In the the late 90s, bloggers were a bit high tech and weird, the nerd geeks of the internet. Law firms weren’t really at the forefront of the worldwide blogging trend – we were still scouring legal journals and dusty academic publications looking for legal authority and trusted opinions and finding our clients down at the pub.
The first legal blogs emerged in 2002 and now legal blogs are a dime a dozen. And a 2014 FindLaw and Thomson Reuters survey revealed that more people said they would use the internet to help them find a lawyer than ask a friend or relative.
So how do we make our blogs stand out? Here’s 5 tips to pump out regular content and make your blog shine in the legal blogosphere.
It’s All About Plogging: Blogging alone won’t sell your services and win you a loyal tribe. You need to be sharing your content and blogs across a range of social media platforms (ie blogging across platforms or ‘plogging’). Think Medium, Facebook and LinkedIn Pulse for starters. Publishing posts on other platforms and not just your blog allows you tap into an existing an audience, increase your visibility and help scale your business. Take a proactive approach to content marketing by posting quality content on a range of platforms consistently, engaging with prospective clients on forums like Quora, signing up for reputable online legal directories and paying attention to SEO and Google analytics. It all counts.
Stay on top of social media platforms: it’s all about plogging.
Make it Niche: Readers are super busy and don’t have time to wade through loads of content at the best of times. And covering the field is just too damn exhausting. By making your blog like a boutique magazine and honing in on specialised content, your readers will know where to find you, will consider you an expert in your chosen field and you can create a special buzz around your blogs as well become a helpful resource. You’ll then hopefully be top of mind when they have legal questions. Include visuals and videos in your posts for some extra pizzaz.
Grab their attention: If your blog never gets read by anyone except your Mum, there’s really no point in writing it (unless it’s fun for you or like therapy, either is OK). You need an audience, my friends. So create content that grabs people’s attention. Share your blogs multiple times. Be bold and daring. Write the way you speak, blogging is not a formal medium. Make sure you’ve got strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your posts so that they know how and where to sign up to your blog for more killer content. Find someone famous or influential to interview on your site.
Be a bit quirky, humorous or different: Let’s face it, law content can be SOOooo boring sometimes. Inject some personality and flex that funny muscle, my little grasshoppers! Clients need to see that their lawyer is a) alive b) understands their real world problems and c) isn’t overly patronisings, snobby or weird.
Flex that funny muscle!
Curate Content: It’s all well and good (and preferable) to create original content every time you post but the time commitment can be intense. If you don’t have the budget to outsource content to copywriters and digital marketers, try curating content. According to Buffer, content curation is sorting through web content to find the best and most meaningful bits and presenting that information in an organised, valuable way. It’s like handpicking quality content and putting you own spin or take on it with a bit of fresh content. Done correctly, it can work a treat and also help you to engage with experts in your industry for some shared benefits.
How do you make your legal blog shine? Or are you over blogging? Do lawyers have time for it? We’d love to hear what you think about the current state, and likely future, of blogging. Sign up for the Legaler platform here and subscribe to our blog for more legal and lifestyle content.
