Legal Blogs - A Lawyer's Guide to Blogging
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by Brandon Cornett
In recent years, I've noticed a slow but steady rise in the number of legal blogs online. In fact, I'm surprised there aren't more legal blogs and lawyer blogs online today. After all, a blog is a great way for lawyers to expand their Internet presence and grow their business online.
Perhaps the relatively slow growth of legal blogs is due to the fact that few lawyers understand the concept of blogging. My goal with this article is to educate you on "blogging 101" and to show you how a legal blog can support your online marketing program.
What is a Blog?
A blog is simply a content-management tool that allows you to quickly and easily publish content onto the web. Popular blog programs include Blogger (owned by Google), WordPress and TypePad.
The common appeal of blogs is that they are so easy to use. Different blog programs have different features, but they all do essentially the same thing. They convert your text into an HTML web page (known as a blog post) at the click of a button. You simply type your blog post, add links or images as desired, and click a "Publish" button. The blog application will then publish your post onto the web.
How easy is it? Well, if you can type an email or create a Word document, you have the technical skill needed to publish content to a blog. It really is that is.
What is a Legal Blog?
As you might have guessed, a legal blog is simply a blog published by a lawyer or a law firm. There are actually all kinds of business blogs these days -- real estate blogs, software blogs, and yes ... lawyer blogs.
A lawyer or law firm might use a blog for many purposes, but usually it is a way to expand the company's online presence for marketing and communications purposes.
Benefits of a Legal Blog
There are many reasons why a lawyer or law firm would want to publish a legal blog. Here are a few of those reasons off the top of my head.
- 1. Easy Online Publishing - Earlier, we talked about the simplicity of publishing a lawyer blog. It's simply a matter of typing your content and clicking a "Publish" button. This ease of use will make you more inclined to publish content on a regular basis, which will keep people and search engines coming back more often. And speaking of search engines...
- 2. Search Engine Visibility - Blogs do many things that can help them earn search engine ranking. In some cases, a legal blog can achieve good search engine ranking faster than a regular legal website. A blog is easier to publish than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often. Search engines like websites with frequently updated content.
- 3. Positioning Power - Blogs are closely associated with an individual author (more so than a regular website). When you make your legal blog an extension of yourself, it becomes an online representation of your knowledge, personality and professional talent.
- 4. Blogs Foster Trust - If you publish a legal blog over time (and you write in your own true voice), people will be more inclined to trust you. And let's face facts here ... many people have a natural distrust of lawyers. So any lawyer can benefit from a healthy dose of public trust. A legal blog can help you earn that trust.
- 5. Lead Generation - You stand to gain a lot from the interaction and trust mentioned above. When you interact with your blog readers in a positive way, you have a much greater chance of turning them into readers, subscribers and clients! In this way, the legal blog becomes a lead generation tool as well.
Conclusion
I hope this article has opened your eyes to the marketing possibilites of a legal blog / lawyer blog. Legal blogging can help you expand your online presence, increase your search engine visibility, establish your subject-matter expertise, initiate a dialogue with your audience, and even generate leads and new clients.