legal content marketing - Express Writers

5 Reasons to Hire a High-Quality Legal Content Writer

June 28, 2022June 14, 2022 by Gary Stroschein

Copywriting strategy to have high quality content

Recent legal industry reports highlight the power of legal content writing as 57% of surveyed respondents indicate they found their lawyer through an online search engine. This compares with 59% who found their lawyer through a referral source. This data shows law firms and legal professionals need a balanced approach to their marketing efforts and hiring a legal content writer can be an effective way to support the online marketing side of those efforts. No matter your practice area, firm size, or content publishing frequency, we break down some of the main benefits of hiring a legal content writer and how they can elevate your business by saving you time and money. Why You Need a Skilled Content Writer for Marketing Your Law Firm or Legal Service Business Several reasons support the decision to hire a quality legal content writer for your law firm, legal technology company, or other legal service business. We discuss those reasons in more detail within the next section. But first, some key context for why content writing is fundamental to your law firm’s future success in today’s market. Before the internet, lawyers and law firms heavily relied on word-of-mouth referrals from colleagues or current clients to attract new business. While that marketing source is still important, the internet offers those in need of legal services a new method for finding trusted experts to solve their legal problems. Your potential clients are increasingly likely to shop for a law firm on the internet and through other social media platforms no differently than they would for other products or services. In fact, potential clients are likely to vet your online presence even if a trusted referral source recommended you. Both short and long-form content is useful in executing a complete marketing strategy and can include, amongst others, the following types of content: Blog posts on your firm or substantive legal industry topics Practice area webpages Attorney bios White papers, industry guides, etc. Social media posts Emails and newsletters The shift in how people access legal markets means a couple of things for your law practice. One is that you need an online presence that gives prospective clients an opportunity to find you. However, a mere presence is not enough. Your online profile must effectively speak to two audiences. The first audience is your potential client’s search engine (e.g., Google, Firefox, etc.) which acts as a gatekeeper through how it ranks and presents your online profile through different queries. The second audience is the potential client who, after finding your profile, requires convincing that you are the right candidate for the job. Both audiences need regularly updated content that demonstrates your expertise and differentiates you from other market choices in the here and now. The 5 Reasons Your Law Firm Can Benefit from a Legal Content Writer As explained above, our business reputations increasingly exist via websites and other internet platforms. Providing information and thought leadership about your firm and your practice is essential to client development. However, using a legal content writer can provide significant cost and time savings compared with a do-it-yourself approach or using a non-legal specific marketing writer. You Can Focus More Attention on Your Legal Practice Law firms that don’t rely on a legal content writer for developing thought pieces and blog posts often depend on their attorneys to craft content. They may do this to save costs and because they know their attorneys have the industry knowledge (unlike generic marketing services that may lack the skillset to adequately write on a topic). While this practice may save you marketing expenses in the short term, it may also cut into your opportunities for generating revenue. Your law firm’s attorneys likely bill at an hourly rate. The time they must dedicate to drafting content for your website is time they could otherwise spend on billing to client matters, likely at a rate higher than what you would save on the cost of hiring a legal content writer. Optimize Your Legal Marketing Efforts for the Average Legal Consumer Aside from the revenue-cost analysis benefit, your attorneys’ style of writing also might not translate well to high-quality content built for attracting an online audience and ranking on search engines. For good reason, attorney writing is different from legal content writing. It requires precise use of technical jargon and restatements of law built for audiences of judges, opposing counsels, governments, regulatory bodies, and other sophisticated parties in a formal setting. In comparison, your legal content writing should still relay accurate information about legal issues but do it in a way that makes the knowledge accessible to the average reader or target audience. The benefit of a legal content writer is their ability to distill legal information and reframe that knowledge in a way that connects you to potential clients. Legal Content Writers Establish Credibility and Trust with Your Potential Clients and Referral Sources Legal content writing is about building credibility and trust within your community and leveraging that community to expand your market through their web of connections. Building credibility within your personal and professional relationships takes time. And traditional marketing methods can only extend so far due to your time constraints (e.g., meet and greet events, volunteering, attending conferences, speaking engagements, etc.). Legal professionals are also acutely aware of how their business often depends on the depth and breadth of their relationships with people. In the context of legal services, this largely centers around providing high-quality, effective work products (the main reason why referrals from current and former clients are so critical). However, the opportunity to showcase the quality of your legal services requires an initial investment of time and rapport building with your network, which includes the likes of: Family and friends The public Fellow colleagues (i.e., other lawyers and legal professionals) Other professional service providers (e.g., CPAs, financial advisors, insurance representatives, real estate agents, doctors, social workers, etc.) Legal content marketing gives you a platform to maintain contact and gradually strengthen the trust … Read more

