Should I have a blog?

Does anyone actually read legal newsletters?

Do potential clients visit attorney biographies online?

There are more than six billion indexed pages on the Internet. And despite efforts to digitize business processes and communications, a lot of paper still crosses most desks on a daily basis. How can you get your message—or content—through all the static? Start by asking these three content-focused attorney marketing questions.

Answers to Attorney Marketing Questions about the Value of Content Creation

This blog is the second in a four-part series that seeks to answer some of the important questions asked about law firms and marketing. Part one of the series addressed the first stage of the TOPDOG marketing process—legal marketing evaluation. This edition addresses step two—legal content creation.

Create Content That Informs and Performs

What message does your online content send to potential clients? Does it reach them at all?

The content on your website—your home page, practice area pages, blogs, and more—provides an opportunity to connect with potential clients looking for specific legal services or information. By creating and posting meaningful, useful legal content and information about your law firm, you can establish your attorneys as thought leaders and build your law firm’s brand. Optimizing that content helps search engines, and the right people, find it.

Here are answers to common questions about legal content creation.

1. Should I have a law firm blog?

Yes, you should.

Here’s why. For law firms that blog regularly, blogs often drive more traffic than any page-level content other than home and attorney bio pages. Blogs can introduce your law firm to Internet users (potential clients) who are searching for information related to your legal services. And regularly posting helpful, relevant content can improve your website’s authority, increase brand awareness, and establish your law firm and attorneys as thought leaders in your practice areas and geographically. The frequency of posting varies depending upon your geography, practice market, your desired results, and your budget.

2. Does anyone actually read legal newsletters?

Yes, they do.

Your clients and potential clients are likely inundated with loads of emails and paper junk mail on a daily basis, so it might come as a surprise that newsletters (email and paper) can still be a very effective marketing tool.

The legal industry average email open rate is 21 percent, and the click rate is 2.7 percent. But there are other benefits to law firm newsletter marketing that can’t be easily measured, like increasing brand recognition, thought leadership, and community involvement and engagement.

In one real life example, our client, a civil defense attorney, received a panel counsel appointment when his email newsletter hit the inbox of a recipient facing the  exact legal issue addressed in the newsletter.

The key to getting people to open your emails (or review a paper newsletter) is to provide genuinely useful content that helps your contacts address the problems and questions they are currently facing. By creating and distributing content that meets this description, you can establish yourself as a valuable partner whose insights are worth your audience’s time and attention.

3. Do potential clients visit online attorney biographies?

Yes, they do.

Web pages that provide details about a law firm’s focus and attorney biographies are often in the top three most visited pages on a law firm’s website.

Attorney biographies bring personal elements to the table. These features also offer additional opportunities for search engine optimization (SEO) and links to authoritative, relevant sites, like law schools and legal associations.

Dig in. Get more information on these and other law firm marketing questions in related articles from TOPDOG Legal Marketing:

The final installments of this blog series will answer common attorney questions related to the optimization and promotion of legal marketing materials and content, completing the circle that represents TOPDOG’s approach to legal marketing.

If you’ve yet to reach out to TOPDOG to discuss your attorney marketing questions and potential solutions, it’s time to get in touch. Call (844) 439-8364 (HEY-TDOG) or completing our online contact form.

The post Attorney Marketing Questions: Lawyer-to-Lawyer FAQ Part 2 appeared first on TOPDOG Legal Marketing, LLC.