How To Use Blogging To Grow Your Law Firm
Online presence is crucial for any business that has an objective of growth. Nearly 70 percent of businesses today are conducted online. According to a research firm in Denver, there are around two hundred and fifty people in the US who use online services every day. Most of them spend their time on social media, while also using a search engine to find relevant information.
Any law firm in the country should work on improving their online presence to target these people. There are different methods that can be adopted to achieve this goal. One of them is blogging.
A blog is a piece of information that is posted on your website with the aim of informing your readers. It doesn’t necessarily have to sell anything or ask readers to take action. Blogs can be written in new-format, or newsletters. A law firm can benefit significantly through blogging as it can be used to reach out to clients who haven’t decided whether to hire an attorney or not.
What are Benefits of Blogging to a Law Firm?
Showcases Professionalism
Writing informative contents on a regular basis not only helps to grow your website, but it also shows your expert level in the subject matter. A reader would always trust a blog that has more content as opposed to a blog with few posts. Make sure you research your content to educate your readers.
Grows your Client Base
Quality blog posts show that you understand your practice, and you are someone who can be trusted. Clients like to work with people who seem to understand their needs. It only takes a few blog posts to convert a reader into a client.
Growing your Email List
There is an old phrase in digital marketing niche; ‘money is in the list.’ Building a concrete email list will help you grow your business very fast. Make sure that your blog has an opt-in form that will help collect email addresses of your readers. By sending more contents to the subscribers, you can convert a huge number of them to your regular clients.
Improves with Exposure
Regular blogging helps to improve your search engine rankings. According to Google, websites that have little contents don’t receive much attention from the search engine. If you want your website to grow, make sure you post regularly. Avoid content syndication as this may be penalized by Google.
Improving your Brand Awareness
Many people may not be familiar with your law firm. However, with regular blogging, you are able to reach out to the majority of them. If your blog posts are packed with value and information relevant to your readers, your law firm will start to experience exponential growth and the recognition it deserves.
Which are the Best Blogging Strategies?
Write Unique Content
Make sure the content of your blog posts remains as unique as possible. Google and other search engines will penalize your website if it contains duplicate material. Gone are the days when you would get a piece of article from another blog, do minor edits, and expect it to rank. Other than Google penalizing you, your readers will doubt your experience and may hesitate to hire your services in the future.
Create Long Posts
Long posts tend to rank well with search engine compared to short posts. Make sure that your posts are more than 1,000 words in length. However, you should also strike a balance and include several short articles as well.
Use Diagrams, Infographics, and Pictures more often
Reading plain text is boring, especially if it’s a long article. The expression ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ has never gone out of fashion. Including images and charts in your articles will help to keep your readers entertained and glued. Google does focus on the bounce rate from your website to determine if the content of your site is relevant and informative. Including images and other visual materials may help to improve your site’s rankings.
Writing general articles may sound like a great idea since you will be targeting a huge population. However, writing niche-specific blogs will help to grow your business fast. It will also help you connect with the right people who need the services offered by your business. Identifying a niche to target is crucial; otherwise, you may end up wasting time with your blog posts.
Connect with your Readers
The reason why your readers end up on your website is that they think they can get an answer to their questions. Writing blog posts the same way you communicate with your fellow lawyers is not a great way to get the attention of your readers. You need to keep in mind that most of your readers don’t have advanced legal skills like you. Keeping your posts simple but informative will always work.
Choose the right topics to handle
Writing on general topics may help to increase your blog contents. However, you should handle topics that other websites in your niche are leaving out. Topics that focus on providing tips to your readers should be at the top of your list. E.g., when other law firms are writing about legal issues faced by real estate investors, you could write about ways in which someone can protect their residence from lawsuits. Try to stand out from the crowd.
What are the Challenges you will likely face?
Content Creation
Creating contents on a regular basis is not an easy thing. You need to come up with fresh ideas all the time, and this can be a challenge of itself. The majorities of attorneys are not professional content writers, and may not know the best content writing strategies to follow. The best solution for this problem is to hire professional content writers. You need to give them specific instructions on how you want the contents to be written.
Freelance content writers are widely available and affordable. You can also find them on different platforms making your work a lot easier. These freelancers will help to come up with structured contents that will educate your readers and entice them to hire your services.
Keyword Research
A typical attorney doesn’t understand how keywords work, let alone know how to use them. Keywords are relevant to your content as they are often targeted by search engines. Knowing the right keywords to include in your contents may be the difference between success and failure. Keyword tools such as Google Planner help you to choose the right keywords. They also recommend other keywords that can be used together with your targeted keywords. The services are free and user-friendly.
Blogging Ideas
Struggling to come up with blogging ideas is a common thing. Writing on relevant topics and titles will help your readers to connect with your law firm. However, these titles are not easy to form, and you may find yourself blank on ideas. Brainstorming with your colleagues is an excellent way of handling this problem. You can also hire someone to help with title research on your behalf. The titles need to be catchy and provide an insight on what to expect from the article.
Mistakes than Many People make on their Blogs
Eliminating the Comment Section
Comment section gives your readers an opportunity of either asking questions or seeking clarification from your article. Make sure you include a comment section on your blog. If you have a comment section, you should reply to any comments that are left on your post.
Not Including the Contact Page
There are higher chances that your readers want to contact your law firm after reading your blogs. Providing them with a contact page will help to ease this problem and will help to grow your client lists. An office phone number and an email address will suffice.
Not including a ‘call to action’ in your Content
After writing an informative piece, make sure you let your readers that you can help them with their legal problems. Make sure you mention your experience and your achievements at the bottom of every post.
Assuming that your Readers Understand the Legal Process
Lawyers often make this mistake, which ends up costing them, potential clients. Make sure that every piece you write is geared towards a client without any law experience. Take them step-by-step on any topic you are writing on, without skipping any details.
Conclusion
Having a website with your brief history and achievements is not enough to get clients online. You need to have a blog and work on it regularly. Make sure you post content that will be useful to your readers and will make them consider hiring you. Invest in your blog, and the results will be worth it.