There are a number of reasons why many different companies have started incorporating blogs into their social media strategy. For one thing, there’s a proven correlation between blog posts and website traffic. The more posts a company blog makes, the more traffic they can expect for their website. If a company publishes at least 16 blog posts per month, they’ll actually receive 3.5 times more traffic than a company that posts zero to four posts per month. Blogs can be considered a less intimidating form of advertising. If they utilize search engine optimization strategies properly, they can draw people casually searching for certain keywords online. Once they discover the blog posts, they will be informed and educated in a manner that they wouldn’t be if they simply discovered the same site through traditional online advertisement. SEO has actually changed the way that a number of companies advertise online, due to their organic natures, and the way that they inform without being obnoxious. For these reasons, they can theoretically be utilized by any company, including those that are less than traditional companies in the first place. This is why a number of law firms have invested in the creation of law firm blogs.
There are a number of ways in which blogs in general and in particular professional SEO can benefit law firms. For one thing, while most people understand in general what lawyers do, many don’t understand the nuances of the law and how to find lawyers that are suitable for their needs. Even after you find a law firm that might be able to help you, you may very well struggle with understanding the abilities and limitations that the law firm possesses. When looking into the basics of starting a law firm blog, a lot of lawyers may be caught between over- and under-informing. How much does a potential client need to know ahead of time, and how much will actually confuse and overwhelm them? Let’s look into what you should consider when starting a law firm blog, and what can ultimately set your blog apart from others, and therefore make your blog more successful in the long term.
1. SEO
What is search engine optimization anyway, and how does it apply to starting a law firm blog? SEO is the practice of essentially making your blog more prevalent in search engine results through the use of keywords, links, and other strategies that will make your blog pull in those results. It may sound easy at first, but content marketing is actually fairly complex, and it’s easy to mess it up. The appeal of SEO lies in the fact that it’s much more organic than typical pay per click ads. People will find your blog because they were actually seeking out a specific topic or keyword, rather than because an ad was thrown at them out of nowhere. This actually makes SEO much more successful than typical traditional advertising. You will focus more on people who actually want or need your services, which leads to a higher lead closure rate. It’s a matter of targeting the right potential clients, rather than casting a wide net and “catching” the entire audience, which will inevitably contain a lot of people who never would have pursued your services in the first place. This means that ultimately, you’ll be getting a higher value out of SEO than you would out of alternate advertising services.
With that being said, it’s not enough to add SEO to your website when starting a law firm blog. You’ll also need to understand what kinds of keywords will appeal most to your potential clients, and what will fold properly into your blog. Therefore, you should consider working with an SEO company. An SEO content company will be able to provide blog posts, articles, lists, and sometimes even videos that will better furnish your blog and make it easier for you to educate your client base. Law firms could attempt to come up with their own content, but the fact is that they lack the ability to properly strategize. You may be able to come up with a winning article, but is it going to incorporate keywords and phrases in an appealing, organic way? For that matter, coming up with blog content takes more time and energy than you might think. This is why, when starting a blog firm, you’ll likely find more success with digital marketing company than you would when attempting to create content on your own.
2. Understand Explaining Versus Info-Dumping
Whether or not you’re working with a professional SEO content provider, you need to think about how much your potential client base needs to know about your law firm, versus how much will overwhelm them. The fact is that law firm blogs do need to educate people in some way or the other. A lot of people don’t fully understand the differences between different legal specialties. It can be all too easy to “info-dump” on your clients rather than fully educating them. A firm may very well be intending to educate its audience on what their personal injury attorneys have to offer professionally. However, the average person doesn’t understand the minutiae of an attorney’s job. If they’re reading and understand nothing, they may very well end up losing interest and moving on to another website within a matter of seconds. At the same time, these people shouldn’t be left in the cold without the information they need.
