Content Writing, SEO
For personal injury attorneys, creating and maintaining a legal blog on your law firm website has many benefits. It boosts your SEO efforts and serves as a way to showcase thought leadership to potential clients of your firm.
A legal blog entails much more than simply writing a post and publishing it. The real work happens before the writing begins. You need to ensure your blog strategy and processes are well-planned. If you struggle to see results from legal blogging, chances are your strategy could use some improvement.
It’s vital to establish an editorial calendar (based on thorough SEO research) and posting frequency.
For example, Postali handles content strategy and execution for many of our clients and seek attorney’s approval before posting. If an attorney wants to do the writing, we provide on-page SEO optimization and handle the posting of the blog. You will need to find the right process for your firm and ensure you have all the resources you need for editorial planning, topic ideation, writing, editing and publishing.
Your legal blog should be updated with fresh content once a month at minimum, but ideally more often. That presents a challenge for many PI attorneys. How do you keep your content fresh? Won’t you eventually run out of ideas?
At Postali, we manage blogs for PI attorneys that are several years old, so we understand that it can sometimes be a challenge to find new ideas. If you’re stuck, here are 5 fresh ideas to keep your law firm’s blog fresh and fun.
5 New Ideas for PI Legal Blog Posts
1. Highlight an attorney.
One of the biggest benefits of a blog is that it allows your potential clients to get to know your attorneys. This is a powerful tool because many people want to hire an attorney that is approachable.
If your firm has multiple injury attorneys, you can use your blog to highlight them. Is an attorney actively involved in the community? Did someone recently speak at an event or receive a prestigious legal industry award? These make engaging blog posts to add to your editorial calendar.
2. Think local.
Creating localized content is a great way to ensure your content is being consumed by the people you care about most – potential clients in your law firm’s city or town. Look to local events for inspiration for your legal blog.
What is localized content? For a personal injury attorney, this can be tips on safe driving in your city. Are there certain roads or intersections that are notorious for accidents? Offer your readers tips for staying safe on the road. Is there a big local event coming up, such as a concert or sporting event? Offer helpful safety tips for attendees to keep in mind. You can also use blog posts to elaborate on statewide and local issues that may affect personal injury claims.
Localized content doesn’t always have to be closely tied to your personal injury practice. Remember that your blog can be a way to show your law firm’s personality. For example, you can offer a list of fun local events for families to enjoy in the summer. Blog content related to personal injury should still be the majority of your posts, but it’s okay to mix in a less relevant post occasionally.
3. Diversify content formats.
Blog posts don’t always have to be written content. If your firm has the resources, content formats such as videos and infographics can work exceptionally well as blog posts.
When you create your content strategy, think of topics that would lend well to more visual content formats.
This could be a Q&A-style video where an attorney answers questions about personal injury-related topics. You can create an infographic outlining steps to take after a car accident. Videos and infographics are also great ways to amplify your firm’s social media reach, as they’re typically shared more often than a text-based article.
4. Comment on new technology.
As a personal injury attorney, you know that technology is always changing and it has effects on your practice. Driverless cars, drones and smart home technology are all raising interesting issues around liability. These make great topics for blog posts. This shows potential clients that you keep up with the industry and can even be considered a thought leader.\
5. Answer FAQs.
You probably are used to answering common client questions about auto accidents, workplace injuries or other areas of focus for your law firm. Most attorneys we talk to can easily state the top 5 or 10 questions they receive from clients.
It’s likely that your clients aren’t the only ones asking those questions. One of the most effective types of blog posts for attorneys is answering a legal question. People often use Google to ask these questions, and it gives your law firm an opportunity to be there with an answer.
What Not to Do On Your Legal Blog
As you create your law firm’s blog strategy, it’s also important to understand what types of content you want to avoid.
1. Don’t be overly promotional.
Your blog is a place to showcase your thought leadership and help potential clients get to know your firm. Being overly promotional can be off-putting in a blog post. It’s okay to include calls to action and explain how your firm can help with a legal issue, but it’s important to make sure it’s natural. If your blog post reads like an advertisement, readers will quickly exit your website.
2. Don’t duplicate content between your blog and website.
Keep in mind that your legal blog has a different purpose than the rest of your website. Don’t post things on your blog that are better suited for your law firm website’s main navigation. For example, information about your law firm’s practice areas should live as part of your website. For your blog, you may want to go into specifics about a particular law or case type, but be careful not to create duplicate content. This can harm your legal website’s SEO strategy.
3. Don’t feature your firm’s case results.
Case results can be an effective way to highlight your successes, but they will easily get lost when they’re mixed in with the rest of your blog content. For personal injury attorneys, we recommend creating a separate section of your website to publish your case results.
Contact Us Today for Help With Your Legal Blog
At Postali, we can help with every step in the process to creating a personal injury legal blog that drives results. If you’re interested in discussing your firm’s blog, call us today at 614-556-4618 – we’d love to talk.
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