7 Simple Yet Essential Blogging Tips for Lawyers and Legal Professionals

When you decided to invest in a legal blog for your practice you fully intended to use it. You figured you or maybe your assistant would publish a post every other day, and receive a ton of traffic and interesting comments from potential clients.

You were wrong. Now, your blog sits dormant – receiving no love (fresh content) from you or attention from your target audience (traffic). Am I right?

How do I know? How can I relate to your pain?

I hear this often from lawyers just like you. Lawyers who have invested big bucks in attractive blogs, but are stuck when it comes to blogging. You’re not clear on your audience, what they want to hear, or how to reach them.

And, I’ve been in your shoes. For far too long, I’ve neglected one of my blogs. I didn’t update it regularly and as a result, it doesn’t get as much attention as it once received. Ironically, while I ignored my blog, I focused my attention on maintaining my clients’ blogs. I’ve ghostwritten several legal articles and posts for blogs that receive their share of targeted traffic utilizing the same tips I will share with you below. (Don’t just take my word for it. Ask me for writing samples!)

So, in a weird unexpected way, because I’ve experienced both the joys and disappointments of blogging, I’m probably one of  the best to share these 7 simple yet essential blogging tips:

1. Blog with a purpose. Your blog must have a clear purpose that you’re able to communicate effectively. Once you determine the purpose of your blog, you can better understand the readers you want to attract.

2. Don’t just “know” who you are speaking to. Speak your reader’s language. The more you understand about your readers, the more you will know about what interests them, and what they’d like to read on your blog.

3. Research topics and keywords for future blog posts. Now that you’re clear on your blog’s purpose and have taken time to get to know your target audience, you can begin brainstorming topics your future blog posts. At this point, you may already have some ideas in mind. You can use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to check the viability of your keywords, and choose your blog posts accordingly.

If you’re lost when it comes to performing keyword research, you can check out this timeless article, Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research, which does a pain-free job of explaining how to research and choose effective keywords to target on your blog.

4. Do not stuff your articles with keywords. Ideally, you want to use keywords and phrases in your blog posts that your target audience will search for. But you should not (nor do you need to) drop the keyword 20 times in one blog post. The most important thing is to write your content so that it flows naturally and grabs your reader’s attention.

5. Optimize your blog’s title bars with those “viable” keywords you uncovered during your research. If you are using WordPress, the All-In-One SEO Plugin is all you need to do the job.

6. Submit your blog to the top RSS feed and blog directories. Take a moment to notify them that your blog exists. Don’t expect them to find you.

7. Setup a Technorati account for your blog, so Technorati will be pinged and updated every time you publish new content.

Bonus Tip: Promote your blog! Share your blog content using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Make sure you include your blog’s URL on your business cards, post cards and any other marketing collateral. Seek the help of your staff, family and friends when it comes to spreading the word about your legal blog.

Having a blog is wonderful, but having one that no one reads because they cannot find it doesn’t feel so good, does it?

If you’ve hit a wall trying to decide which topics you want to discuss on your legal blog, or cannot find the time necessary to maintain your blog, you should consider hiring a legal marketing assistant (LMA). Your LMA can ghostwrite blog posts on various legal topics, summarize (in layman’s terms) case law and recent court decisions that affect your audience, and post fresh content to your blog on a regular basis.

Tagged as: Blogging Tips