A Checklist for Your Law Firm’s Blog Promotion

When you’ve spent time writing a compelling blog and finally hit the publish button, you feel a sense of accomplishment; you feel like your content marketing efforts are done. That is not the case, however. Your work is only halfway over. Now, it’s time to work on blog promotion. 

You can’t just create valuable, high-quality content for your blog and assume readers will find their way to your site to consume it. You must use promotion tactics in order to build readership, grow your blog traffic and increase visibility. With that in mind, follow our checklist for your law firm’s blog promotion to ensure you get the most out of the work you put into creating your content.

A Checklist for Your Law Firm’s Blog Promotion

Get Visual

In an analysis of over 1 million articles, BuzzSumo found that articles with an image once every 75-100 words received double the social media shares as articles with fewer images. Why? Digital culture has changed how people consume content online. Videos and images are much more likely to attract and engage readers than plain text. Images also help break up the content within your blog so that it becomes easier for your audience to read. It’s recommended to use a featured image and one to two images through your text on every blog post.

Optimize Your Content for the Search Engines (Google)

The most effective SEO strategies are constantly changing with algorithm updates on Google so it’s essential that your firm stays informed in order to use best SEO practices when writing content.

Here are some simple strategies to help you optimize your blog content:

• Identify a target keyword using the Google Keyword Planner. Use this target keyword 3-10 times throughout your blog content.
• Do some Google research of your own. See what is already ranking with your target keyword.We recommend the plugin Keywords Everywhere.
• Use Buzzsumo. This social media tool will inform you on the topics that are currently trending on social media.
• Write engaging meta titles and descriptions. Let your audience know what they can get from your content in a few short seconds.
• Add alt text to your images. If your image doesn’t appear on the blog for some reason, with the alt text your audience will still have an idea as to what your image is. You can add the alt text when you upload your image to your law firm’s blog.
• Add links throughout your blog. Add resource links when necessary to help increase your SEO rankings and the credibility to your blog content.

Engage your Email List

Email marketing remains one of the most effective channels to spread the word to a large audience, so utilize your email list to promote your latest blog post. Segment your email list to people who would be interested in reading your blog content and create newsletters on a weekly or monthly basis. Whatever the timing is – be consistent. Another quick tip is to add a link to your most recent blog in your email signature. WiseStamp makes it easy to add a live RSS feed to your email signature that pulls your latest blog content. This gives everyone you email the chance to click a link to view it.

Follow Through on Social Media

A well-planned social media strategy goes hand in hand with your law firm’s blog promotion strategy.

Share your latest blog post on your firm’s social media pages and industry related groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to increase exposure. Then, share again. Just because you shared your blog post when it was first published, it doesn’t mean that you can’t share it again at a later date. Not everyone will be exposed to your content on social media right away. This is why we recommend posting three times on Twitter with a new image and different hashtags.

We also recommend you:

• Place social share buttons directly on your blog post page.
• Network with top influencers in your industry or partner with other businesses to share your content with their network.
• Implement an employee advocacy program at your law firm. There are several tools available which allow you to easily encourage colleagues to share recent blog posts to their own social networks.
• Experiment with paid social posts on Facebook or Sponsored Content on LinkedIn to expand the reach of your blog to a highly targeted audience that does not follow your page directly.

Related: What to Post on Each Social Media Platform: The Complete Guide to Optimizing Your Law Firm’s Social Content

Repurpose and Improve

To truly increase the readership and visibility of your law firm’s blog and set up future blog content for success, you’ll want to make sure you are systematically enhancing your promotion process for sustainability. Legal marketers should build a routine around the following practices:

• Monitor analytics vigilantly to determine which channels are driving the most traffic and invest more in the top referring social channels.
• Test out a new headline and/or imagery if the post isn’t gaining traction
• Thank those who shared your post and pay back the favor by sharing their content.
• Grow your personal brand to expand your network and find new readers.
• Refresh, republish, and recirculate popular blog posts that are 6-12 months old. Ideally, your audience is always growing, so some people didn’t get the opportunity to view your content originally.

Takeaway

Our blog promotion checklist will help you achieve traffic from new and existing audiences, will help you grow your social media following, and lead to more newsletter sign-ups. As you can see, there are a lot of digital channels and techniques when it comes to blog promotion and not every channel may be the right fit for your law firm. However, the best part about digital marketing is that you’re able to experiment with new tactics easily to see what works best for your firm.

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Updated and Republished from Jul 26, 2018