You put up a blog or a website for your law firm, full of hope that this will solve your online legal marketing woes. But how do you get people to show up and read what you’re writing?
Once upon a time, I fancied myself a writer. A fan of short form fantasy and science fiction since I was a teenager, all I wanted was to be the next Harlan Ellison – master of short speculative fiction, turner of words and thinker of interesting thoughts. So much so that I took nearly as many creative writing classes in college as Economics, my chosen major.
As with most writers, I have a stack of manuscripts sitting around. I began writing too young to have much in the way of skills, and stopped before I got good enough to make a living out of it. Of course, this was before the Internet took hold or I probably would have started blogging as a teenager.
Yet here I am again, essentially writing for a living. I’m a lawyer, and our stock in trade is language to a large extent. I’m also a blogger, writing anywhere from 300-1,000 words or more each day. Harry Chapin said, “all my life’s a circle,” and I suppose that’s true. Began as an aspiring writer, now a working writer in various forms.
There is, however, one critical difference between my original goal and the current state of affairs. As a writer of books and short stories, the publisher often handles promotion and distribution. Not so with the blogger or website publisher. My world involves worrying not only about my words, but also how to get those words in front of people who care about them.
I’m guessing that’s a concern of yours too, isn’t it? What happens after you publish that blog post or launch that website? The Internet is a big playing field, and getting found is no easy task.
Write For Your Ideal Reader
Most lawyers who blog or have websites tend to write in stilted language rather than how they speak. It’s a product of three years of law school, countless hours of drafting pleadings to be read by judges and other lawyers, and fear of being too loose with language and causing a potential malpractice problem. Luckily, my years of reading and writing short stories have honed my ability to get the message out in a way that makes sense for people who come to my site.
But I’m not perfect, nor will I ever be – perfection’s an unattainable goal, isn’t it? One resource I’ve found pretty helpful is The Copywriting Scorecard For Bloggers, a handy little resource written by Darren Rowse of Problogger and copywriter Glenn Murray. As compared to some of Glenn’s longer works, The Copywriting Scorecard For Bloggers is short and to-the-point about creating content that’s going to actually get read.
What I love about this resource is that it’s essentially a checklist – yup, there’s actually a scorecard – that you go through in order to make sure that what you’ve written is worth a darn. Oh, one more thing – this isn’t just for bloggers. In fact, I’ve been using it to score the pages on my website before I put them online.
Hone So The Search Engines Can Find Your Content Effectively
Readers are the ones who count most, but if they don’t find your content then it’s a wasted effort. You definitely want to know the basics of search engine optimization – keyword choices, titles and the like. I used to think that search engine optimization was some voodoo techie thing, but then I realized it’s all a matter of using language in a certain way. You don’t need to be a major geek to write content that gets found by the search engines – you just need to understand the nuances of language that the search algorithms understand. If you’re so inclined, you can check out my guide, Search Engine Optimization For Lawyers, for a good roadmap.
My work doesn’t end here. I’ve been creating content for a number of years, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to bouts of search engine optimization stupidity. Things like using the same word too often, poor linking strategies and the like keep me from being at the top of my game. That’s why I use Scribe SEO, a fantastic tool that allows me to find problems with my content and make tweaks that make it sing to the search engines.
Scribe SEO functions from within WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and all of those nifty blogging and content management tools. But if you’re just looking to create a webpage, press release or article for submission to the article directories, the service offers a web-based interface.
Scribe SEO is a service that analyzes the content of web pages, blog posts, online press releases, or any other web content … all at the click of a button. Then it reports back to you and gives you pointers on tweaking your content to get better search engine rankings and more traffic. It also suggests alternate keywords you may have missed, and search volume for each of those terms. And it does all this while enabling me to maintain the reader-focused copy I develop in the first place.
Publish And Promote
Nothing you write is going to get any traffic at all unless you publish it. For the most part I publish on my blogs and websites, but I also create content for other sites as guest posts and article submissions. These let me get myself in front of people who may never have heard of me, and allows them to get a sense of what I’m all about.
No matter where you publish, you need to always remember to promote your work by letting people know it exists. It’s like a movie – if nobody knows about it, chances are pretty good that nobody’s going to see it. You need posters, commercials and the like to inform the world and invite everyone to come take a look at your film.
I’ll typically send out a link to my content via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Sometimes I’ll submit it to one of the sharing sites like Digg, or bookmark it on Delicious. I also mark it as shared in my Google Reader so that people who follow me there will find out about it. If it’s particularly good, I’ll send out a message to my email list to give them a heads-up. And of course, those who subscribe to my blog by email get each of my posts automatically (which is awesome because it saves them a trip to the site).
This promotion isn’t sleazy, it’s a way of giving people who care about what I’ve got to say a way of getting informed. It also gives them a chance to pass it along, expanding my reach. Not everything appeals to everyone, but this lets you get to pick and choose.
Anything Else?
I’m the first to admit that there’s no such thing as knowing absolutely everything about everything. That’s what makes the learning process fun no matter how long you’ve been doing something. If there’s something I’ve left out, drop it in the comments section.
Thank you! I need to know this stuff. This past year has been laying the foundation for our business: Say It With Jack greeting cards (written by God). And, as you know, it's all about getting it out there and letting people know you have a product. I'm also learning how important it is to be consistent with your blog and activity on FB and Twitter. Learning, learning!
Absolutely, Judi. Good luck with the business!