Why do law firms need to blog? It’s a great question.
Blogging is one of the most widely-used content marketing tools. Many law firms have reaped the lead-generating benefits of successful blogs.
Yes, they can be time consuming and yes, it can be hard to come up with good law firm blog ideas. Blogging isn’t easy, but blogs are certainly worth the time and effort.
When you use a law blog to engage with your prospects, it increases their trust in your firm. Blogging also positions your law firm as an authority.
Providing value with your blog is a very powerful way to convert prospects. Leads generated from content marketing are eight times (PDF) more likely to close.
Consistency Counts
If you’re going to maintain a successful blog, consistency is key. If you’re not going to take the time to blog on a consistent basis, there’s no real point in starting a blog.
When you post consistently, your audience will continue to return to your blog to read your new content. When your posts are more sporadic, your readers won’t really know when they should check for new material. It makes you seem unreliable.
Another reason for consistency is that it makes your blog more attractive to search engines. If you regularly post useful and relevant content, it will greatly improve your search engine rankings. This means your law firm will be much easier to find when people are looking for legal help in their area.
Fortunately, maintaining a consistent blog doesn’t have to be difficult. There are things you can do to make it easier to post consistently.
Keep a Blogging Schedule
In her post on SheOwnsIt, Diana Adams discusses the idea of keeping a blogging schedule in order to help bloggers stay consistent with their posts. She offers several suggestions:
- Get a planner that can help you keep track of the topics you want to post about. It can be a simple pen and paper planner, or something electronic. There are several tools online that you can try out.
- Figure out how often you want to post. When you figure out a number you can live with, stick to it. Try to post at least once per week. Any less than that will make it harder to keep readers interested.
- Update your blogging schedule each week. When you plan out your blogging each week, it makes it easier to keep up with your posts.
Finding ways to stay on track with your blog will help you maintain consistency in your posting. It’s easier than you think!
Create a List of Blog Topics
One of the things that makes it hard to maintain consistent blog posts is having a steady flow of compelling topics. Create a list of blog topics to write about that will be useful to your readers.
When adding a topic to the list, ask yourself these questions:
- Is this topic relevant to my potential clients?
- Can I write a post that will actually help the reader?
- Am I able to take a unique approach to this topic?
- Is this topic something that my prospects will have questions about?
The hallmark of a great legal blog is that it provides helpful information to its readers. If you keep a steady flow of good content, your law firm will benefit immensely.
Invite Guests
When your blog gets a decent readership, you should invite guest bloggers to contribute. Doing this can help you grow your audience and take some of the load off of you.
Having guest bloggers contribute to your blog can help you in several ways. It can provide a great way to increase your readers.
Here are some other benefits:
- A unique perspective. Having someone else give their opinion on a common subject that you blog about can make your blog more interesting.
- When bloggers write a guest post, they will promote the guest post on their own blog. This means their readers will come to your blog to read it. This can drastically increase your readership. The guest bloggers’ readers may add your blog to their list.
- Having a different perspective can help you come up with even more topics to write about. Getting ideas from other bloggers is always a great idea.
Finding people to write guest posts on your blog isn’t too difficult. Many bloggers are looking for opportunities to gain more exposure for their blog. Here’s a few tips that can help you invite another blogger to post on your blog.
Solve Problems
This is probably the most important part of maintaining a successful blog that converts prospects into leads. It’s simple. If you want your blog to succeed, it needs to provide value.
The amount of influence you build with your prospects is directly tied to the amount of value you can provide for them. Write only content that benefits the reader in some way.
Each post you write should help the reader solve a problem, answer a question, or provide information they didn’t have previously. Using your expertise, you should be able to give your prospects something that they can use to make their lives easier.
Conclusion
If you want a more effective way to generate more leads and convert them into clients, a law firm blog is your best bet. Creating consistent, high-quality content that provides value is a proven method of attracting more leads. Start using your blog to offer something valuable. You’ll be glad you did.
Gavel Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
Most law sites I see are now hiring SEO experts to tend to their sites. Let’s admit it. Link building is hard work and it is far better if you have someone to do it for you especially if your expertise is in another area.
That’s a good point Aira. This is especially true of smaller firms or sole practitioners. It makes more sense for them to outsource their marketing and SEO instead of trying to do it themselves. Content marketing requires a large amount of time and effort to maintain effectively and outsourcing it allows law firms to do what they do best: practice law. Thanks for the comment!
Aren’t lawyers generally conservative and haven’t jumped into the blogosphere? I have been talking with some law firms here in Gothenburg and many are interested in social media activities for legal reasons, but most of them are not actively updating their web sites with new media content.
Hello Martin,
It is true that many lawyers and law firms have not decided to focus much time on blogging, but this is starting to change. What I’m seeing more is that firms are using blogs, but they’re using them to truly provide value, which is a mistake. They use their blogs mainly to talk about their services, or to highlight popular cases in their area. While this is good, it’s not enough. If a law firm wants to convert prospects into clients, they have to do more. They need to write content that actually benefits their readers and helps them solve a problem.
Thanks for the comment!
In the US, many lawyers have hopped on the blogging bandwagon. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority aren’t very good. As Jeff notes, the key to effective blogging is building trust. Most seem to lack this part (I wrote a bit on this here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-blogs-work-lawyers-gyi-tsakalakis).
With regard to links, we’ve seen great posts earn links. That’s not to say this is the only way to earn links, but it can be a good one.
That’s a great point Gyi. The key to gaining the trust of a prospect reading your blog is providing actual value, not just giving interesting but useless information. Thanks for the comment!