This presentation, originally delivered to the Dallas Bar Association's Solo and Small Firm Section on Feb. 6, 2019, walks through the why, where, when and how of starting and maintaining a legal blog. It includes tips for beating writer's blog, how to grow your blog's audience, and how to make it the cornerstone of your personal marketing ecosystem.

1. Legal Blogging for Business Development
Dallas Bar Association
Solo & Small Firm Section
February 6, 2019

2. 1. Advertising/PPC
2. Organic search engine results
3. Referrals/word of mouth
...Blogging can help with #2 and #3
How Do Lawyers Get Their Clients?

3. • Very long game
• Happens with consistent, high-quality content
• Requires technical expertise
...Happy side effect
Organic SEO

4. • Current or former clients
• Other lawyers
• Professional colleagues
...Your professional network
Referrals & Word of Mouth

5. Making sure they know:
• What you’re up to
• That you’re doing good work
• That you’re staying current on developments
in your practice area
Staying in Touch With That Network

6. • Dinners & Lunches
• Happy Hours
• Golf
• Gifts
...There’s never enough time
The Best Networking is Personal

7. • Content marketing isn’t sales pitches
• It is providing information relevant to your
clients and prospective clients
• Light touches and regular contacts
• Demonstrating your knowledge
• Becoming a source of genuine value
Bridging the Gap with Content Marketing

8. • Content marketing is also about vetting
• Making sure that when someone Googles you
that you make an immediate good first
impression that is consistent with your
marketing mission
Bridging the Gap with Content Marketing

9. • Blogging**
• Social media (esp. LinkedIn)
• Email
• Also,
• Writing for legal/trade publications
• Speaking to legal/trade associations
Raising Your Online Profile

10. Each of these elements are interrelated and feed
each other.
Together, they make up a marketing ecosystem
that can elevate your personal brand.
Your Content Marketing Ecosystem

11. • Requires us to think about our clients’ and
prospective clients’ questions and concerns,
anticipate their problems, and devise solutions.
• Opportunity to demonstrate you’re staying up-
to-date on recent regulatory changes, court
rulings, industry trends, etc.
Blogging: The Cornerstone
Of Your Content Marketing Efforts

12. • Greentarget survey: 75% of GCs consider lawyer
blogs to be a credible source of legal, business
and industry news. (Traditional media 95%;
LinkedIn 86%)
• 77% of GCs said they consider lawyer blogs
“very” or “somewhat” important when they are
researching outside lawyers and law firms for
potential hire.
Blogging: The Cornerstone
Of Your Content Marketing Efforts

13. • Conclusion: Having a consistent, high-quality
legal blog is a solid investment of a lawyer’s
resources.
Blogging: The Cornerstone
Of Your Content Marketing Efforts

14. • Clearly defined focus (e.g. trade secrets &
non-competes, FCPA)
• Start brainstorming
• “Everything is Copy” (RIP Nora Ephron)
• e.g. Bull and Silicon Valley
What Will You Write About?

15. • What are your clients’ perennial questions?
What mistakes do you consistently see clients
make that, if they didn’t, could help them avoid
trouble? (“evergreen” blog posts)
• Any pending or recently enacted legislation or
regulations that will or could affect your clients’
industry?
What Will You Write About?

16. • Any economic trends that could affect them
down the road?
• Any recent court rulings that could affect
them?
• Any current events that intersect with your
clients’ interests?
• What events happen on a regular basis that
you can use as a jumping-off point?
What Will You Write About?

17. Examples

18. • Presentations
• Articles written for other publications
• Previous blog posts
Recycling Other Work

19. • Your firm’s blog (obviously)
• LinkedIn articles platform
• Medium.com
• Any others?
You are not limited to one of these.
More places = more eyes.
*SEO exception
Where Will You Publish

20. • If you write your blog only when you “have
time,” you’re never going to get it written.
• Establish a schedule and hold yourself
accountable.
• More frequently is better than less frequently,
but less frequently is better than nothing.
• At least quarterly, monthly is better.
Hold Yourself Accountable

21. • Bloggers who write more frequently have the
best results, but even if all you’re doing is
posting something quarterly, after one year,
that’s an archive of 4 solid articles you can build
on.
• Create a spreadsheet with topics and deadlines
and STICK TO IT.
Hold Yourself Accountable