Fortunately, there are ways that you can both focus on starting a law firm blog and educate your clients at the same time. Your blog posts can be framed in the manner of offering helpful tips, or perhaps a “guide” to the services that the law firm offers. If your law firm has a lot of criminal defense attorneys available, for example, a blog post that offers a “crash course” on choosing the right attorney for your case might be useful. A major benefit of these types of blogs is that they teach people, and therefore make them feel more trusting of the firm that specializes in these types of blog posts. If you feel as if a blog has already offered you a number of beneficial resources, you may find that you’re more likely to work with the firm that hosts the blog itself. The point of a blog is to be somewhat personal and to give a touch that can’t easily be found through a typical article written in a more formal style. The last thing you want is to lose those qualities by bogging your blog down in heavy language.
3. Consider Your Website’s Structure
When starting a law firm blog, you’ll probably be initially focused on its content. And of course, content is remarkably important. But you also need to think about what your website looks like, and how functional it is. After all, there’s no point in starting a law firm blog if it’s not reasonably easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing. One major reason why a lot of law firms hire web design companies to help them launch their blogs is that they either need help in starting a blog in the first place or because they need to revamp the websites that they already have.
There are several different factors to consider when plotting out your blog’s overall design. You’ll want to consider, firstly, the blog’s ease of access and whether or not it’s difficult to use. Say your client becomes interested in a post on family law. If they then want to find more posts about family law, they may find themselves sifting through hundreds or even thousands of posts, before eventually giving up and leaving your blog behind. If your blog posts are grouped together by tags, this makes it much easier for clients to read up more and learn through your blog, thus validating your blog’s purpose in the first place. If you really want readers to trust you and the content you’re posting about, you should also make sure that the blog website in question doesn’t strain the eyes or create an uncomfortable, difficult to read experience. This may involve changing the color of your text against the colors of the backdrop, and creating a gentle experience that isn’t hard on the eyes. You may also want to consider how to embed content without potentially slowing down your blog. These are all factors that a professional web design company will be able to help you with, regardless of your own skill level.
4. Don’t Forget The Personal Touch
As previously mentioned, one of the major reasons why some considering starting a law firm blog is that they need a way to personally connect with clients. Of course, you’ll want to be professional and project a confident, responsible image to the web at large. But you should also think about the possibility that it may be easier to connect with people if you let them have at least an idea of who you and the others working at your law firm are, outside of simply being lawyers.
This can be accomplished in a number of different ways. You could post a quick addition to your blog about you and the rest of the law firm attending a company picnic. Alternatively, your attorneys could pick specific topics to blog about. Clients like it in particular when these posts are somewhat revealing, and therefore don’t shy away from actual stories. This shouldn’t be difficult for you and your fellow attorneys to provide, but it’s understandable that you might feel uncomfortable with this at first. You should consult with your digital marketing agency before providing the type of content that they can turn into an interesting post. You should also consider adding guest contributors. Not only will this occasional disruption of routine potentially make the blog more exciting; but guest bloggers, no matter what their background, can offer a perspective that would potentially be far less accessible than any of the alternatives. You can always review whatever your guest blogger added, to ensure that it’s well-written. But if it’s the content you were looking for already, you may very well find that your initial guest blog posts may become more permanent stints on the way to starting your law firm blog.
5. Stay Consistent
In so many ways, starting a law firm blog is all about consistency; however, this can be easier said than done. All too often, the heads of different law firms order that a blog is started, only to find that there’s more to do, and the blog isn’t an instant success. Too many law firm blogs have been shut down because their founders were impatient and acted before properly prioritizing what their readers want
If your blog stops posting for months at a time, people will likely forget that it existed in the first place and move on to the next blog. At the same time, if you bombard readers with too many posts in too short a time, they’ll probably become embarrassed and overwhelmed. For that reason, you should consider having a set schedule for your blog to know when and what is posted. If you’re better able to remember your blog’s schedule, you’ll probably be able to focus on running your law firm, without worrying about the annoying alerts you’ll get regard confused readers who carry questions that you simply can’t answer.
So much of starting a law firm blog is reliant on appearance. What does your website look like? What will people think about the opinions that you reflect? A major reason why the heads of law firms sometimes hesitate over starting blogs in the first place is that they’re worried that they’ll be a waste of time. Yet we know, due to the traffic generated by these types of blogs, that they aren’t. Therefore, you should invest not only in the blog itself but on optimizing it for search engines. Ultimately, this will help you attract more clients than you thought possible!