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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.