Law Blog Writers: 6 Key Steps to Stop Writing Boring, Blah Posts

June 19, 2024November 29, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Blogging. Everybody’s doing it. It’s not a coincidence. Content marketing and blogging are successful, proven ways to earn leads, conversions, and increase sales and revenue. More and more marketers are focusing on blogging in particular as the keystone of their efforts. According to stats Impact shared, marketers consider blogs “critical” to success. It’s all because one of blogging’s main goals (and successes) is building the consumer’s trust. Once you build that trust, it’s much easier to get them on your side and turn them into customers. Take a look at these numbers from the same study: These are great stats in favor of content. People generally feel more comfortable learning about companies through informative articles. After they consume a brand’s content, they feel better about the brand. The problem? You can only enjoy the benefits of content marketing and blogging if the stuff you create is good. Unfortunately, for people in specialized industries who want to take advantage, that’s not exactly simple to do. If you’re a lawyer or law blog writer who creates content for a legal blog, it may be even harder. Why Is It So Hard to Write an Interesting Law Blog? Niche, high-level topics are not easy to write about for the everyman (or everywoman). Often, with the wrong approach, your content can be just as dry and boring as the contracts you draft or the briefs you compose. Look at this example of a contract between a company and an independent contractor: Nobody will touch writing like this with a 10-foot pole unless they have to. Unless the law requires it, it’s not happening. Quite frankly, writing like this looks scary and daunting to read. It may even fill your audience with anxiety. If you’re tapped into writing like this 24/7, we have a problem. The thing is, you already know law blogs are inherently boring, but you may not know how to write any other way. Years of law school probably drilled most of those down-to-earth writing skills right out of you. It’s time to re-learn some writing techniques to make your law blog intriguing and readable. It’s time to pick up some tips so you can craft a great, informative, personable blog alongside all that legal writing you do. Law blog writers, here are the keys to banishing boring, blah posts from your content roster forevermore. How to Be an Interesting Law Blog Writer Law is a notoriously hard topic to write about in a way that’s engaging for the average internet surfer. If you want to make non-law experts and potential clients interested in your blog, give these tips a whirl. 1. Research Post Topics That Fill a Knowledge Gap or Have Built-In Interest If you’re currently flooding the internet with posts that delve into nitty-gritty aspects of your law specialty, let me ask you one question: Why? If you’re trying to attract business with your blog, your audience isn’t law students. It’s not lower-level members of your team or fellow law professionals, either. Your audience is your clients and potential clients. These people don’t care about deep-dives into new legislation. They don’t understand legal jargon. However, to connect with them, you can’t write another post that other law blogs have already discussed hundreds of times. Instead: Look at your law specialty. Look at the services you offer. Simplify these topics and do basic searches to discover what’s already out there on the web about them, as well as what people want to know. Use keyword research tools like BuzzSumo or Google Keyword Planner to find out what interests people right now and what opportunities you might have to fill in knowledge gaps. For instance, a common legal topic the average Joe searches for online is “DUI law.” Plugging “DUI laws in California” into BuzzSumo shows what people are sharing. It also shows how some law blog writers are addressing narrower topics, like “Green DUI” and how to contest a DUI in court. Doing research like this shows you where the interest is hovering and empty spaces that you could fill with good content. Never neglect research when coming up with legal blog post topics. Neil Patel calls keyword research “the most important part of digital marketing” for a reason. It shows you how to reach the right people online with your content – the people who need it, and the people you have a better chance of turning into clients. 2. Cut Your Sentences in Half Wordy sentences have their place. You’ll find them in legal documents, in some forms of pretentious fiction, and in technical manuals. Where do they have no business showing up? In your blogs. Online writing is different from any other type because of how people read it. Think about it: They’re staring at screens of all sizes, scrolling, clicking, and browsing. It’s not like settling down with a book and giving it your full attention. It’s like sitting in a darkened room while hundreds of pieces of content fly past your face. Ads, blog posts, articles, images, social media posts, links, videos, and more. Which ones make you want to pause? According to Buffer, the internet is doused in trillions of ads per year and hundreds of billions of tweets a day. That’s not to mention the extra few billion Facebook posts created daily. Via Marketoonist The result is that most people get pretty schizophrenic when they’re online. They skip from content piece to content piece and post to post without drawing breath. They scroll through their feeds like speed demons. Hence: Online writing must cater to short attention spans. If your sentences mirror the ones in that contract you just drew up, stop. Think again. It’s time to ruthlessly edit yourself. Cut your sentences in half. Insert periods instead of commas. Trim out useless adjectives. Here’s a great example: Both of these sentences say the same thing. Sentence #1 is 16 words long. Sentence #2 is 8 words long. In half the time, you … Read more