#023 – Why You Should Hire A Legal Content Writer
Quality content is like a magnet that draws people to your website and blog. Eventually, you want that content to draw in new business. When you provide meaningful, well-written content, it increases the chance that potential clients will find you in searches, land on your pages, and take the next step of contacting your law firm. The best way to get your content noticed is to work with a content writing company that is experienced in creating and publishing content for attorneys.
SHOW NOTES
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TRANSCRIPT
The Legal Marketing Lounge
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 23, of the Legal Marketing Lounge. Today we are going to be talking about why an attorney or a law firm should hire a content writing company to do their content on their website. If you have not subscribed, I would love it if you hit that subscribe button. And also, if you’re enjoying all of these podcasts, I would love it if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. Those are really great things for the algorithm so that I can reach even more law firms and more lawyers and help them with their digital marketing too.
Legal Content Writer for Your Law Firm
So with all of that said, let’s just get right into it. Now, full disclaimer, I own a digital marketing agency, right. And we create content for law firms. So this particular podcast might seem self-serving. But let’s just set that aside for a minute. Because I do know a lot of attorneys who are not quite aware of why they even need content, why they can’t just write it themselves. If they were going to write it themselves, how would they do it? Why would they need to ever even consider hiring a content writing company
and how they should go about making that final decision.
So let’s just jump right in. First of all, you can go back and look at some of my other podcasts where I directly talk about content. But as a refresher, quality content on your website is like a magnet that is going to draw people to your website, through your blog. Eventually, you want that content to draw in new business.
Make no mistake, the entire reason that content is important is because you are consistently showing potential clients as well as the Google bots, that you are valuable that you have got expertise and that Google should be putting you up higher than your competitors, and potential clients should be hiring you, above your competitors.
Really to be honest with you. Google looks at websites as either growing or dying, there’s kind of no middle ground. So you could have spent $10,000 on a gorgeous website for your law firm. If you don’t put consistent content on that website. Google doesn’t have anything else to look at the little Google bots that go search your website don’t see any new content. And that will lower your rankings overall of your whole site.
So creating this content is important, not only for you to have something on social media, to promote to your website, but also to show the Google bots that you are an expert in your field, you continue to be an expert in your field. And when you provide meaningful, well-written content that is optimized for SEO, which is search engine optimization, it increases the chance that potential clients will find you in Google searches, that they will end up on your page and take the next step of contacting your law firm, which is what you want.
That’s the whole point of all of this anyway, the best way to get your content noticed is to consider working with a content writing company that is experienced in creating and publishing content for attorneys for your specific practice area. And do it in such a way that it’s optimized for SEO.
Now, if you are still interested in creating content for yourself, perhaps you’re bootstrapping your law firm, you just don’t have any extra financial ability to pay anyone for anything, right? You really are just putting your shingle out and you’re really trying to bootstrap everything yourself. Please go back to the creating great content series that I created at the beginning of this podcast. There are six or seven episodes right there that you can work your way through, where you can try to do all of this yourself. Also, I have blog posts on my website, and you can find those at LawQuill.com/blog, and there are a lot of resources there as well for free, where you can try to create this content on your own, it’s really important to me to provide law firms with all of their available options.
And if you are not ready to hire a content writing company, then I still provide all of the options for you for free, and sort of demystify the whole SEO process for you.
Why You Need Content on Your Website?
Let’s get in first, though, however, why you even need so much content on your website, a law firm marketing strategy should have one essential goal and that is what? Well, it’s to make money right to attract new clients. That’s the whole point of why we’re doing any of this in the first place. creating quality content is one of the most effective and powerful ways to do this.
And even though your marketing plan may have a variety of channels, you may be using social media email marketing lists, the well-written content that you create for your website, which then can be disseminated into your social media strategy, or onto your email lists or into other places is really going to be the foundational piece that holds everything together.
Increase Website Rankings
Again, the first way that it does this is by enhancing exposure and increasing your website rankings. Search engines, like Google want users to get the very best answer to their question, right? If you’re typing in vegan chocolate chip cookie, you don’t want to see anything about sugar cookies, you want to see something about a vegan chocolate chip cookie, and it is the job of Google to provide a user the best answer to their question.
So they favor websites that help them do this. Google’s algorithm really rewards websites that provide useful content to users and it devalues websites that frankly, lack relevant content and lack consistent content. websites.
