9 Tips for Writing an Effective Law Firm Blog Post

How to write an effective blog post

Writ­ing a blog post that oth­ers want to read and share is a feat. Writ­ing an engag­ing blog about legal mat­ters is anoth­er feat all on its own. When a firm suc­cess­ful­ly har­ness­es a pow­er­ful read­er­ship through con­sis­tent­ly use­ful blog con­tent, the pay-offs are many. 

Atten­tive blog fol­low­ers can boost a legal office into an author­i­ta­tive posi­tion in the mar­ket cre­at­ing a loy­al audi­ence that trans­lates to built-in leads and prospec­tive clients. Hav­ing an ongo­ing rap­port with an online com­mu­ni­ty can boost your brand, boasts a pow­er­ful rep­u­ta­tion, and improve PR with every post generated. 

The ques­tion is, how can law firms cre­ate entic­ing and engag­ing con­tent about legal matters?

The Best Law Firm Blogs Are Objective

As tempt­ing as it may be to reveal the inner-work­ings of your firm’s cas­es and your legal team’s jus­ti­fied opin­ions on legal mat­ters, the best law firm blogs are to-the-point and focused on the respec­tive firm’s specialties. 

Typ­i­cal­ly, read­ers of legal blogs are in search of legal direc­tion and con­text. While blog posts in no way coun­sel read­ers, they do offer an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build expec­ta­tions, to under­stand reg­u­la­tions and to pre­pare for a case or expe­ri­ence that awaits the reader. 

In cre­at­ing your blog, stick to the mat­ters of fact. Deter­mine your team’s strength and exploit the many ways that your knowl­edge and data can be shared to help read­ers. Decades of knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence can go unap­pre­ci­at­ed in the firm set­ting where big cas­es and motives take cen­ter stage. But the legal intel­li­gence you’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the years is immense­ly use­ful to those whose days are not filled with legal matters.

Let’s take a look at what it takes to write an out­stand­ing legal blog.

Effective Blog Writing Requires Strategy

A win­ning legal blog fol­lows a win­ning strat­e­gy. It’s updat­ed con­sis­tent­ly, its writ­ing is held to a high stan­dard, and it is always more use­ful to the read­er than it is to the firm. The ROI of a suc­cess­ful blog will pay off if its intent remains user-focused.

When build­ing your strat­e­gy, there are a num­ber of fac­tors to keep in mind.

How to Write an Effective Blog Post — Tips for Writing a Blog

Fine-tun­ing your blog strat­e­gy is the first step in cre­at­ing a suc­ces­sion of lik­able and share­able blogs. Once your strat­e­gy is in place, it’s time to write. Writ­ing stand­out con­tent is a good start. Apply­ing the struc­ture and guide­lines of that stand­out con­tent to every pub­lished post is even bet­ter. As you or the writer you out­sourced the work to cre­ates con­sis­tent, friend­ly and engag­ing con­tent, be sure to ref­er­ence our experts’ tips below.

1. Keep it unique: When report­ing on cur­rent events, trends or top­ics that most firms dis­cuss, con­sid­er angles to make your approach unique. This might include the pre­sen­ta­tion for­ma­tion, con­tent orga­ni­za­tion, point of view, experts inter­viewed, or com­par­i­son to anoth­er rel­e­vant event.
2. Use an approach­able tone: Your read­ers are (like­ly) not lawyers! It’s impor­tant to break down com­plex ideas into sim­ple terms and to pro­vide con­text in an easy-going man­ner. Blog read­ers should feel com­fort­ed by the edu­ca­tion and encour­aged to reach out to you with ques­tions or leave notes in the comments. 
3. Break it up for easy read­ing: Keep posts frag­ment­ed to help read­ers stay engaged. Avoid­ing long para­graphs and includ­ing mul­ti­ple head­lines and bul­let­ed sec­tions will keep the pace tight and mov­ing along well.
4. Include evi­dence: Always include evi­dence to back up your claims, even if it is com­mon knowl­edge in the indus­try. Not only does this pro­vide read­ers with an addi­tion­al source of infor­ma­tion and edu­ca­tion, but it helps you to net­work with oth­er author­i­ta­tive lead­ers. And on top of these ben­e­fits, Google and oth­er search engines favor inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, mean­ing you can earn a high­er-rank­ing search posi­tion for your content.
5. Pri­or­i­tize qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty: As tempt­ing as it can be to write long-form con­tent for SEO pur­pos­es, a con­cise, neat­ly-fit­ted post might be bet­ter suit­ed to a light top­ic. Always eval­u­ate an appro­pri­ate length of a post for a sub­ject before writ­ing and publishing. 
6. Know your audi­ence: Your audi­ence is clients and prospec­tive clients. Con­sid­er the ser­vices you offer and the gen­er­al pro­file of your cur­rent client base. Under­stand their needs, their desires, and the legal con­tent they’re most like­ly search­ing for online. If you answer sim­i­lar ques­tions or have repeat con­ver­sa­tions with cur­rent clients, your read­ers will like­ly be inter­est­ed and after this same knowledge. 
7. Estab­lish a blog goal: Start with a blog goal and under­stand its use to your firm. Is it to gen­er­ate leads? To inform the pub­lic? To rise to promi­nence with­in the indus­try? Each blog should con­tribute specif­i­cal­ly to this goal.
8. Under­stand the blog’s pur­pose: Is the pur­pose of the blog to inform, to edu­cate, to enter­tain? Is it to under­stand the law with­in the news, or to under­stand the intri­ca­cies with­in legal mat­ters? Each post, again, should relate direct­ly to the over­all pur­pose of the blog. 
9. Stay on-brand with your spe­cial­ty: Avoid veer­ing from the type of law your firm rep­re­sents. Stay­ing in line with your built-in spe­cial­ty increas­es your author­i­ty, encour­ages clients’ con­fi­dence in you, and helps to guide the direc­tion of blog topics.

Let Us Know About Your Experience

Have you writ­ten or endeav­ored to write a blog for your legal office? We’d love to hear about it and learn more about your expe­ri­ence. The insights you share are valu­able to the read­ers on our blog, and we strive to fos­ter a help­ful, com­mu­ni­ty read­er­ship expe­ri­ence. Let us know about your blog tips (do’s and don’ts) below. 

Conclusion

Rosy Strate­gies can help you write the per­fect law firm blog post or curate a long-term blog­ging strat­e­gy. You can rely on our team of experts to con­sult, edu­cate and guide you toward cre­at­ing the most effec­tive con­tent plan for your over­ar­ch­ing busi­ness and mar­ket­ing goals.