Goals for your Legal Examiner blog should be to attract business by educating your audience. Your audience is your clients and potential clients. Here are some tips for attracting readers and keeping them engaged.
How to Pick Your Topic
Learn to Write Catchy Headlines
Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs
Write in Plain English
Use Formatting & Make Content Stand Out
Create High-Value Content
Add Links
Other Blogging Tips to Consider
How to Pick Your Topic
Legal topics can be difficult to write about in a way that’s engaging for non-law experts and potential clients. First, take a look at your law specialty and the services you offer. Next, simplify these topics and do basic Internet searches to discover what’s already out there and what people want to know about.
Learn to Write Catchy Headlines
The headline or title of your post is the most important part of the article. It’s what convinces people to read your article. If the headline doesn’t entice your audience, then the blog can’t do its job of attracting business. Do not use ALL CAPS when writing your headline. You don’t want to shout at your readers.
Here are some additional resources with headline writing tips:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/a-simple-formula-for-writing-kick-ass-titles-ht
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/types-of-blog-headlines
https://bloggingwizard.com/write-better-blog-headlines/
Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs
- Online writing must be geared to short attention spans.
- Cut your sentences in half; insert periods instead of commas; and trim out useless adjectives.
- Use sentences with 20 words or less for easier readability.
- Shorter paragraphs will make your blog easier to understand and more approachable.
- Keep paragraphs to 3-4 sentences
- Make sure you use whitespace to combat the reader’s fatigue.
Write in Plain English
Plain English means using language that anyone can understand and enjoy. Avoid using legal terms and jargon and use fewer complicated or rare words. The average online reader is at a grade 8 level so simple language is very important.
Use Formatting & Make Content Stand Out
Use subheadings to break up your great content. Subheadings should introduce new ideas, reinforce key information, and improve flow and readability. This allows a reader to jump to the part of the post that is most interesting or applicable. Subheadings are great for search engine optimization (SEO).
Use bold and italics to capture your readers’ attention and help them continue reading the article. Avoid using underline because the reader will expect a link.
Some other formatting options include:
- bullets for unordered lists
- numbers for steps to follow or lists ordered by importance
- indented paragraphs for quotes or testimonials
- larger font sizes for quotes, subheadings and headings
- use the paragraph/ subheading dropdown in the WordPress editor to change fonts styles and sizes
Create High-Value Content
- These are articles that engage readers and give them valuable information they can use.
- Research your topic before you start writing; knowing the message(s) you aim to communicate will organize your content and keep the right focus.
- Decide on the best way to provide value to your audience.
Add Links
- Links are important because they help connect related resources and they show that your content is credible. This is also what search engines want.
- Link to other Legal Examiner posts (especially your own) and trusted external sources.
- Links are more effective for both SEO and readability if they’re made of fewer words. Keywords should be used for clarity of where the reader is going once they click the link.
- Too many links can sometimes hurt SEO and readers may think it’s spam if an article is too link-heavy.
- With complicated, scientific, legal or medical articles, more links to help explain the topic are often a good idea and are sometimes needed to help the reader.
Other Blogging Tips to Consider
- Try Different Post Lengths – suggested word count is 350-1,600 words. 1,000-1,600 is optimal for SEO. Mix things up with short, normal, and long posts.
- Use Different Content Types – vary your content types to show the range of what you can offer to prospects and to attract more traffic.