This interview had been edited for length and clarity.
The basics
Tell us a little bit about your journey.
David Donoghue of Chicago IP Litigation: I'm a patent litigator–IP technology litigator more broadly. I sit in Chicago but I work across the country. [I’m an] Aerospace engineer by background, and I do a lot of computer, internet, electrical stuff, but also aerospace related whenever I can find it.
What is your company's core mission and what industry do you operate in?
David Donoghue: Our core mission is to protect and advance the interests of our clients. As a law firm, it's all client-centric and driven. We have 77 industry sector groups which would be our main focuses. Transportation, health care, real estate and hospitality, financial services, energy and natural resources and then the defense industry.
What role does content play in your overall business strategy, and why is content marketing crucial for modern businesses?
David Donoghue: So content is important to us and to me, in terms of showing thought leadership and building reputation and brand recognition, credibility. The internet provides so much information, and is now augmented by artificial intelligence. It's really important to show that you are deeply knowledgeable [and] that you have unique experiences and ideas. Content is absolutely a way to do that.
Growth and success
How has content marketing contributed to your brand's growth and success?
David Donoghue: So I should give one caveat when you say content marketing. I think that can mean a lot of things. From my perspective, what it means is that I put out content, an article or blog post, and that by itself is marketing for me. There's not necessarily an ask or a click here to purchase because my services aren't really offerable in that way. So my content gets put out into the world and people interact with it and then hopefully it may cause them to call me.
But the way that it's led to my growth and success is it helped make clear, helped develop a reputation for me. It's helped show my clients or potential clients how I think and how I operate, what matters to me. It shows my depth of knowledge in the space. For example, if you're filing or defending an IP action in the Chicago federal courts. I doubt there is anybody who has read as many of the decisions that have come out of that court in the IP space over the last 20 or so years except for me. And so it makes me deeply knowledgeable in a way that very few people are.
So we could say that in your case, content marketing is a way to establish yourself as a thought leader in that space.
David Donoghue: Right, right, and display that thought leadership. It helps create thought leadership, and having the content out in the world for people to consume, make sure they know or quickly find out that I'm a thought leader on whatever issue they're focused on or need help with.
Can you share a specific success story where content marketing played a key role?
David Donoghue: One of the very first clients I developed totally on my own was a client where I had written something and published my Chicago IP litigation blog, and I got a call from [the client] to say, we've got this big issue, we need help, you look like the right person. Now I had to close the deal. I went to the company's headquarters, sat down with them, and talked about the case and how to handle it, what to do, what it would cost. But it was that piece of writing that created a relationship that otherwise did not exist.
Do you remember the title of the piece?
David Donoghue: I do not, and I don't know that they told me exactly what article it was. They had looked at my blog where I had a bunch of stuff. It may have been about the underlying case, it may have been about a similar case, but whatever it was, I was the person they found, and my writing caused them to trust me enough to call, and then to trust me during the call.
My next question will be, what is the most effective content marketing tactic your company has implemented?
David Donoghue: So I don't know that I can speak for the whole firm, but for me, it is very much consistent and thoughtful written analysis. Putting good quality, thoughtful content out in ways that it's always accessible has a time benefit that a conference almost cannot.
How do you measure and define success in your content marketing strategy?
David Donoghue: So the first thing that I learned 20 or so years ago when I started my first blog was I don't measure it by the volume of traffic. I may look at relative volume of traffic to a blog post or readership if it's picked up by other syndicated services as an indicator of what readers may be interested in, but I don't spend a lot of time on whether a post got 3 views or 300 or 3000 views, because I really only care if it got the one view that it needed to drive a relationship or some work.
As long as I'm getting word that my writing helps me be seen as a thought leader and a leader in the space, those are my metrics. They're much softer than, how many views did I get? How quickly did I get them? If I post on a Tuesday versus a Friday or a Thursday, do I get more readers? I'm not super concerned by any of that.
Content marketing advice
What advice would you give to fellow CEOs or digital publishers just starting with content marketing?
David Donoghue: The first thing I tell people, and I have versions of this conversation somewhat regularly is: Take a breath and make sure you're ready to do it. If you're writing one article, then just write the article, but if you're establishing a blog or making a commitment to the reader about publishing, make sure that you can meet that commitment over time, every whatever it is, day, week, month, year, because when you find some content that you think is really interesting only to find out it hasn't been kept up it's deflating.
Start with something that's less than might match your excitement in the moment, and if you have that excitement to write every day, great, but build those posts up so that you have a cache of them which allows you to go on vacation, be sick, have a busy time and still maintain that consistency. So much of it, particularly if you're creating your own blog or LinkedIn following, is providing regular content that your users can come to expect.
How long have you been in this blogging business?
David Donoghue: About 20 years.
What would you say is the most important thing for these publishers to understand about all these content marketing efforts?
David Donoghue: I think it's gotta be genuine and it's gotta be consistent. Like I said, it's deflating to get to a resource and find out that it's dated, and or just not being kept up. It's also deflating to think you've found the right resource and get an article that is clearly machine generated or AI generated or is wrong.
And I've seen a number of cases, I won't name any names, but where I go to a blog of a reputable outfit, and then I dig in, I say, oh this is what I'm looking for, this is what I need. I dig into their resources or whatever the resources are behind it and find out that they're wrong. Somebody wrote it with AI and there was a hallucination, or somebody wrote it on their own and just didn't read the source material. So it's got to be consistent, but it also has to be accurate and there has to be some value provided to the reader.
How integral is content marketing to your overall business strategy?
David Donoghue: It was very important twentyish years ago when I started doing it. It was really the backbone of my process. And then over time, it's probably less critical or at least less top of mind. I keep it up because I think it is valuable and important from a reputation standpoint, but it's driving less and less of my business, the more the reputation of my work and my existing client relationships drive the business.
Can you share a key performance indicator or metric that demonstrates the impact of your content marketing efforts?
David Donoghue: For me, it's really comments from readers, clients, and colleagues that tell me it's working in the sense that it is creating or bolstering my reputation as a thought leader.
What about the impact? Can you share a specific moment where you said, “wow, I'm provoking a specific impact?”
David Donoghue: I wrote quite a bit about some new local patent rules that were put in place in the Chicago Federal Court, and I won a journalism award for that, called the Herman Kogan Award a number of years ago.
The other is when I get calls from a new client, or I send out a pitch and I get a response back and they know with a link to my writing about a particular case or a particular judge's cases or something else. And the potential client says, “I took your call because of the depth of your writing.”
R. David Donoghue is a patent trial attorney and partner with Holland & Knight’s Intellectual Property Group in Chicago who routinely speaks to groups of all sizes on an array of intellectual property topics. Chicago IP Litigation was created to help businesses understand their intellectual property rights and how to drive their cases to positive resolution.
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