22. • Get to the point: A blog post is not a pleading
or a law review article. Use a modified inverted
pyramid: most important up top, with a nice
conclusion.
Writing your blog

23. • Write as much as you need to say what you
want to say: 300-600 words is no longer
optimum. Recent data now show that
2,000+word blog posts perform best.
• HOWEVER, don’t write 2,000 words if you just
need 500.
Writing your blog

24. • A 500-word blog post performs infinitely better
than the 2,000-word blog post that does not
exist because the writer didn’t have the time or
the wherewithal to write it.
Writing your blog

25. • Be sparing with jargon or legalese: That
being said, if you’re targeting corporate clients
and general counsel, you will want to speak in a
language appropriate to your sophisticated
audience.
Writing your blog

26. • Make it easy for people to contact you:
Include an “about the author” box at the end of
all your blog posts.
• It should briefly encapsulate your areas of
expertise and provide your contact
information. Be sure to link to your bio on your
firm’s website.
Writing your blog

27. • Link to supporting information: Opt for high-
authority sites (major media sites, courts, etc.).
• Make your post visually easy to read: Use
short paragraphs, subheads, bullet points,
callout quotes, and graphics to break up large
blocks of text and make it easy for readers to
skim your post.
Writing your blog

28. Headlines:
• Don’t be opaque or “click-baity.” If someone
can’t tell what the article is about from the
headline, they aren’t going to click on it.
• Conversely, don’t undersell yourself. If the gist
of your post is that clients should be leery of a
new regulation coming down the pike, the
headline should convey that and not simply say
the post is an analysis.
Writing your blog

29. Beating writer’s block
• Don’t start at the start. If you know where
you want your piece to conclude, start there
and think about what you need to say before
the end to make your conclusion work.
• Go somewhere else. Fresh location = fresh
perspective
Writing your blog

30. Beating writer’s block
• Exercise. Take a walk, do some yoga, play
football. Blood flow and getting out of your
head helps the creative process.
• Try a new time. Change your schedule.
• Write about something new. Move on to a
new topic and come back to it later.
Writing your blog

31. Beating writer’s block
• Be OK with shi**y first drafts: Just get it on
the page. Once you have a terrible first draft,
you can refine it into a work of art.
“The only kind of writing is rewriting.”
Ernest Hemingway
Writing your blog

32. • Writing a great post is the most important
ingredient of SEO.
• Good SEO is the result of providing relevant
information that readers want.
• It’s not dark arts or keyword stuffing.
• However, there are backend steps bloggers
should take to make it easier for Google and
other search engines to find your content.
Formatting and SEO

33. • Use H1, H2, H3, etc., for headlines and
subheads. Google distinguishes those headers
from regular text and gives them more weight.
• Use your keyword/key phrase prominently:
If the premise of your post is, “What small
businesses need to know about tax reform,”
use that phrase and related variations early in
the article and in the headline or subheads.
Don’t go overboard.
Formatting and SEO

34. • Meta description/snippet: The meta
description of your post is the summary that
appears on Google. It defaults to the first few
lines of text; customize it so that it doesn’t trail
off into ellipses.
• Slug: Yoast lets you tailor your “slug,” the
unique URL to your post. It will default to your
headline, so you may want to shorten or refine
it to eliminate extraneous words.
Formatting and SEO

35. • Images and alt-text: Fill in the “alt-text” line to
include words with your keyword or phrase.
• Google can’t “see” the image, so it wants you
to provide alt-text to reassure its bots that the
image is, in fact, related to the topic of the post.
Formatting and SEO

36. • Also for the blind and visually impaired.
• Best alt-descriptions do double duty, e.g.
“Picture of editorial calendar on desk to show
importance of scheduling blog posts.”
Formatting and SEO

37. • Include internal and external links: Links to
other high-authority sites help SEO. Also
include internal links to other pages within your
site:
• Previous blog posts on related subject matter
• Practice area pages
• News releases
• Lawyer bios
• Contact us page
• Newsletter subscription form
Formatting and SEO

38. LinkedIn Articles Platform
• LinkedIn’s Articles platform is a SUPER
easy place to publish your own work.
• Easy formatting tools and it saves your
articles in perpetuity.

