10 Tips for Great Legal Blogs

January 18, 2010 - Starting a blog for your legal website is a great way to draw traffic, increase your page views, capture your target audience, and improve the search engine rankings for your website. As a lawyer, you'll have specific benefits and complications when it comes to managing a successful blog. Below we've compiled our top 10 hits for great legal blogs to help you get started.

1. Start Reading Blogs - This is a must. It's important to read and see what else is out there to help you determine the best strategy for your blogging. Look at other lawyers' blogs that also focus on your legal specialty. Are there great ideas you can repurpose for your website? Or big mistakes to avoid? Start reading and keep reading! You'll never know where the next great idea will come from and it's always a good idea to know what your local competitors are up to.

2. Go Local - As a lawyer, you are usually somewhat confied to specific geographic regions. Let your blog reflect this and try to include relevant local stories that make sense with your law practice. If you are a personal injury lawyer, write blogs about new pedestrian laws or drunk driving accidents in your area. List other local businesses that provide resources and value to your potential clients and help keep those citizens informed about what is going on in their neighborhood. Making yourself a local expert helps tie you into your community which leads to more local clients.

3. Connect with Keywords - Part of what's great about blogs is that they can be published, scanned by search engines, and found by readers in a very short period of time (especially with real-time search!), but all that depends on what keywords you are including. Make sure to always include your researched SEO keywords in all of your blogs to help promote your content and drive organic search engine results to your site!

4. Stay Current - Blogs are quick and easy so people expect them to include the most recent information available. You can draw more readers to your blogs by staying on top of current events that are relevant to your law practice and target audience. Are their new laws going into effect in your state that may affect your clients? How about recent court decisions, settlements, or even high-profile national cases? Take those headlines and put your own spin on it! Breaking news is a great way to stay relevant and capture interest, just make sure that news is engaging for your target audience.

5. Include a Call to Action - Blogs are meant to inform. After that information has been presented you need to provide clear directions to your readers on what to do next. That's why all of your blogs should always include information and links to other areas of your website along with directions such as - set up a Free consultation, contact us for more information, visit our article library for more information on this topic, etc. If you don't provide a call to action, most of your readers will assume there is nothing more for them to see and just leave.

6. Think Visually -  One big paragraph of text is hard to read, not to mention boring! Keep your readers stimulated visually by breaking up the text on your page through short paragraphs, images, and subheadings. A blog can have great information but if it looks dull or is difficult to read, no one will share your content or even read it all the way to the end.

7. Mix Information and Advice - While you might not want to give specific legal advice on your blog, you need to exert your legal expertise and provide tips and advice along with the content you post online. Providing lists of local resources, steps to take after a car accident, and even safety tips to prevent injuries and accidents are all valuable content ideas that allow your knowledge to shine.

8. Share and Be Shared -  You want to make sure your blogs are ripe for sharing, so be sure to include share buttons (like the retweet button at the top of this post), share bars, an RSS Feed, and post links to your blogs on social media to help spread the word. Likewise, be sure to find and share other great information found online. When you share someone else's content they will be more inclined to share yours in return (if it is well written and relevant).

9. Use Your Voice - Blogs are typically more casual than long articles, so this is a place to show your personality, use humor, and create a style and voice your audience can connect to. Try not to sound like a legal robot and more like a wise uncle giving advice and compassion to people clearly going through a difficult time. If readers don't connect to your voice, they won't contact you for more information. Choose your words carefully!

10. Post, Post, Post! - Blogs only work when you can commit to keeping them up. Blogs should be posted several times a day, at least 5 days a week -- every week. If you can't manage that amount on your own hire a team to help you, but don't start a blog and think posting 1 item every 2 weeks is ever going to be enough.

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