“It’s your turn to write the blog post this week/month/year/decade.” – Result: sad face.
“Please write a blog post like this and it will generate lots of new money for you.” – Result: happy face.
Is it that simple? Yes. Good content will make you money and, if it’s really good, it will make you money day after day, month after month, and year after year.
This blog will talk you through:
We help our law firm customers produce content that works online day after day, so if you’d like us to do this for you, please just let us know. The return on investment can be absolutely huge
Crucial steps to take before writing your blog post
There are a few things that must be in place before you will get any value from the legal content you write for your website:
- Your site must have a conversion orientated design (visitors must be clearly encouraged to take specific actions – call us, fill out a form, download a guide, leave an email etc)
- Your site should be search engine friendly
- The mobile version of your site must present well
Make sure you’re not wasting your time, or the time of others
There’s a firm I know that produces a lot of good content. Their site is not conversion orientated and the way that it has been implemented means that the blog section is separate from their main domain.
As a result, the posts will receive a fraction of the traffic they should receive. The fee earners’ time is being wasted. If they made a few quick fixes, their traffic would be transformed and the value generated by the content would increase considerably.
Objections (and solutions) to writing content for your law firm’s website
Not knowing where to start, or spending hours on a piece of writing and receiving no enquiries from it, can leave you feeling deflated and unwilling to try again. That is why I’ve answered two of the most commonly asked questions when writing an online post:
Q: I’ve no idea what to write about?
A: Write about the type of business you want to attract. Don’t write about stress at work if you don’t want that kind of work. Think about an issue your ideal client will be currently facing and help them with thought leadership content – don’t be afraid of giving the game away or selling the crown jewels.
It’s one thing to write about how one might approach a problem, and another thing entirely to actually tackle the problem head on – particularly if the problem is a legal one. Write about something your ideal client would find useful and that you feel comfortable with. Think about the questions client have – then answer them.
You are looking to empower your readers by making them more knowledgeable than they were before they read your content with a view to establishing trust.
Q: I’ve written content before and I don’t know what use it was, so it must be a waste of time?
A: Being clear on your goals is critical and ‘just to keep the website up to date’ is not a strong enough objective. Your goal should be to make your law firm more successful and you must have both a strategy and metrics in place to ensure that the content’s role in achieving this strategy is clearly evidenced.
Metrics such as page views, visits, time on page etc are okay, but if you can’t ultimately track their impact on income, then how much attention will you actually pay them?
Our top 3 reasons to create content
At MLT Digital, we create content for three main functions:
1. Awareness raising
We largely generate business online for law firms through the expertise implied by our content. We want our target market to see our content on social channels or on Google, and think ‘that looks interesting and may answer my question’.
We want this to happen continuously in one piece of content, repeated across a number of individual pieces of content, and as such become an authority on our subject to our market.
The benefit comes from the collection of content as a whole driving traffic, raising awareness and providing insight as to what resonates and what doesn’t.
Our key metrics for this aspect are more generic such as page views, time on site, bounce rate etc.
2. Lead generation
We don’t expect a visitor to become a customer after having read one piece of awareness raising/thought leadership content and neither should you. This is known as ‘top of the funnel’ content and is right at the beginning of the prospect conversion journey.
What we would like to happen is for the visitor to sign up to receive more content from us – we would like to be able to communicate with the visitor directly and move them into our content-conversion sales process.
The key metric here is database growth.
3. Outbound marketing
We use a marketing automation platform to manage our marketing-to-sales conversion process. This has had great effect over the years and ongoing content is a critical aspect of it.
We market every new piece of content to our database and, as audience members interact with it, they score points.
As their score increases, they move from the top of the funnel, to the middle and then to the bottom where it is clear that they are interested in our services and could benefit from a more concerted sales effort. The content feeds this ongoing effort and returns many, many times the effort needed to create it.
The key metric here is money.
Proven example that legal content can generate enquiries
We’ve worked with Lewis Nedas Law for a number of years now and the team are great to work with. Everything is a collaborative effort and their website generates a huge amount of new enquiries every month. Content plays a critical role.
To view the blog post we are going to discuss, click here.
First published in 2017, this post has generated over 56,000 visits and 400 enquiries. So, the next time you are asked to write content for your website see it as opportunity, not a pain.
Why does it work?
- The title is really good and is designed to attract clicks
- It is written by a knowledgeable professional and offers relevant insight
- The topic has associated search volume and is linked to a potential distressed purchase
What does Siobhain, the author, have to say about it?
“I wrote the piece on Voluntary interviews once we noticed that the Police were using this approach, rather than arresting people as they usually did.
We recognised that this would have an immediate effect upon the rights of individuals and that people would want to Google information about this.
Having worked successfully with the team at Moore Legal Technology for 8 years, I had picked up a few tips from them along the way, especially after reading their carefully drafted blogs.
The blog had to have immediate impact, a title that would stand out amongst all the content on Google and would answer the questions that potential clients would want to know before agreeing to such an interview.
It worked!
Thousands of people have viewed it and hundreds more instructed us as a result of reading the article.”
Siobhain Egan
Director
Lewis Nedas Law
Improve your law firm’s content today
There’s no doubt producing high-quality, engaging and relevant content is one of the most important aspects to being successful online. We know this can be a difficult task but can help you develop an effective content strategy guaranteed to increase traffic and gain clients.
Improve your content today by calling 0333 344 2722 or complete the online enquiry form to improve your digital marketing.
