Why should a lawyer have a law blog?
Do you even need one? What good can it do?
A law blog does three things:
- It establishes your expertise in your area of specialty.
- It helps local people find you more easily via Google.
- It helps you market to new clients without running afoul of you state’s bar association rules. (More on this in a minute.)
If you want to be a recognized authority in your field, there are a few ways to do it. One is to be visible to potential clients in that field. For example, if you specialize in alternative energy startups, you could blog regularly about the issues facing both alternative energy companies and startups, as well as providing commentary on news and developments in the industry.
Your readers would be alternative energy entrepreneurs and principles. You would inform and educate them, and help them understand why you’re the expert to call when the need arises. (Of course, you would never provide legal advice, or talk about clients on your blog. But you can certainly educate people.)
This approach also does not violate your state bar’s rules on advertising and marketing, since there would be no competitive or comparative language, no guarantees, no promises. Just educational information that demonstrates your deep knowledge and understanding of your specialty. The rules you follow for advertising are even easier to follow in legal blogging.
Blogging Helps Local SEO
Blogging also helps you and your firm be found on Google. That’s because Google focuses more on localized search results now, rather than large national results.
The next time you’re on Google, try this experiment: search for a type of restaurant, say Italian, and see what comes up: Italian restaurants in your town. This works for most businesses or services. Search for coffee shops, dry cleaners, plumbers, etc. The results that come up are usually the ones closest to you.
This same is true for your firm. If someone in your geographic region looks for “alternative energy attorneys,” and you’ve followed all the right steps, your site will be at or near the top of the search results.
That’s because Google knows where you are when you perform that search. They want to be as helpful as possible, so they look for the best results closest to you. This is what local SEO does for businesses.
If potential clients can find your site on Google, they’re more likely to contact you. If they can’t, well, you know.
Right now, Google is looking for fresh hot content. People are on search engines looking for information that can help educate them about the issues they face. If you generate fresh content frequently, you’re more likely to find people who need answers to their questions and someone to help solve their problems.
But I don’t have time. Why should I spend 5 hours of $300/hour billable time to blog?
You don’t. That’s the point.
We are professional writers who can generate 8 blog posts a month for you, with just 1 hour of your time. Per month.
Do you really want to spend $300 – $600 in billable time, 2 – 3 times a week, writing posts? If you write 8 blog posts a month, that’s costing you anywhere from $2400 – $5400 in billable time.
But if you turn it over to a professional content marketer with experience in legal blogging, we will only take up a fraction of your time at a fraction of the cost, but deliver the same (or better) results. Here’s how it works:
- We interview you on that month’s topics – 30 minutes
- Pro Blog Service writes the blog articles – 0 minutes
- You review and approve – 10 – 30 minutes
- We publish the posts to your blog – 0 minutes
Notice that you provide the appropriate information. We transcribe what you have told us, but in a way that is readable and easily understood by potential clients. Your thoughts, your ideas, your viewpoints. Our time, our word smithing.
If you want to talk about how legal blogging can help your practice, please call us at (317) 674-3745, or fill out the form below:
