photo © 2008 Daniel Henríquez | more info (via: Wylio)
The topic of adding content and articles to a law firm's website comes up often when I'm talking to lawyers about web strategy. Many firms understand the need to get better rankings, of building links to their sites, and of having professional looking sites that get visitors to contact the firm. However, many lawyers do not understand how critical it is to add quality articles and content to their sites on a frequent basis.
According to this research from Hubspot:
Business blogs that have at least eleven articles posted will generate a median of three leads. Blogs that reach the 12-23 posted article threshold find that this median dramatically rises to 10, according to Hubspot. Blogs with 24-51 posted articles generate a median of 13 leads, and will generate a median of 23 leads when the posted article threshold reaches 52. This represents 77% lead growth, more than twice the 30% lead growth that occurs when the number of posted blog articles reaches 24.
It is obvious from the data that blogging can generate leads for your law firm. However, by blogging consistently and frequently, you can dramatically increase the number of contacts coming from your site. Blogging is the type of activity that builds on itself. It isn't enough to do it once or twice or even just 10 times. It's important you are building a database of content. As the amount of content grows, so will the visitors to your site, potential clients, and you will establish yourself as an authority in your field. Keep in mind you want to maintain a high level of quality with your articles. Publishing useless articles for the sake of publishing won't be as effective. In fact, it could damage your reputation in the long run.
Set Yourself Up To Succeed
It's easy to start writing articles, get busy, and then watch things taper off. It's important you establish a process and make the article writing a priority that gets done each week. I recommend setting a goal of a certain number of articles, say 2 or 3, and then make them due on specific days of the week. This will help ensure you are posting frequently and consistently.
I also recommend you sign up for email alerts via a service such as Google alerts to find interesting new information around the web. Pick a few blogs covering topics similar to your own and sign up for RSS feeds with a free service such as Google Reader. This will help keep the juices flowing and new ideas coming for your articles.
Finally, you will want to have a plan in place for good search engine optimization practices. Whether you choose to do this yourself or hire an outside consultant, it's important you are building authority to your blog or website and developing strategies to get your great content in front of people who are ready, willing, and able to link to it.