The blogosphere has dominated the internet for years. All manner of people have tried their hand at blogging, but only a few have stuck. As such, they have risked missing out on the incredible benefits blogging has to offer. Many lawyers have been hesitant to try their hand at law firm blogging. Some don’t consider it a worthwhile endeavour. Most don’t know where to start, even if they do. However, no one should ever let that stop them. For lawyers who want to try law firm blogging and do it right, this article is the answer.
Benefits of Law Firm Blogging
Establishing a blog on their professional legal site is something all lawyers should consider. Online presence plays a big part in reputation management, especially with all the competition in the industry. Blogging offers lawyers a unique chance to connect with potential clients and establish themselves as an authority. It sets them up to connect with clients or other professionals, depending on their goal. Therefore, it serves as a clean and efficient marketing strategy for lawyers and their practice.
Besides spreading the word about their services, legal blogs allow law firms to share their thoughts with their target audience and engage in a discussion. This shows the lawyer’s expertise as well as their passion for their practice. Therefore, the blog ends up becoming an extension of the blogger. In this case, it is necessary to make sure that the blog is doing blogger justice.
Here are some key considerations for starting a legal blog.
Have a Goal for Your Law Firm’s Blog
The mission statement or goals of a person’s blog are its defining features. They determine the audience, quality, quantity, style, and everything else related to the content. While it is perfectly okay to blog as a hobby, most people use it to meet a specific goal. Any lawyer hoping to become a blogger should first outline their blog’s goals. Why are they writing? Is it to promote their business, establish trust with their clients, connect with other lawyers for referrals, engage with the community, or something else?
Whatever the goal is, the blog should be directed towards meeting it. The content and marketing of the blog should be decided accordingly. The writer should use SEO and keywords analysis from sites like Answer The Public to find a goal for their blog. The keywords will let them what their target audience is interested in, and they can decide on an objective accordingly. SEO will also improve the blog’s traffic and increase organic reach, helping the blog be successful.
Specialize Your Practice
Legal blogs should have an area of specialization, just like lawyers do. It is critical to find a niche for a blog for it to be successful. The niche here means a particular corner in the blogosphere that isn’t saturated by competitors. A writer needs to find or create a niche to curate a dedicated audience. If the blog is too broad and deals with too many topics, people will not be interested. For example, people in Alberta who would read a blog to find out about taxation and corporation would not want to see content about wildlife conservation laws in Africa.
Therefore, the focus of the blog should be narrow and specific. Don’t worry about finding a niche: even if a law firm’s area of expertise has a few blogs on it already, it can still be the subject of your blog. You can do this by tailoring it to a specific audience in a specific area. If not that, then they can always focus on opinion pieces. That will always have a niche or knowledge gap since every individual brings in their unique perspective and analysis to a topic.
Be Understandable to the Audience
If a legal blog’s target audience is the general public, it should be structured accordingly. Writers should attempt to be understandable and avoid using legal jargon. The reason blogs are successful is that they are accessible and easy to digest. Complicating the blog’s language will ensure that it is no longer accessible to the ordinary reader. That defeats the purpose of the blog. Therefore, a prospective blogger should always write with the audience in mind.
The writer should be engaging and inviting. Most people will be put off if the blog sounds like an instruction manual or a lecture.
The goal is to use simple language. Writers should talk to their audience rather than at them. This will also boost engagement and the blog’s visibility. Additionally, the blog should be audience-driven. The content should include topics that interest the audience. If people would rather know about a famous legal controversy, and the blogger continues to publish blogs on property law, the blog will fail to generate traffic.
Keep your Law Firm Blogging Relevant
It’s not enough to start a legal blog. Writers must continue to maintain it. That involves publishing quality content regularly. The content should revolve around contemporary stories and topics of public interest to grab readers’ attention. While it can be hard to churn out content consistently initially, it becomes more comfortable with practice.
Writers should stay up-to-date on current events. They can follow specific topics on Twitter, subscribe to journals, or use Google Alerts to be notified whenever there’s a development in a topic of interest. The important thing is to stay relevant by being consistent.
Conclusion
These tips are not exhaustive, and lawyers can pick up many more by merely getting started and getting a feel for their niche. However, following these guidelines can help beginners orient themselves. The most important advice, as always, is to begin. Everything else comes afterwards.