4 essential tips for writing your law firm blog
Law firm blogs used to be an option, with only a few firms participating. They’re now an important component of a successful SEO strategy. If your firm is about to produce its first blog article, we’ve got a few tips to share.
Truth be told, lawyers tend to be terrible at writing articles in plain English. This is understandable because, at the end of the day, lawyers are experts in legal issues rather than writing in a language that’s engaging and informative.
These days, however, having an engaging online presence is essential to your firm’s success.
So we've got some simple tips to get you started.
1. Know your audience
Before you begin, it’s important to keep in mind who you are writing for.
And let’s be honest, it’s rare that your audience will fully understand legal jargon. Try creating a persona in your head. Perhaps you’re writing for someone who is going through a marriage break-up or maybe you’re writing for a small business owner.
Whoever it may be, make sure you get your tone and language spot on. Some audiences want lots of details while others just want a quick answer to a pressing question followed up with some options to fix their problem.
2. Create a headline that clearly identifies what you’re writing about
Your headline should let people know why they should care about your article. Google will also use your headline to determine if your article is something worth sharing in its search results.
Headlines such as “Insolvency” do not attract many clicks; it's quite vague. Try to be creative and engaging whilst also being informative, with a title like “My company is insolvent - what should I do?”.
You don’t have to be too fancy with your headlines; after all, you’re not writing for a newspaper. But your headlines do need to be immediately understandable to both Google and your potential clients. If people can’t figure out what your article is about or why it’s relevant to them, it’s unlikely that they will click through and read it.
3. Use multi-media whenever you can – that’s images, video, animations, infographics
These days the internet is awash with content. Unless you’re writing for a particular niche audience, you’ll quickly lose their attention if you shower them with text.
It’s also worth noting that 80% of internet users in 2018 are browsing on their smartphones, which don’t lend themselves to big slabs of text.
You can break up your article using:
- shorter paragraphs;
- sub-headings;
- bullet-points;
- photos;
- images like animations and infographics; and
- embedded video.
You can try a paid subscription to stock image services such as Adobe Photo Stock or Shutterstock so the images you use are good quality. Or if you’re short on budget, there are also plenty of free services such as StockSnap, Unsplash and Pixabay to name a few.
For smaller law firms providing services to individuals, explainer infographics and/or animations are perfect for your audience.
To get people interested in complex legal questions in a simple way, a visual experience can be through the use of explainer videos. Videos also tend to gain more traction on social media. Tip - keep your videos under 2 minutes and preferably around 1 minute to 1:30.
View this explainer video “Racial Discrimination? Know your rights” as an example.
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is imperative to have your blog found
Gone are the days when there were just a handful of law firms writing blog articles. Nowadays, it’s harder to find those that aren’t actively posting content. The market is crowded and law firms that have not traditionally been in the digital space are now vying for a piece of that pie.
Actually, we’ve written a whole blog post about the importance of SEO. In simple terms, it stands for Search Engine Optimisation – and it’s a process undertaken to make your content discoverable.
Some think SEO is a bit of voodoo and to be honest, they’re somewhat right – it’s half art/half science.
Building up a wide range of search optimised content is a far better long-term strategy than running costly pay-per-click search engine advertising. In doing so, you can establish yourself as a content leader and a voice of authority in your specific areas of practice.
You won’t be able to improve your SEO overnight but with a long term strategy and commitment, you will see results.
We highly recommend investing time and resources into making sure your website is SEO friendly.
Want your law firm to stand out from the pack but don’t know where to start?
Social Hive works with small to medium sized law firms in Australia. With 30 years’ experience within the legal industry, we have a focus on delivering actual results.
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