Content marketing for lawyers is as crucial to a law firm’s success as it is for any business. In case you haven’t been told before, here’s the truth of the matter. If you own a website and are marketing online you are in the publishing business. This means that you are in the content marketing business and for law firms, it is much more involved. Why is this? Well, for starters, law firm content is held to a much higher standard, not just by readers but by the organizations like the American Bar Association, which regulates law firm and attorney advertising in the U.S. Content written for law firms must be accurate and include the latest references to updated laws.
When planning your website it is necessary to understand that simply throwing up content without purpose is pointless. It should be evident that there is more to ranking websites than simply publishing a website and letting people know it exists. It doesn’t matter if you spend tens of thousands of dollars on a custom website for your law firm if you invest nothing in SEO and content marketing. A website that is not promoted properly is like a sign in the middle of the desert, it won’t be found.
All businesses should take the time to plan out their content marketing strategy before even beginning to market online and that includes building a website. For law firms building a new website or upgrading an old one, these are the core components we recommend here at Forward Lawyer Marketing:
Other optional components depend upon your individual law firm. If you do a lot of video marketing, it’s a good idea to have a video page, we suggest putting it as a drop-down below your blog. For law firms that the subject matter works for we also create RSS news pages that help attract local traffic. Law firms we have seen this work well for include personal injury and criminal defense.
It is also a really good practice to have a community involvement blog page. On this page, you would post things like local events that your law firm sponsors or participates in. These types of posts also let the search engines know that your firm is relevant to the local area. We have seen law firms have good success sponsoring local college scholarships as well.
Many people write as little content as possible to get by but this is a losing proposition. From research we have done on search results, the top search results are those with more content. Pages that contain at least 1,500 words rank the best and those that contain over 2,000 rank even higher. All of your main pages should have a minimum of 1,000 words and ideally, should be over 1,500. This applies to all pages with the exception of perhaps content and testimonials. All web page and blog content should include reference links as well as internal links to relevant posts and pages.
When it comes to blog posts, we recommend writing 500 words per post as a bare minimum. We prefer writing and publishing blogs of at least 1,000 to 1,500 words for our law firm clients. Those that post longer form blogs at least twice per month have better results than those posting less. The clients seeing the best results are those posting a 1,500-word blog every week targeting the keyword phrases they want to move up in rankings for.
In addition to writing and publishing content on your own website, you also want to spread it far and wide to increase the number of people that see it. The internet has a built-in content syndication network through numerous social media platforms. Talking about social media causes some people to break into a cold sweat from the anxiety of even thinking about it! Relax, it’s not that bad, and an agency like Forward Lawyer Marketing can handle all of your law firm social media marketing.
So, which social media platforms should your law firm market on? It isn’t necessary to be on every social media platform, nor is it a good use of resources. If you have operated your firm for a decent length of time you should have a good idea of your demographics. The best use of your resources is to focus on the platforms that your potential clients are most likely to use.
While Facebook tends to be more generic in terms of demographics, others such as Instagram and Pinterest are more targeted. Below are some of the most recent social media demographics for major platforms from Sprout Social.
As you can see from the data above, Facebook is a good overall choice for most law firms with the best balance between males and females. While the ages of 25-34 represent the largest age demographic, we know that people of all ages use the platform including senior citizens. Instagram is also well-balanced as far as gender but tends to trend younger as does TikTok. If you want to target males more predominantly Twitter is a good choice, while Pinterest would be best for targeting women. Like Facebook and Instagram, YouTube is also very balanced between males and females.
From our experience working with law firms of all sizes across the United States, my recommendation for social media, in general, is to start with Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube in addition to posting on your Google Business Profile. In addition to organic social media posting you can also utilize paid posts and social media ads that appear in the feeds of users.
Online marketing for law firms matters. It’s a competitive market, and having expert advice gives you an edge. Here are some examples:
Our goal is to learn your law firm marketing goals, then help you achieve them. Please contact FORWARD Lawyer Marketing at (888)590-9687 at your earliest convenience to get started with a no-obligation consultation. For some real-world examples of what we do and how it can impact your practice, feel free to check out a few of our case studies.
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