Why Attorneys Should be Bloggers

Do you have your own law blog?  Does your law firm have a blog?  Do you want to get more clients?  Do you want to make more money?  Does a bear . . . oh never mind.  I am a big advocate of the attorney law blog.  It works for me.  It can work for you.

The term “blog” is short for web log.  In the early days of blogging a blog was a series of posts displayed on a website in reverse chronological order.  People typically created a blog with content about a specific topic because they wanted to provide a source of information about their topic of interest.  You can find many blogs on any topic you can imagine.  The quality of each blog depends on the creative talent, knowledge and writing ability of the blog’s creator.  Nobody know how many blogs exist, but there are millions of them.

Here is my list of some of the reasons a lawyer should have a blog:

• Blogging is a learning experience.  Writing good articles (called “posts” in blogese) helps you to know your topic better and increases your legal knowledge.  When you write something that can be viewed by the entire world it has a tendency to cause most people to invest time in making sure the don’t say something that is not true or that is misleading.  It is very common for me to spend time researching a statute or reading one or more cases to make sure that what I say in my post is correct.  Writing about a topic also helps me understand that topic better.

• Blogging brings traffic to your website/blog.  An important goal in having a website/blog is to attract a lot of visitors to your site.  The best way to get visitors is to have large quantities of good content on your site.  One of the best and easiest ways to create content is the blog.  With good blog software like WordPress is it extremely easy to write an article and post it on your site.  No need to send the article to your web designer and wait a week for the article to be up on your site.  With WordPress adding an article to your site is as simple as writing the article, giving it a title, adding it to one or more categories and clicking the upload icon.   Read “Why I Love WordPress for My Law Firm.”

• Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your area of law practice.  Over time as you add more and more content about your specific area of law (widget law for example) your blog becomes clear evidence to visitors that you are an expert in widget law.  When deciding on who to hire a prospective client is more likely to hire the lawyer that has tangible (ok technically it is intangible) proof of expertise than the lawyer who has no blog or website about widget law.  Consider for example my blog called “U.S. Real Estate Law.”  This blog is about a single topic, i.e., nonU.S. citizens investing in U.S. real estate.  I form a lot of new Arizona LLCs for people all over the world who want to purchase U.S. real estate.

• Blogging helps you convince propects to hire you.  Several times a day I talk to prospects on the phone who are interviewing me for the purpose of deciding whether or not to hire me.  Prospects frequently ask about a subject that is an article or post on one of my websites.  When that happens I tell the prospect I have an article on the subject and if he/she will give me his or her email address I will  send a link to the article.  I then use Macro Express to zap canned text with the link to the article into an email message and send it to the prospect.  For example, people frequently ask me about dissolving their Arizona LLC.  When I get a call on that topic I send the prospect the following message:

• Blogging is fun.  Yes it is.  I enjoy the writing and creative aspects of blogging.  I also get personal satisfaction in knowing that people are reading my posts and learning from the results of my investment in time.

A great way to get ideas for blog posts is to listen to questions prospects and clients ask you in email messages and over the phone.  I am sure you have the same experience I have with people who ask the same common questions about widget law (ok maybe questions about your area of practice, not widget law).  These commonly asked questions make great blog posts.  Turn these questions into a post you can email to prospects and clients to show your expertise.  See for example a blog category on my Arizona Limited Liability Company Law website called “How Do I.”  When I get a call or email message from somebody that asks me a question I’ve answered on my blog I send the person a link to the blog post.

An very important fact of blog life and the key to a successful client generating blog is that you must create good content.  This means you need to invest the time to create posts.  This leads me to Keyt’s Technology Rule #5, which is call the Website Content Equation.  The equation is:

more posts = more content = higher search engine rankings = higher web traffic = more new clients = more revenue

Schedule times for content creation and set a goal for a minimum number of posts every week.  Over time your content quantity will grow and the Website Content Equation will put more money in your pocket.