In the United States, there are over 1.3 million active lawyers.
If you are one of these lawyers, you may be wondering how to get your slice of the pie. People need to know that you exist and that you have something to offer them. Well, one thing that you can do is create a legal blog.
What is a legal blog? How does legal blogging benefit you? What can you do to get your legal blog some attention?
This is your guide.
Know Your Audience
Like any other business, it is important that you know your target audience. If you end up reaching a different audience instead, it is important that you recognize this and start catering to them.
Depending on what type of law you practice, you could end up speaking to a very specific group of people.
For example, let’s say that you are a lawyer in a large college town. In this area, you are likely specializing in an area where you are likely to take on a lot of clients that are currently in college. That may mean trying to appeal to their parents as well.
The crimes you could be defending in those situations include driving under the influence. That is something that someone between the ages of 21-24 is more likely to commit than any other age groups. Other crimes include minor liquor laws, drug possession, drunken disorderly, and more.
Whatever area you do practice in, you are likely going to be speaking to that demographic and their loved ones. So, for the example above, you should speak to a college kid and try to speak to their parents as well.
Provide Useful Information
When you start writing your blog, you want to provide information that is actually worth sharing. People need to think that you are an authority figure on this subject. This is especially the case when they could be relying on your services to get them out of legal trouble.
Let’s use driving under the influence as an example. What useful information can you provide here?
For starters, you can make a list of all of the legal consequences that they face if they are found guilty of doing this. That can include things such as the amount of time they lose their driver’s license for, how much money they get fined, any jail time that comes with that, and more.
This does not just have to be about criminal law. In something like estate law, you can explain what happens to a reader when they do not write up a will. Then, you can discuss how difficult the process is to get certain items to their rightful owners.
Regardless of what type of law you are writing about, you want to make sure that you are backing up what you state with useful and factual information. Then, a reader can start to depend on you to provide accurate information on certain legal matters.
Write About Your Specialty
Most lawyers tend to have a couple of areas of the law that they specialize this. You likely already know what areas you specialize in before you even thought about making a blog.
What you need to do is center most of your content around what you specialize in. This makes you sound like an authority figure when it comes to that area of the law and it can help give more credibility to your practice.
Let’s say that you specialize in criminal law. More specifically, you take on a lot of cases that involve driving under the influence.
Here, you would write several articles about driving under the influence. There can be subjects such as why it is a good idea to hire a lawyer after this, what you should do as soon as you or a loved one gets arrested, what the legal consequences are, what happens on a second or third offense, and more.
The point is that you should be centering your legal topics around cases that are most likely to come up for you. If you are a newer lawyer, then you should write content around cases that you would expect to come up for your target audience.
Have a Good Hook
Keep in mind that the internet is a big place and that your website can get lost in the clouds if you are not careful.
There are over 200 million active websites on the internet. What this means is that internet users have a lot of websites to choose from. So, they will happily click off your website if you do not provide anything that interests them.
You have one shot to make a good first impression. When it comes to content, that first impression comes down to two things.
The first is the title. People need a reason to click on an article that you have in your blog. The title gives them an idea of what the article is about. A good article title makes someone want to click on the article to find out more information.
That is just what it takes to get somebody to click on your article. Now, somebody actually has to read through the entire article.
This is when you have to win your audience over. You have to put something in your intro to make people stick with you.
One way you can do this is by putting a relevant stat that may surprise people in your first couple of sentences.
Look at the beginning of this article as an example. The number of lawyers in the whole country was a hook that was put in place by the third sentence of this article.
It signified the number of lawyers that may be attempting to do the same thing as you and what the competition may look like. So, find your hook for these articles and come up with good titles for these articles to get people curious.
Length Is Not Everything
When it comes to legal articles, you may think that the right idea is having one be as long as possible. Well, this is not always the case.
Some people may try to have all of their articles be over 2,000 words to try to increase the likelihood of it getting shared. However, you can accomplish a lot with shorter articles too.
For instance, you may attract clients that are not looking to read articles that take 10 minutes to finish. Some may just want a simple read that provides them with the basic information that they need.
This can also be a good way to leave some information for a consultation session. The idea should be to give someone just enough information to be temporarily satisfied. However, they should also feel the need to contact you for more information about that subject.
Let’s use the driving under the influence example again. You can provide them with all of the information that they need to know when it comes to potential legal consequences.
However, you do not have to tell them in the article how you are going to try to minimize the charges. That can get revealed over time. At the end of that article, you just have to provide your contact information so that way people will reach out to you.
Sometimes, extra words can be a bad thing. This is what writers call fluff. It is when a writer puts unnecessary words in an article or paper to increase their word count.
Remember, humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish.
You do not have to write an encyclopedia in a legal article. Keep it simple and keep the writing tight. Shorter articles will do just fine when it comes to finding new clients.
Be Sympathetic
People that are reading your blogs are likely in legal trouble. If they are not in this situation, then they may be afraid of future legal trouble or have a family member that is in legal trouble.
The point is that they are likely going through a difficult time. If you want to gain points in the hearts and minds of the people, you should try to come across as a little sympathetic in your writing.
As a lawyer, you are the person that has to tell your clients that a certain charge is not the end of the world. You are also the person that has to tell the client that you are going to do everything that you can to fight on their behalf.
This can be anything from reducing penalties on guilty pleas, getting certain charges dropped, looking further into their case, and more.
The point is that you are the legal muscle for your clients. In the eyes of the law, you are the one legal mind on their side.
So, they may be leaning on you to try to get them through this difficult time for them. While you cannot do everything to help them through this, you can make their lives a little easier by giving them good legal counsel and remaining rational.
Use Search Engine Optimization
If you want your content to be read by more people, you are going to need to implement search engine optimization (SEO) into your articles. For those of you that are not familiar, SEO is when you use certain keywords that you think people are going to type in on a search engine.
For example, let’s say that you are a criminal lawyer that practices in Columbus, Ohio. You can use keywords such as “criminal lawyer”, “DUI lawyer”, “best lawyer in Columbus”, and more.
The point is that you want to have certain keywords in your article that are more likely to come up on these search engines. The keywords can vary based on what you are writing about.
One article can have a few keywords related to DUIs while another article can have a few keywords related to drug possession. Regardless, you want to maximize the potential exposure your article may have with the right keywords.
Hire Professional Writers
Finally, if you think writing quality content is an overwhelming task for you, there is one other option you have. You can choose to outsource your blog and have a professional writer write your content for you.
The main benefits to this option are that it saves you time and that it gives you someone with more writing experience to write your content.
Some lawyers may be concerned about a writer’s legal knowledge for these articles. Well, you have the option to put in specific requests such as requesting someone that has experience writing about these types of articles.
You can tell writers what subjects you want written about on your blog or you can just tell them what type of law you specialize in and let them get creative. Either way, it can be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Create an Appealing Legal Blog
This is everything that you need to know about creating an appealing legal blog. Remember, people have short attention spans. Come up with a good hook and keep your writing tight.
Also, people have to know that your website exists. Use SEO to help you get more eyeballs on your blog. Have an idea of what your target audience is and provide useful information that would appeal to them.
Do you need help doing this? See what services our law firm SEO can help you with here.