Law Firm websites are no exception that offer quality content have a huge SEO advantage, and they get a boost in rankings over the competition. Now content does more than just help your rankings. It also can help improve your brand awareness across all of social media, in your advertising, whatever you’re doing great content on your website allows you to spotlight who you are, what you do, why people should choose you over everyone else. And the content that you provide to prospective clients is going to display your law firm as distinctive, and different and unique and better, right. Because of that branding, that is what is setting you apart from your competitors.
Create Quality Content
Quality content will also help you establish your reputation. This really is a way for you to take content, and show not only potential clients on your website, but also to show people throughout all of social media, your reputation. If you are creating really great quality content that is answering questions, addressing novel legal issues, you’re going to be showing potential clients that your law firm has their best interests in mind.
Let me give you an example of this. Let’s say you’re a trademark attorney. A lot of trademark law doesn’t change super rapidly. However, there are new types of technology that absolutely can impact trademark law. And if you have something on your website, that is an article about how 3d printing can really impact the trademark legal space as it has in the past. Perhaps your potential client doesn’t really have an issue with 3d printing of anything. But they will see that you are an expert in your field that you are on the forefront of what is going on in the legal community regarding intellectual property.
So if you have some foundational content that is evergreen, regarding the difference between patents and trademarks, and copyright, that’s great, but it’s also important to show that you are an expert in your area and quality content can really help you do this. It’s going to show that you’re knowledgeable, experienced, and frankly trustworthy, because you know what you’re talking about.
Even if the article that you are writing doesn’t really have a direct impact on that potential client reading it. When a prospective client is landing on your website, all of your content rich pages are really the first introduction to your law firm. And that engaging, interesting, informative content really does make a great first impression. And hopefully, they pick up the phone and call you, which is the last point converting more visitors.
Establish Your Expertise
Because your website can be your first and frankly only tool to generate leads and gather more business on the internet. your website’s content has got to have a way to generate leads, gather more business, and do it in a really efficient way. your website’s content has a direct impact on acquiring new clients, because your helpful material is going to engage them. And again, establish your expertise. If your content is bland or boring, or if it’s incorrect on the law, or if it’s just the same as everyone else’s, it’s not going to attract visitors and keep them on your website as it should. So now we get to the part about content writing companies, there are a lot of them out there. A lot of digital marketing agencies include this as a service with a very large digital marketing package.
Law Quill does things differently, we actually have a bit of a cafeteria plan where you can choose how many articles you want, whether you want video with it, whether you want social media marketing attached. The reason we do that is because we really understand that every law firm is at a different place in their journey for their company. And frankly, some people can afford the whole thing and some people can’t. And we really wanted to give every single one of our clients the ability to choose exactly what they need exactly at that particular time of growth in their company.
It was something that was so important to me when I created Law Quill that I made it a foundational part of the integrity of our company, that we’re going to help law firms and lawyers with a ridiculous amount of free content, and help them do things themselves if they cannot afford someone to do it for them.
And then, step by step answer every question along the way, regarding all of their digital marketing. And then if they were at a place where they felt like they needed to outsource some of this content, writing video, social media management to someone else that we would be here for them when they are ready to do that. laquelle is unique because it is an attorney owned digital marketing agency, we have a solid understanding of legal issues and experience in explaining legal matters. And listen, I understand some attorneys may feel that they don’t need outside help producing website content.
Hiring a Content Writing Agency
However, if you are at a place to be able to afford a content writing company, let me give you the benefits, how this can actually help you get more clients, in addition to frankly, saving you an incredible amount of time, and help you actually do what you probably like doing the most anyway, which is practicing law, a content writing company that focuses on legal article writing.
And that’s important. I’m just going to take a little tiny side note here, it is really important that if you make the decision to hire any content writing company that you ask for samples, specifically related to legal issues, if you can get it, hopefully you can get samples that are related to your specific practice area. Because writing for different practice areas is a very different. The SEO (which is search engine optimization) is very different. And frankly, writing for companies or businesses that are not in the legal field, it’s just a whole different animal than writing for law firms. So if you are considering outsourcing your content writing, I would highly suggest you get a company that is either proficient with working with law firms, or is owned by an attorney.
Assistance in Speaking to Your Target Audience
So a content writing company will be able to speak to your target audience. Because again, your website and your blog are oftentimes the first introduction into your law firm, it’s really important that visitors receive information in a language they understand without a bunch of legalese in a language that they understand.
Showcasing You as an Expert
But also that showcases you as an expert, and also is understandable to the google bots.
