Many bankruptcy lawyers, including those who have been marketing their practices online for a while, tend to place a heavy emphasis on getting traffic to their websites and blogs. Although this is critical to internet marketing success, it’s only half of the equation. Once you get visitors to your site, it’s just as important that you keep them there.

In short, if you want your visitors to stick around, you need to engage them. Readers who are engaged will read more pages on your site, and will come back time and time again. Not only that, but they’ll likely become your clients at some point.

Here are 9 ways to engage your readers, so you can use your blog or website to grow your practice:

1. Provide fresh, relevant content. Your blog posts and web pages should deal with topics that genuinely affect your readers. As the financial climate changes, your readers will have new concerns, develop new goals, and need new information. Stay in tune with what your readers need today, and make sure that your content meets their needs.
2. Respond to reader comments. Your blog is not a one-way street - it’s a means to develop a dialogue with your readers. Show them that their insights and opinions matter by responding to their comments.
3. Post polls on your website or blog. Readers want to know that you care what they think. Plus, they’ll be interested in finding out how other readers respond to your poll questions.
4. Ask readers what they want to read about. By using their answers, you can tailor your content to meet their needs… and position yourself as the “go to” attorney for financial and bankruptcy related information.
5. Use video to supplement your written content. Internet users love video… and they’ll spend more time on your site if you provide video content to educate and entertain them.
6. Provide links to other valuable resources.Many lawyers hesitate to do this, because they’re afraid they’ll lose their visitors to another site. In truth, giving your visitors a variety of resources furthers your position of authority.
7. Don’t overuse keywords. It’s tempting to build your content to appeal to search engines, rather than to visitors of the human variety. If you keep your content smooth and natural, though, you’ll be more likely to keep readers on the page. Keywords should not comprise more than about 2% of your content.
8. Consider adding a discussion forum where visitors can chat about bankruptcy and personal finance issues. Forums are excellent tools for getting repeat visitors – a freelance programmer can build a forum for you quickly and cheaply.
9. Use reader comments to build fresh content. Writing a blog post based on a previous reader comment shows your visitors that you’re paying attention… and it’s a great way to touch on the issues that they care about the most.

Related posts:

1. 7 Reasons Why Content Matters
2. 3 Easy Ways to Grow Your Marketing List
3. How "Series Posts" Engage Your Blog Readers
4. Increase Your Prospect Database From Your Website
5. 3 Things Your Website Must Have To Convert Visitors Into Clients