Blogging For Lawyers / Solicitors – Is It Worth It?
Someone suggests that you write a blog to grow your law firm, so you start to consider what is involved. Ideas, research, mapping out the blog post, writing it, publishing it… You start to ask yourself “Blogging for lawyers – is it worth it?”.
Having been blogging more or less since I started my law firm growth consultancy in 2003, I can tell you that blogging is very much worth it for me, in terms of delivering people who are looking for or researching my services to my website.
When it comes to blogging for lawyers, as someone who actively encourages all of his clients to consistently blog and add new content to their websites, I can confirm that blogging for lawyers is very much worth it, SO LONG AS you follow the steps below.
If you start blogging for no other reason than one of your lawyer friends says that it works for them, so you should do it too, you are more likely than not going to fail.
Follow these steps when it comes to blogging for lawyers and you will succeed, so long as you persevere!
- What is your purpose?
- Ensure you write about what people are looking for.
- Make your content compelling.
- Write enough to make it wortwhile.
- Provide options for your readers to learn more.
- Do it consistently.
Let’s look at each of these in more detail, as failure to ensure you check each of these boxes will more likely than not make all of your blogging efforts worthless.
Blogging for lawyers: What is your purpose?
You might think that your purpose or objective when blogging for lawyers is any number of things, including:
- To prove that you know the law in depth.
- To show that you are proactive.
- To do it because everyone tells you that you should.
- To show off to your colleauges and peers.
The reality is that when it comes to blogging for lawyers, the only purpose or outcome that you should be looking for is to win new client instructions.
Everything else is irrelevant.
A blogs sole purpose is to bring more people into your website at the precise moment in time that they are looking to hire someone to provide the legal services that you provide.
Many solicitors make their blog easily accessible from every page of their website. They actively try and send people from one page on their website to their blog so that they can read all of the wonderful blog posts that they have written.
Sadly, the lawyers that do this will win a lot less instructions than the clever lawyers who hide their blog away in the footer, knowing that they want people to come into the site through their blog, but then get them on the telephone, live chat or completing an enquiry form to find out more about their services as quickly as possible.
Your sole purpose of a blog is to bring more people into your website and then to ensure that as many of them contact you as possible.
Blogging for lawyers: Ensure you write about what people are looking for.
The next mistake lawyers make is that they believe that blogging for lawyers is all about showing people how much they know about their area of legal expertise.
Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.
Your clients do not want or need to know about S30 of this or that act, they presume you are an expert, they just need to find you.
Therefore, when it comes to blogging for lawyers, ensuring that you only write blogs which answer questions your idea prospects type into Google is all that matters.
To do this, you use on of the many keyword research tools that exist out there. Download my complete guide to SEO for solicitors to discover more:
Blogging for lawyers: Make your content compelling.
Your content has to engage your reader and persuade them that they need to discover more about how you can help them.
It must be ALL ABOUT YOUR READER.
They must believe you really understand their current sitation and are the best lawyer for their needs.
Blogging for lawyers: Write enough to make it wortwhile.
The reason that you have to write enough when blogging are two fold:
- If you do not write enough, Google will not know what your page is all about so no one will ever find your blog post; and
- If your readers do find your blog post, a few lines will not persuade them that you are an expert on the topic, so they will not contact you.
Generally, a 750 word count is my recommended minimum for each blog post.
Blogging for lawyers: Provide options for your readers to learn more.
If you go back to point number one above, the sole purpose of your blog is to win more client instructions.
Therefore, a crucial component of this is providing your readers with as many options to get in touch with you at the end of each blog post as possible.
Do not assume that they will head off to the contact page to find your contact details, they won’t. It is your job to make it easy for them, so at the end of every blog post ensure you have:
- your telephone number;
- your email address;
- a link to your online enquiry form; and
- live chat.
Missing one or more of these options will lead to less enquiries; guaranteed!
Blogging for lawyers: Do it consistently.
Finally, blogging for lawyers works so well only when you do it consistently and relentlessly.
I have so many conversations with lawyers who tell me that one or two blog posts bring in new clients every week, so I naturally ask them how frequently they now blog.
“Oh no, I have not written a blog post for a while now.”
Ouch!
The lawyer knows that blogging for lawyers works, then stops blogging.
Once you know blogging works, and I promise you that it does if you follow the steps above, you MUST do it consistently.
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