Why should a lawyer have a law blog?
Do you even need one? What good can it do?
A law blog does three things for your practice:
- It establishes your expertise in your area of specialty. You can demonstrate your knowledge and show potential clients that you know what you’re talking about.
- It helps local people find you more easily via Google. All search is local these days, which means when someone looks for “lawyers near me” or “attorneys” with your specialty (e.g. “personal injury attorney” or “employment lawyer”), you want to show up in those local results.
- It helps you market to new clients without running afoul of your state’s bar association rules. There are certain rules to advertising for law firms, but blogs are considered educational, not advertising. YOu can create as much educational content as you’d like without any problems.
Your readers would be alternative energy entrepreneurs and principals. 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 about the issues.
(This educational approach is primarily how content marketing works. You’re persuading by educating.)
This approach also does not violate your state bar’s rules on advertising and marketing. There would be no competitive or comparative language, no guarantees, and no promises. Just information that demonstrates your deep knowledge about your specialty. The rules you follow for advertising are even easier to follow when you’re blogging: You won’t necessarily write about yourself, which means you’re not using the forbidden language.
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: It will almost certainly be 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 generally the ones closest to you.
This same is true for your law 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.
Google is always looking for fresh content because people are searching for information that can answer their questions. If you regularly publish fresh content, you’re more likely to reach people who need someone to help solve their problems and answer their questions.
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 4 or 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 costs 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: That takes 30 minutes of your time.
- We write the blog articles: That’s 0 minutes of your time.
- You review and approve the articles: Up to 30 minutes
- We publish the posts to your blog: 0 minutes
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 wordsmithing.
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:
Photo credit: Mohamedramadanabdalstar (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 4.0)