Whoo, that’s a lot, right!!!
So you’re writing an article that needs to directly impact clients in a language they understand, but still shows you as an expert. And also, the Google bots can also pick up what you’re throwing down.
Oftentimes, a skilled content writing team can do this for you. They can present legal issues in a simple jargon-free language, and offer calls to action, which would encourage your potential clients to go ahead with the next step, which is to contact you.
SEO Optimized Articles
In the middle of all of this, they should be writing with SEO in mind, a content writing team can create very well written and engaging content that, of course, informs visitors and showcases you as an expert. But that content really needs to be infused with rich keywords that make it easy for the Google bots to understand it, and then promote it high in the rankings. So that people who are searching for you organically in an online search will find you.
So professional content writers should be creating material that is Seo optimized and supports a holistic marketing strategy for your law firm. Of course, they should also be creating original content, nothing that’s plagiarized.
Unique Content
All website and blog content should be totally unique, not copied from other sites. And you know, there’s very specific rules on this. For example, if you decide that you want to quote a statute, you know, look, you’re technically not plagiarizing, right. That’s just a statute. Sometimes, though, the Google bots don’t really understand that you’re plagiarizing the statute. So a quality content writer will understand that, frankly, it may not be in the best interest of your SEO, to quote statutes or laws, or even quotes from different decisions in the past.
If your site does contain any kind of duplicate material to other information that’s on the internet, there is a possibility that a search engine would devalue your website as a whole. So an experienced content writer should be creating original engaging material that completely avoids duplication of other online content, they should be using some sort of tool such as copyscape.
There are other ones as well, that let them know for sure that what they have written is 100% unique. Now let’s talk about the content throughout your website, the types of content that you or potentially, a content writing company could be writing for your law firm.
When you hire a content writing company, where really should they be focusing their efforts? Most of your content will inform and engage clients and answer their legal questions. Let’s dive a little bit deeper to find out where the most important places on your website are to do that, where is the most important place or places for you to optimize your content for local searches on Google, as well as optimizing the content so that it will showcase nicely on your social media accounts.
Optimized Practice Area Pages
So one of the most important places for content for your website are practice area pages, and each of your law firm practice areas should have its own separate page. Now, some will include sub-sections. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, you may have subsections of dog bites, slip and fall, car accidents, trucking accidents, pedestrian accidents, nursing home, abuse, or medical malpractice. All of those can be subsections.
But instead of bland, generic content, your content should be infusing your own law firm branding and personality into these practice area pages as well. There may be a contact page that you have that is separate than a pop up or a little box where someone can insert their email address. Again, a contact page should be simple, user friendly, and have obviously essential contact information. But along with this, it can also have content that makes your law firm showcase its branding and show how it’s really unique, as opposed to all those other law firms out there.
About Me Page
Another really important page that you should have quality content is your about me or About Us page. This page is actually one of the very first pages that most potential clients will look at after the front page. So use this real estate really wisely. Look, anybody can sort of craft a predictable, I mean, even dull, frankly, About Me page. So make sure yours is unique showcase all of your accolades, any kind of awards you have, and infuse it with a little bit of your personality as well. Whatever makes you unique, your hobbies, your interests, maybe a little bit of something about your family, if that is something that you’re comfortable with.
And then last, but certainly not least, if you’ve listened to me, you will know that this is certainly not least, it is blog posts.
If you do not currently have a blog, you or your content writing company needs to jump start one for you. And this is going to be really interesting for you, I hope, although having a blog offers a massive marketing boost. Are you ready for this? Only 26% of law firms keep up a consistent blog! Only 1/4 of law firms have a consistent blog. If you have a website, and you don’t have a blog and get ready to start one, you are already in the top fourth of all of your competition!!!!!
It’s absolutely possible for you to do this against large, large law firms. Some large law firms don’t have blogs, they have a beautiful website, but they don’t have a blog. And it is true that Google will not place those law firms those law firm websites above a law firm website that has a consistent, valuable blog.
Legal Blog
A blog is going to draw visitors to your website, it’s going to position you as a trusted legal source, it’s going to boost all of your SEO, I mean all of it. It’s going to keep clients informed about current law firm successes that you might have, if you include those in your blog. It’s going to display how your law firm connects within the community. If you do any kind of volunteer work. It’s going to showcase stories about real clients who have been through your legal process, I just wrote a blog article myself about why a client’s journey at your law firm is a great source of material for you to put on your blog, it can improve your overall link structure, which also helps your SEO, it obviously answers typical client questions. It gives visitors another channel to contact your law firm because you should be putting calls to action within every single one of your blogs. And it really does allow visitors to see your authority and authenticity.
