7 Reasons Why Blogs Will Increase Your Firm’s Growth
If you type a question into your favorite search engine, you might find that many of the answers come from blogs. Blogs precede many recipes, and even lawyers are now turning to blogs to provide legal information to potential clients. Blogs even helped with the research of this very blog! In 2021, many businesses are now turning to blogs to inform and engage with more clients. So, should you use blogs to appeal to potential clients?
The answer is yes. Having an established presence online will help potential clients find you. Not only will they be able to find you, but by keeping your blog relevant and updated, both current and potential clients will trust your law firm. It’s also good to note that blogs can go a little more in-depth with their information, allowing people to become more informed of their rights. As a lawyer, you want your firm to be the leader in providing information. Having an online presence and utilizing blogs will help you grow your law firm.
You need to write blogs to reach clients. Let’s learn more.
What is a blog?
Before learning all the benefits of blogging, let’s define the term. The term blog is short for weblog. A blog is discussion or information-based and is generally informal. At its barebones, a blog shares information with others. When you use blogs for your firm, you can show the reader who you are and what you do.
Blogs should be easy to read and understand. They should also appeal to an extensive range of readers with all different backgrounds. Imagine that a blog is a presentation you would give to your client. Focus on a specific topic to answer questions and provide helpful information. Remember, it’s not an academic paper like you may have written in law school.
The Benefits of Blogs
Now that we’ve defined the term, we can look at all the benefits of a blog. We’ve established that blogs help reach potential clients, and they’re also able to help your firm reach new heights through search engine optimization.
We’ll discuss how blogs can help you reach clients and increase your SEO. SEO might be a term that you’re already familiar with, but if you’re not, that’s okay too! Essentially, if a website has good SEO, it will be one of the top results to appear when someone uses a search engine.
Now let’s get into the weeds about how blogs help grow your law firm.
Convert Potential Clients and Retain Current Clients
Clients are the bread and butter of a law firm. When they call your law firm, you’re able to do your job, and without them, your firm will struggle. But to get clients, you need leads. Good leads turn into clients, and clients can refer others to you and your firm. Here are five ways that blogs can help you reach new clients and retain current and former clients.
1. Blogs Generate Leads
To get clients, you must first generate leads, and there are several ways that a law firm can do this. You could use social media, billboards, or radio. However, blogs are one of the best ways to bring brand recognition and leads into your law firm. When a lead is searching for answers, and they stumble upon your website, they’re much more likely to reach out and become a client.
2. Blogs Establish Trust
Solving problems through blogs establishes trust, which is critical for reaching new clients and retaining current or former clients. By providing content that solves someone’s problem, you’re much more likely to convert someone into a client. When you can solve a problem or answer a question, people are more inclined to share your blog on their social media or with people they know. And when people share your blogs, your firm will appear more trustworthy. Being trustworthy generates leads both through website traffic and word-of-mouth referrals, which will, in turn, grow your law firm.
3. Blogs Facilitate Research
People are often much more likely to research services that tend to be expensive – like hiring a lawyer. People want to know what they’re getting before they spend money on it, so you’ll want to make sure that you provide quality content that adds value. By publishing blogs, your leads are allowed to find solutions on their own time and contact you when they’re ready to move forward. They may also remember the name of your firm when they find they need an attorney.
4. Blogs Grow Email Lists
Blogs can also help you grow your mailing list. Email marketing is still effective, especially for keeping your firm at the forefront of someone’s mind. However, it is getting more and more difficult to add and keep people on your email list. That’s where blogs can come in handy. When you provide content that adds value to someone’s life, they’re more likely to trust that you’ll give even more information for them. Therefore, when someone views your blogs as helpful, they’re much more likely to sign up to receive emails from your firm as well.
5. Blogs Stay Relevant
Having relevant blogs may bring potential clients to your law firm for months or maybe years. Posting timely content is essential, but older posts can generate leads well into the future. As a post continues to gain authority on the web, it will bring organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic like this can result in people bringing their case to your firm well after posting a blog with that topic. Remember – blogs may not have an instant return on investment. However, studies have shown that prioritizing blogging is 13x more likely to bring in a positive ROI.
Search Engine Optimization
While blogs can help you convert more leads and retain more clients, they also help your search engine optimization. The more content you put out into the world, the more likely people are to find that content and, in turn, your law firm. Search engines like Google are constantly scanning for content that would be applicable for search engine results. So first, we’ll provide clarity on SEO and then get into two reasons why blogs help SEO.
Google is King
While there are multiple search engines that people can use, people are more likely to use Google. Since Google controls most of the market, it’s essential to stay relevant to its current trends and algorithms. You’ll want to make sure that your blogs appeal to Google and its SEO algorithm. This search engine is what we’ll be focusing on when it comes to SEO.
How SEO Works
It’s important to note that SEO is complex, and the main focus of this blog is to provide you with information on why blogging works. However, it is essential to know how SEO works to understand why blogging works. Essentially, search engines use a piece of coding to index websites. This piece of coding is also called a “crawler,” “spider,” or “bot.” Their function is to crawl across a website and catalog its keywords and information. When they find keywords, they tell Google that your information is relevant to any questions that a user may ask.
1. Blogs Keep Your Site Relevant
Google and other search engines use crawlers to see if your content is up-to-date. If you continuously post content, Google will likely keep your website towards the top, where more people can see it. Fresh content will keep your website current. It will also let Google know that you are active and provide relevant content. Because search engines don’t want to give users inaccurate or outdated information, they will rank older or inactive websites towards the bottom. Websites that are updated frequently give crawlers more reasons to index your site and will keep your website towards the top of the results page.
2. Blogs are Natural Link-Builders
SEO crawlers are constantly looking for links since that’s how they build their map of important websites. Writing content for a blog allows you to place more links throughout the page, creating more authority for your website. All links are good in the eyes of SEO, whether that’s internal links that lead to other pages on your website or external links that go towards different pages on other websites. Creating varied but related content will add many more opportunities to increase your SEO rankings through backlinks.
Being Real About Blogs
Blogs are critical to building your firm’s credibility, but they can take a long time. Some studies have found that blogs can take anywhere from three to six hours to write. That’s a minimum of three hours that you could be spending on your law firm. If you are worried about having enough time in your day to run your firm and maintain a quality website, it may be a good idea to hire a marketing team who can help you post quality, consistent content to your website. 8 Figure Firm offers marketing services that can keep up the content that will help you grow your law firm to eight figures in predictable revenue.
In Conclusion
Blogs are incredibly important to the growth of your law firm. They help you generate leads, establish trust with potential and current clients, stay relevant, and become an authority in your practice area. You don’t have to be an expert copywriter to begin blogging, you just have to start. So if you’re not already blogging at a consistent rate or you don’t have a blog, it’s crucial that you start as soon as possible. Start your blog – and see how your law firm grows!
Further Reading
Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing
Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging in 2021
7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog
Why Your Business Needs a Blog
4 Ways a Blog Can Help Your Business Grow Right Now
How Blogs Work for Business, Even if No One’s Reading Yours
Study: The Perfect Blog Post Length – And How Long it Should Take to Write
Ultimate List of Blogging Statistics and Facts (Updated for 2021)
What is SEO and How Does SEO Work?
Web Crawler 101: What is a Web Crawler and How Do Crawlers Work?