39. LinkedIn Articles Platform
Articles
• Include a complementary image; bio and
contact info; a link to the article on other
platforms (your blog page or Medium), and
promote it on your LinkedIn newsfeed.
• Once you have several articles, include a link
to your Articles page in your email signature.
It’s your own blog archive on LinkedIn.

41. • Free account (paid version available)
• Same basic format as LinkedIn articles
• Avoid CTAs: Calls to Action, e.g. sign up for
newsletter, etc. But do link to bio.
• “Please don’t publish stories with the primary
purpose of selling a product or a service.
Readers can see through content
marketing.”
Medium.com

42. • Let others know about your blog: Include a
link to your blog in your email signature line, on
your website bio, in your LinkedIn profile, and
in any other regular communications with your
contacts.
Growing Your Blog’s Audience

43. Amplify via social media:
• Promote every post on your social media
channels.
• If your post is “evergreen,” you can re-post it to
your social media channels periodically. That
will help drive traffic to perennially useful
content and raise your online profile at the
same time.
Growing Your Blog’s Audience

44. Submit RSS feed to Legal Blog Rolls:
• Texas Bar Today: texasbartoday.com/texas-
law-blogs/ (Top 10 list)
• LexBlog: lexblog.com/join/
• ABA: abajournal.com/blawgs/
• Any others?
Growing Your Blog’s Audience

45. Amplify via email
• Law firm newsletters
• Personal emails
• One of the most cost-effective marketing tools
in your toolbox
Growing Your Blog’s Audience

46. • LinkedIn is best bang for the buck,
professionally.
• It’s one of the best places for people to vet a
potential hire.
• Twitter takes a lot of time to be good at. Also, a
minefield.
• Facebook: Use judiciously. Don’t be That Guy
Social Media: LinkedIn

47. 73% of GCs used LinkedIn within the
previous 24 hours or the previous
week “for professional reasons.”
No other social media channel came
close
Source: Greentarget, State of Digital &
Content Marketing Survey, 2017

48. Promote Your Blog on LinkedIn
• Add links to articles & blog posts in
“publications”
• Upload presentation decks to SlideShare
• Repurpose your blog posts into SlideShares

49. • Texas Lawyer and Texas Lawbook both receptive
to relevant, well-written, non-salesy content.
• They let you re-publish it on your own blog as
long as you link to the article on their site.
• Also, industry trade publications/websites and
specialty bar groups
• Ask first if you can re-publish.
• Pro: Instant affiliation with a reputable industry
organization.
Writing for Outside Publications/Websites

50. • Your “about the author” box should provide
contact information. Also a link to your blog,
your bio, or your LinkedIn profile.
• Include the article on your bio and link to it.
• Publicize the article on social media.
…Ecosystem
Writing for Outside Publications/Websites

51. Speaking to Bar & Trade Groups
• Even more impactful than writing; make a
personal connection.
• Provide contact info, social media links, etc.
• Add to your bio; post to social media.
Pictures.
• Repurpose presentation on other platforms,
e.g., blog post or LinkedIn Slideshare.
…Ecosystem

52. • It’s the first thing a prospective client is likely to
do when someone refers you to them
• May just be website bio and LinkedIn profile.
That’s OK.
Final Tip: Google Yourself

53. • How’s your photo?
• Is the narrative up-to-date?
• Are your most recent presentations and
articles included?
• Noteworthy representative cases?
• Association and bar group memberships, pro
bono efforts, volunteer work.
Google Yourself

54. • Spend some time updating those profiles
• Make them:
• Consistent with your marketing mission
• Easy-to-read
• Informative
• Compelling
Google Yourself

55. • Super Lawyers
• Avvo
• Lawyers.com
• JD Supra
• Martindale-Hubbell
• Justia
• Best Lawyers
• Specialty bar groups
Google Yourself
Other online profiles:
No need to create separate profile for each; Not worried
about duplicate content if work not SEO-generated.

56. We’ve covered a lot today, so I want to
leave you with this message:
Don’t Get Overwhelmed

57. Just pick one thing and do that.
Next week or next month, do another
thing.
You’re playing a long game.

58. Amy Boardman Hunt
214-801-8116
Amy.Hunt@MuseCommunicationsLLC.com
@musecommllc