And I’ll just say this as well. If you are creating a blog, I’ve said this before, but if you are creating a blog, you are creating a foundational piece of content that you can then share throughout all of your social media, you can create email newsletters, which is still a very powerful way to connect with your already existing clients, your past clients and your potential clients. And if you or your content writing team is creating excellent content for your website, you can repurpose this and use it in your email letters as well.
Email Newsletter
Again, I can just not stress enough that an email newsletter can really reach out to past clients and reengage them to hire you again keeping you in the front of their mind. And it can also reach out to any potential clients as well. So these are great sources of referrals for new business. At the end of the day, quality content is the core of any marketing plan for a law firm. I absolutely 100% believe this.
Now, in many cases, busy attorneys simply don’t have the time to focus on regular writing regular material, thinking of topics, creating the content themselves actually writing it, then doing all of the keywording all of the SEO creating the external and internal links, creating a meta description making sure that they don’t accidentally even plagiarize either themselves or others on the internet, and just creating a piece of content that is very valuable for their SEO for Google rankings.
And for social media, busy attorneys, just frankly, a lot of times don’t have time to do all of this, they may have great intentions to do it. But the day just gets away from them. And they don’t have time to do it. And another thing is that a lot of attorneys may not understand the keywording and SEO and formatting that goes into a quality piece of content.
Here’s the analogy I always give, you know, as an attorney, when you have to submit something to the court, it’s got to be like in a 14 point font in a certain type of font. And it’s got to be double spaced, and this page intentionally left blank, all the things that make the formatting very unique for that court. And you could have written an amazing, brief or whatever it is you’re delivering to the court. And if it’s not formatted correctly, the court just rejects it, right? Like the courts not even going to look at it.
And I say it’s the same thing with Google, you could be writing an exceptional piece of content regarding explaining business law to an entrepreneur, explaining estate planning to someone who really needs your services. But if you don’t put it in the correct format, the Google bots are just not going to understand what you’re saying. And therefore that content won’t get found by your potential clients. And then all this work that you’ve done to create this quality content won’t really be found by anyone.
So what I’ve noticed a lot is that lawyers come to me and other digital marketing agencies and say, we have the best of intentions to write all of this ourselves. However, we just don’t have the time to not only write the content, but then to format it and keyword it and optimize it for the search engines in such a way that we can benefit the most from it.
Again, your law firms website needs unique engaging content that will help answer questions with authority, and also inspire visitors to contact your law firm above all those other law firms, right. So if you are considering hiring a content writing company, you are not alone.
A content writing company, a digital marketing agency, that focuses on law, firm content, can really take these tasks off your plate, and allow you to then work within your own zone of genius, and actually, you know, be practicing the law, which is why you got into all of this in the first place. As a final note, I would just like to say that Law Quill is here to help.
And I mean it when I say that, if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out to me, either on LinkedIn – my name is Annette Choti. Or through my website, I am more than happy.
It is actually one of the most important and most exciting parts of my job where I get to help answer questions from lawyers who are struggling with their digital marketing or their content.
Conclusion
So please, please feel free to contact me with any questions that you have. Even if you’re trying to do your content yourself. I genuinely want to help you at whatever point your journey is. That said, if you are in a place where you are considering outsourcing your content writing, we would welcome the opportunity to visit with you for free, just regarding all of your website content we can visit with you about where we think you’re doing amazing, and where we think you could maybe focus a little more on and we can absolutely take these things off of your plate for you.
If you are interested in scheduling a free chat with me. You can do that through our calendar, which is www.LawQuill.com/calendar super easy. You can also email me like I said or find me on LinkedIn. And I would be more than happy to visit with you in a quick phone or zoom call.
So with all of that said, I hope that this has helped you understand how a content marketing company a digital marketing company that focuses on quality content can help your law firm, grow and get more clients.
If you have any questions again, I sound like a broken record, but I really mean it. I would love it if you guys take a moment and call or email me, I’m more than happy to visit with you.
And in the meantime, if you would like to hit that subscribe button or leave me a quick review, I sure would appreciate it. As always, it is an honor to have you here listening to me and allowing me the opportunity to help you with your digital marketing questions. As always, thank you. Thank you for joining me in the Legal Marketing Lounge.