Blogging for lawyers: The importance of regular online communication for solo attorneys.
If you’re looking to build a rapport with your client base, show off your expertise in a particular legal area and add a little personality to your practice, consider starting a professional blog as part of your website. A blog is an essential part of most content marketing plans, and it improves the SEO on your website by adding new, relevant information on your focus area. Additionally, the art of blogging for lawyers may be more valuable than you think.
A successful blog sets you up as a recognized expert in your field while identifying the type of work you want to do. Blog about the issues you’re interested in as a practitioner. Talk about the key legal issues you specialize in, and express your knowledge of these subjects. As potential clients search for related topics while investigating the legal services they need, your name should start to appear as a provider of high-level insights. The more this happens, the more you establish yourself as an authority on those topics. The more you can focus on specific topics, a specific clientele and a specific area, the more successful your blog will be.
Reaching prospective clients is important, but don’t forget to connect with key influencers in your field. Engage with editors for legal journals, business leaders in your field and other publishers who focus on your areas of practice. Offer to provide them with content or allow them to co-op your blog for their content needs. Develop offline relationships for your online world, encouraging others to link to your blog and reference you as an expert resource. The key is to provide information freely and generously, endearing these industry influencers to you.
If your blog doesn’t get a lot of comments or shares through various online avenues, don’t worry. Many people tend to listen exclusively when it comes to blogs and content marketing. It takes a long time for content sources to build up a loyal set of followers and commenters. Social listening metrics designed to measure the effectiveness of a blog’s content strategy don’t always apply to directly to legal work, because of the ethics limitations on legal promotions. As such, it’s usually best for law bloggers to focus on measurable objectives when it comes to measuring success. For example:
- Is your reputation being enhanced?
- Are you finding yourself face-to-face with new prospective clients?
- Is the strength of your network increasing?
- Are influencers interested in getting to know you and your circle of professionals?
- Are people coming to you for feedback?
- Do you feel that you are established as a leader?
If you can answer yes to several of these questions, then you’re on you way to improving your online reputation, building a stronger referral base and landing more of the types of clients you actually want to work with.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help you with your pursuit of a successful solo career.
