Blogs Are One Of the Most Important Ingredients in an Effective Legal Online Strategy
You can see the expression change on their face whenever a lawyer hears the word “blog”, yet blogging is one of the most important components in your online presence. Why?
What Purpose Does A Blog Serve?
How Long Does a Blog Need to Be?
How Often Should I Blog?
How Does a Blog Connect Into the Rest of My Strategy?
Blogging provides “fresh, relevant, original” content that supports not only the strength of your law firm’s website, but the connection of your strategy into the local communities you wish to serve. Blogs allow you to focus upon critical areas of practice, and specific cases within those niches to improve the quantity and quality of potential opportunities.
What is a Blog?
Quite simply, a blog is a type of post or legal content marketing that is designed to target specific keywords and geography while providing high quality and value to potential readers. It is different than most of the traditional pages on your website, in that it is usually shorter and more directly on point with a specific type of reader in mind. There are many misperceptions about what a blog must or must not be, and for the purpose of our discussion I’m going to focus in on what has proven to work for attorneys across several states over the past 5 years or so.
Blogs provide high SEO value, as well as original content for your site. The purpose of a blog is to improve the performance of your web strategy for specific types of search keywords and phrases as they relate to “local search” or targeted geography. Metropolitan areas are surrounded by several suburbs, and most legal strategies that I’ve encountered make some attempt to position the firm to multiple geographical references, such as:
- areas or neighborhoods
- towns
- cities
- counties
- regions
- and even states
Blogs are an excellent tool for increasing the “local” signals in your strategy to help performance within a specific area or city. Each blog should be 300 to 400 words, and provide content that is totally focused upon the reader and/or helping the reader with a specific issue or challenge. If the subject is a deep one, a blog can be longer. However, an effective blogging strategy should target 4 or more per week, and if they are too long it becomes a challenge for the firm to write, and even more of a challenge for readers to get through – and convert!
What Does an Attorney Blog About?
We are often asked this question by clients and during speaking engagements. One strategy is to hire an experienced blog writer with expertise in your legal market, such as Rain Marketing + Consulting. One of the best blog sources for blog ideas is whenever you begin to “roll the tape”, you know the experience – you’re pat answer for a question you’ve answered hundreds of times. Whenever you catch yourself starting to “roll the tape” it should trigger the thought of “ah, this would be good topic for a blog”. There are an endless combination of topics to write about combined with geographical references to fit the bill. More than anything, blogging is a discipline. A profitable discipline.
Finally, blogs serve as an important connector between various elements of an effective online strategy. They serve to support content pages and performance of the host website within search engine organic and local results. They also provide backbone material and linking opportunities for social media campaigns as well as customer focused marketing strategies. Blogs provide raw energy to online strategies, and provide substantial returns for the effort invested.
Looking for Experienced Blog Writers for Lawyers and Law Firms?
Looking to add or improve your own blog? Shift your marketing into a higher gear and contact the seasoned legal blog builders and writers at Rain Marketing + Consulting. We’ll provide actual client examples of our blogs. Examine for yourself how they show up on their own in search results, and work to effectively support our client’s internet strategy. Blogs may be purchased in 4, 8, or 16 unit packages or contracted on a monthly basis as needed. Like all of our services, there is no long term contract and the results speak for themselves. Contact proven blog writers for attorneys, or call 760-579-1635 today to discuss your goals and how we can help to make it rain for your practice and increase the quantity and quality of your cases.