There are a number of excellent reasons you should be blogging – to demonstrate your expertise in your field of practice, to brand your firm, to differentiate yourself from competitors, to attract prospects and to boost your SEO with fresh content. 

If you are not seeing the results you want, then you need to be sure you are blogging effectively.  Here are the top 10 best practices for your law firm blog:

1.  Publish consistently.  You can’t build an audience without constantly feeding your blog with quality content.  If you find yourself falling behind, then now is a good time to establish an editorial calendar to help you plan ahead.

2.  Focus on your prospect.  People who seek legal advice have a problem they need solved.  Focus on that problem and provide valuable content to address your prospect’s needs.

3.  Create great titles.  You won’t get many readers if you don’t have an enticing headline. 

4.  Include images.  Images are another way to attract attention for your blog posts.

5.  Include a call-to-action.   What do you want your prospects to do after reading your blog?  Sign up for a newsletter?  Download a free report?  Experiment with different CTAs and use those that help you increase your conversion rate.

6.  Optimize your blog posts.  Keywords are still important to include in your posts, but remember that you are writing for a human being, not a search engine.  You’ll be penalized by loading a post with too many keywords and you won’t impress the prospects you are trying to attract.

7.  Respond to comments.  One of the key reasons you should be blogging is to engage with prospects, so if someone takes the time to post a comment on your blog, be sure you comment back in a timely manner.

8.  Share on social media.  Every one of your posts should be shared on all your social networks to extend your reach.

9.  Build relationships with other bloggers.  Identify other bloggers who are experts in your field, comment on their posts and invite them to post on your blog.  Hopefully they will reciprocate.

10.  Create great content.  If you’re not a good writer, then you will need to outsource this task.  Just be sure that the person you engage understands what you do and has experience in writing for attorneys.