If you’re a blogging lawyer, you’re likely using blogs to attract new clients who are surfing the Web for specific keywords and phrases. If you’re using this SEO method of client attraction, you’re probably spending a lot of time researching to incorporate keywords into your posts to make your blogs search engine optimized (or you’re paying someone else a good chunk of change to do so).
However, search engine optimization is only a way of getting potential clients TO your blog. Once the potential client is AT your blog, you’ve got to hook him into believing you’re the best lawyer for the job. Unless you’re working in a very selective niche, you’re probably not the only lawyer on the block who knows how to incorporate keywords into a blog post.
To win those potential clients over, you’ve got to show them you’re something special. And because web surfers get bored and click that back button pretty easily, you’ve got to impress them quickly. There are a few ways you can do this:
Offer more than just the news.
News is great, but they can get that anywhere on the Web. If someone has landed on a lawyer’s weblog, chances are that he or she is looking for something more than a rehashed news story. Although you can’t necessarily offer them privileged information or legal advice, you can provide more than just a regurgitated report. As a lawyer, your opinion means something. As a blogging lawyer, what you think is important.
Be human.
As a general rule, folks don’t trust lawyers. Having worked for dozens of lawyers in the past ten years, I’ve personally found that most lawyers tend to be good people, although this goodness isn’t usually apparent at a first impression. Your blog visitors probably aren’t going to spend time getting to know you. If you’re able to come off as someone who actually cares about the damages done to the potential clients you’re trying to win over, rather than as someone whose obvious agenda is a sales pitch, you’ll be richer for it.
List your wins.
While you don’t want to turn your blog into an infomercial, if you’ve got an impressive history of winning large settlements for clients, it doesn’t hurt to add a case/client list to the sidebar of your blog.
