As an established attorney, you know how critical that next client can be. Legal blog posts can be an effective way to attract new clients.
Maintaining an online presence is not only trendy but also necessary. A professional-looking website is essential, but more importantly, your website should help clients find you and retain you.
WRITING LEGAL BLOG POSTS SHOULD BE A KEY PART OF YOUR MARKETING PLAN
Martindale-Avvo, studied the importance of blog posts and websites when it comes to legal marketing. The group’s report – Hiring an Attorney – found that 43% of potential clients looking for lawyers used a Google search, and 36% visited the lawyers’ websites.
Writing legal blog posts and posting a consistent stream of helpful information can serve as an effective law firm content marketing plan by:
- Helping potential clients find you online,
- Showcasing your legal knowledge and experience;
- Building your reputation;
- Differentiating your legal practice from the competition; and
- Converting your readers into clients.
To find new clients as cost-effectively as possible, your marketing plan should include a powerful website with enticing content that does the heavy lifting for you.
However, for many attorneys, legal website content writing can seem overwhelming.
Let’s simplify this process.
FOLLOW THESE FOUR SIMPLE TIPS TO CREATE LEGAL BLOG POSTS THAT POTENTIAL CLIENTS WILL WANT TO READ
The average web surfer has an attention span of only five to seven seconds. They leave the page if they don’t find what they need or can’t tell if they are in the right place.
To keep a potential client on your page, follow these four guidelines for compelling legal blog posts.
Narrow Your Focus.
Many lawyers make the mistake of trying to write to every possible client, facing every possible legal situation. With this approach, your blog will be lost among the hundreds of thousands of similar articles on the web and will rank poorly in a Google search.
Instead, each legal blog post should focus on:
- One person – limit your target reader to one type of client you want to reach.
- One topic – choose a topic in a specific area of law that you enjoy or know well.
- One question – consider a question you’ve recently received and answer it.
By keeping a tight focus, your post stands a better chance of resonating with the reader, demonstrating your exceptional knowledge of the topic, and helping them address their legal situation.
Provide Helpful Information in Plain English.
Potential clients search the web for a specific reason—usually to resolve a pressing legal issue. Your blog posts should be helpful, accurate, and concisely address the reader’s motivation for searching.
Remember, you are writing to non-lawyers who won’t understand Latin terms. They may be impressed with legalese, but your complicated explanation will be more confusing than helpful. Write as if you are speaking to someone in your family or a neighbor who does not work in the legal field. Use common, everyday language. The goal is to make the reader feel understood, not alienated or inferior.
Offer Fresh Perspectives and Variety.
Create two types of legal blog posts—topical articles and evergreen pieces.
Explain how the reader may be affected when changes to the law (or rules and regulations) exist in your practice area. Topical posts show that you are on the cutting edge of your practice area, which indicates that you are in a position to provide the best advice to your clients. To stay current, set up a few Google Alerts and create a timely post when a significant event occurs.
To create evergreen posts, consider which questions you regularly receive from clients and use each as a different blog topic. Your goal is to educate your reader about possible general issues and how different situations may yield different results.
You could also write about familiar topics from a fresh or unusual perspective and explain why the issue is vital for your reader. If you are writing about topics you enjoy, your enthusiasm will be apparent in your post.
Create Reader-Friendly Blogs.
Studies have shown that certain formatting can improve the number of searchers who find your blog and then stay to read your post. To draw more attention and hold your reader’s interest:
- Spend time crafting the title of your post. Your title appears on the search engine results page. Grabbing a searcher’s attention is best to make them choose your page. Pose a question; create a Top 11 list or some other unusual number of items, or use another creative approach to stand out.
- Incorporate headings and subheadings to organize your information. Many people skim blogs. Strong headings help them understand the article even if they don’t read the entire post.
- To strengthen the pull of each section, start each subheading with a verb.
- Use a keyword in the headline, first sentence, and first paragraph.
- Create bullet-point lists, columns, and other visual ways to break up large blocks of text. Draw attention to important, concise information.
- Write in short paragraphs to give your reader a quick break and keep ideas focused. Two to three sentences per paragraph is a good target.
- Insert relevant images, photographs, and other graphics to entice your reader. Online content with images or graphics draws 94% more views than content without images.
Lastly, remember the primary purposes of legal blog posts – to:
♦answer your reader’s question;
♦solve your reader’s problem; and
♦provide a strong reason they should contact you to discuss the matter further.
Clearly explain how they can reach you. Make it easy for them to take that next step now.
WRITING LEGAL BLOG POSTS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AN OVERWHELMING TASK
Online law firm marketing is more important today than ever. Keeping up with your marketing plan can take time and effort. Consistent legal blog posts can provide a big bang for your marketing buck, but realistically, you might not have time to create blogs without some help.
You’re not alone if you struggle to create legal blog posts consistently. As law firm content marketing consultants, we create optimized legal blog posts that bring readers to your website, build your reputation, and convert those readers into clients.
Call us today at (800) 862-0361, check out our website, or email info@legalcopywritingcentral.com to discuss your online copywriting needs. We’d love to help you out.
Cheers,
Stacey
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