advice such as readers favoring listicles, headlines with action verbs, and titles phrased as questions. Katie notes, “Readers showed less engagement with abstract titles and long technical titles, both of which can be a hallmark of attorney writing.”

Takeaway: Regularly analyze your reader data to identify headline structures and wording that resonate most with your audience. AI tools can simplify this significantly, turning a tedious manual review into a quick exercise with powerful results.

2. Identify Evergreen Topics for Continued Visibility

Lauren emphasized the value of revisiting your top-performing content—especially evergreen pieces—highlighting how important it is to track performance over time:

“There is an article from 2020 that has been our top-performing article on JD Supra every subsequent year. It’s on attorney retainer fees and taxes… [W]e go back to that author and say, ‘Every year we can go back to this well. How can we keep building on this?’”

Takeaway: Use your reader data to uncover and revisit your evergreen successes. Encourage authors to refresh, extend, or spin off popular content topics regularly to maintain audience interest and reinforce your firm’s expertise.

3. Use Data as a Neutral Voice in Editorial Decisions

Analytics can also serve as an objective voice in conversations with busy authors, offering a neutral, evidence-based perspective on editorial changes or content direction. As Lauren noted, presenting analytics-driven suggestions rather than subjective editorial opinions can make discussions with attorneys much smoother and more effective.

“We do a lot of that editing for SEO terms, making those titles and headers better… we track the way things are performing—we want it to rank and be seen. [We explain to attorneys:] If there’s anything we changed that’s incorrect, let us know. They’re trained in legal writing but persuasive writing is very different. They know they don’t have the time to be persuasive writing professionals as well.”

Takeaway: Leverage data-driven insights as objective recommendations to strengthen author communications. Attorneys appreciate concrete evidence (aka precedent) that helps their work perform better.

4. Use Analytics to Cultivate Real Business Development Opportunities

Katie emphasized the strategic use of reader engagement data to directly support business development:

“We do monthly reports about content performance, and as part of that, we include the readers from JD Supra who have interacted not just once or twice, but look for a pattern of three or more engagements—looking at that as your list of warm leads.”

These analytics become an invaluable BD tool, identifying potential leads who have repeatedly shown interest, helping your attorneys focus outreach efforts strategically and effectively.

Lauren expanded on this by reminding us not to overlook leads based on immediate perceptions of relevance:

“You can’t write them off if you say, ‘Oh, that company is not a target,’ or ‘That person’s job title is not a target,’ because you can’t forget the value of that referral network. That person won’t be in that job forever.”

Takeaway: Analyze reader data not only to gauge content performance but also to identify meaningful engagement patterns. Provide attorneys with curated, actionable lists of prospects, helping them understand and leverage the broader potential of engaged readers for long-term relationship building.

5. Find Quick Wins by Monitoring Immediate Readership Spikes

Both Katie and Lauren recommended keeping an eye on sudden spikes in readership for new articles, as these can highlight timely issues capturing your audience’s attention right now.

Quickly noticing these surges allows you to rapidly amplify successful topics through follow-up content or timely pitches to the media. Katie advised, “Look at what’s getting attention today—not just month-over-month performance. You might find unexpected topics suddenly resonating, providing opportunities for immediate outreach and follow-up.”

Lauren echoed the sentiment, suggesting, “When you see these spikes, proactively approach authors with quick ideas for related content, interviews, or media pitches.”

Takeaway: Monitor real-time readership analytics to capitalize quickly on trending topics, supporting both author visibility and firm-wide strategic initiatives.

Your Next Step(s): Get Strategic with Your Data

• Schedule regular analytics reviews with your marketing and business development teams.
• Employ AI to quickly glean insights from large datasets, identifying content trends and engagement patterns.
• Create practical, action-oriented reports that your authors and BD teams can easily understand and leverage.
• Monitor daily readership spikes to spot timely opportunities for immediate outreach, content follow-ups, or strategic media pitches.

As Katie and Lauren made clear, your readership analytics offer a goldmine of insights—use them strategically to improve your content marketing program, optimize your writing, and grow your business. Grateful for the time we had together!

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[JD Supra clients: log into your account dashboard to watch a video recording of the complete conversation. Look for the Office Hours prompt in your account homepage and click for the archive of all previous conversations.]

Paul Ryplewski is VP of Client Services at JD Supra. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Follow his latest writings on JD Supra.