First and foremost the internet is an input-output tool. You type in a question and up pops the answer. But not just any answer. The response Google et al feel to be most fitting.
To achieve high rankings, your law firm needs to (a) understand its audience’s wants and needs; and (b) convert that knowledge into content that solves their problems.
Enter Answer The Public: an auto-complete tool designed to give organisations like yours fresh insight into the questions your prospects want answers to.
But what is Answer The Public, how does it work, and should your law firm invest time and money into it?
What is Answer The Public?
Visit Google and type in a phrase. Immediately you’ll see a list of suggested searches that attempt to predict what you’re looking for. These educated guesses are based on information entered by other users and can be reverse-engineered to discover the important questions your audience is asking.
Here’s an example we created using the search term ‘how to find a law firm’…
Two stand out in particular:
- How to check a law firm – which could be turned into a short downloadable guide
- How to find a good law firm – which could be converted into an explainer video
But how does this relate to our earlier question: ‘What is Answer The Public?’ Well, Answer The Public is a search listening tool that tracks, collates, and alerts you to the questions your prospects are asking. At its core, like Google, it’s an auto-complete tool that helps you identify topics by experimenting with keywords.
In short, you’ll be able to:
- Identify the hot topics your audience is interested in
- Remove the guesswork from your content strategy
- Identify niches your rivals might have missed
- Fill gaps in your content and improve SEO
Answer The Public Tool In Action: How To Get Started
Step 1 – Type in your keyword or phrase
For consistency’s sake, we used the same key phrase as before: ‘how to find law firms.’
There is some low-hanging fruit your law firm could grab to get deeper insights into its prospects’ wants and needs.
Two stand out in particular:
- How to check a law firm – which could be turned into a short downloadable guide for your website and social channels
- How to find a good law firm – which could be converted into a short, punchy explainer video on TikTok or YouTube
But how does this relate to the question we asked earlier: ‘What is Answer The Public?’ Well, Answer The Public is a self-described search listening tool that tracks, collates, and alerts you to the questions your prospects are asking.
In this regard, Answer The Public has much in common with Google. It is, at its core, an auto-complete tool that helps you identify topics by experimenting with different keywords.
What is Answer The Public other than a Google clone? The key differentiator is that it converts keywords into ‘why,’ and ‘how’ questions clustered around what’s called a search cloud.
In short, you’ll be able to:
- Identify the hot topics your audience is interested in
- Remove the guesswork from your content strategy
- Identify niches your rivals might have missed
- Fill gaps in your content and improve SEO
Step 2 – Review your list of questions
Your key phrases will be presented in a series of search clouds.
These wheels are categorised as follows:
- Questions: ‘who,’ ‘how’, ‘will’ and similar
- Prepositions: ‘is,’ ‘to,’ ‘with’ and many others
- Comparisons: ‘vs,’ ‘or,’ ‘like’ and more
Step 3: Download your data in spreadsheet format
Now it’s time to start analysing. This means downloading your questions, prepositions, and comparisons in an Excel format so you can create a powerful content strategy.
Creating a content strategy: should you or shouldn’t you?
Although ‘What Is Answer The Public?’ has provided insight into how the tool could improve your firm’s marketing, the question is insufficient. How will you identify the best topics? Google handles 9 billion searches a day – so you’ll need a strategy to separate the good content from the bad.
Here are three steps you can take to get maximum value from the Ask The Public tool.
#1 Review your keywords and phrases
Do your keywords make sense and can you convert them into valuable content? ‘How to find a law firm’ (which we discussed earlier) provides an opportunity to help prospects compare with confidence. ‘How to find a law firm’s clients’ might, meanwhile, be useful if you’re researching competitors but less so if your aim is to generate leads.
#2 Can you cut through the digital noise?
You wanted to know ‘What is Answer The Public?’ And we replied with a step-by-step guide that showed you how easy the tool is to use. What we didn’t explain was the hidden challenge: finding topics not being answered well elsewhere.
Having found a powerful key phrase it can be tempting to incorporate it into your digital marketing strategy. But before doing that, type the query into Google and review the results.
If your question is already being answered well by others then revert and try to pinpoint niches not yet exploited. That way your content is more likely to be noticed.
#3 Turn your questions into fresh content
Having whittled your list down it’s time to put your thinking cap on. How will you turn that insightful data into content that’ll improve brand visibility, build trust, and generate leads?
Perhaps you could:
- Build an FAQs page broken down into specific categories
- Turn your questions into blogs and share them socially
- Create a video based on one of your top topics and:
- Chunk the content into several shorter clips
- Turn the video transcript into a blog
- Use your questions to run polls
What is Answer The Public going to do for your law firm?
Firstly, it isn’t a silver bullet. Ask The Public eavesdrops on your audience’s conversations but it’s your responsibility to filter data to locate niche questions that’ll get your audience’s attention. So make sure you understand your demographic and be prepared to burn the midnight oil to refine your strategy.
If you don’t have the time or resources to invest in market research why not hand the task to us instead. Book your free consultation now.
