Marketing for Lawyers – How to Make your Law Firm Blog a Powerful Tool – Part 3

Blogging first started as a way to have an online personal web log, in which a person would journal about their day. From “web log” came the term “blog.”

Like most new innovations on the Internet, many entrepreneurs saw marketing potential in having a blog, and blogging took off from there. Not only can a blog be used for marketing, but also, a blog can be a business in and of itself.

The power of blogging for lawyers isn’t just in the individual author’s reach – it’s inside the connections and network that they utilise with their entire firm behind them.

Look at What’s Happening – Measure your Metrics

Do you know what information most lawyers actually collect about their blogs? Nothing. Nada. Zip. This is very disappointing. Think of it as marketing collateral, with lots of traffic at your exhibition stand, unfortunately, the flyer/brochure doesn’t have company name, contacts. They are picked but there is no way of follow up.

Law firms have no idea how far their articles are going, where traffic is coming from, whether people read things at all, or anything else that might matter to someone running a business.

Using the free tools from Google Analytics, at the very least you can try to take a look at these absolutely basic blog metrics:

• Where are your visitors coming from? Social? Email? Search? This will help you know what’s “worth it” and what isn’t (but don’t be too quick to discount a particular channel – sometimes good things take a bit of time).
• How many views of each post are there? This will give you an idea whether your topics and headlines are capturing enough attention.
• How long are people on the page? This will tell you if people are reading your posts – if you have a 2400 word guide and the average time on page is 14 seconds, people are leaving too fast…
• What do people do next? Do they sign up to your email system? Do they click around your site? Do they call? Do they make an appointment?

There is a huge amount of information out there for people who choose to capture it.

You don’t want all of it, for sure – but you want some.

Without that, you can’t start to refine your law firm’s blog into something remarkable.

Refine your Firm’s Blog

If you’re going to collect data, then you need to do something with it.

If people aren’t clicking your articles, then:

• your headlines are terrible; or
• your topics are wrong; or
• you are publishing in the wrong places; or
• you don’t know your audience well enough.

Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

If people are clicking but not staying long enough to read, then:

• your articles are ultra-boring
• your headline was clickbait and you’re not delivering on the promise you made
• your blog is hard to read or looks bad on screen

If people are visiting your site but not doing what you wanted them to do then:

• your website strategy needs work
• your calls to action are weak
• what you want them to do isn’t obvious enough

See how easy it is?

Look what’s happening, decide the likely candidate for that, and fix it.

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Commit to Getting your Firm’s Blog Right

Do you know why most efforts at blogging for lawyers fail? Because the firm doesn’t commit – to the time, training and effort it takes to succeed with a law firm blog.

First, if you’re going to start a blog for your law firm, then you need to know why. Not just “Because all the cool kids are doing it” but a serious, business reason to engage in content marketing for your law firm.

The “why” will instruct your topics, your audience, your design, your headlines, your calls to action – everything.

Without it, nothing else will work.

So let’s start with this: why does your law firm blog? Or why doesn’t it blog?

Understanding why you’re blogging means:

• committing to the effort required
• training yourself and your staff in basic copywriting skills
• understanding the business case for your blog
• measuring what’s happening
• fixing things that need it.

Your blog is a serious tool to build leads and generate business for your firm. If you don’t treat it like that… then it won’t be.

Need help with your firm’s blog? Apply for consulting today and let’s see if we can help you out.

Photo by Malte Baumann on Unsplash