Maintaining an active blog adds credibility to your website – from both your readers’ and Google’s perspectives.
That is, as long as you’re publishing relevant content that lawyers and other readers find valuable. Consistently publishing interesting blog posts helps you:
- Engage and develop relationships with your audience
- Display your personality and thought leadership qualities
- Become a trusted authority in your field
Which all works out to more sales. Businesses that blog experience 126% more lead growth than those that don’t. So, of course, you’re doing the right thing.
As great as the results can be, it can also be quite a challenge coming up with new topics to write about. Here are 14 ideas for content topics that legal vendors can use on their blogs.
14 Blog Topics for Legal Vendors
1) Answer your clients’ and prospects’ questions.
This one’s too obvious. So obvious, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook.
When lawyers and their staff are searching for solutions or answers, they could wind up finding them through your blog content. That alone is reason enough for vendors to create blog content that speaks to the concerns and pain points law firms experience.
Do you have an FAQ section on your website? Could you go through and dig deeper into your responses for any of those?
You can also listen in on industry forums and social media for questions asked by lawyers and people in your audience. Visit competitor websites to see some of the issues they’ve addressed. Your sales representatives are a treasure trove of information about the questions or concerns your clients and prospects have.
2) Share case studies and client success stories.
Lawyers have a deep appreciation for precedence. They need proof that other law firms have used your product or service and benefited from it. Just like any other typical prospect, client success stories let lawyers know that you truly can back up your claims.
But more importantly, client success stories and case studies show that other lawyers have evaluated your product or service and found that it meets the ethical and professional standards attorneys are bound to uphold. If partnering with your business presented a threat to these standards, nothing would convince attorneys to work with you.
Because of this, client success stories are extremely valuable to legal vendors.
3) Share and respond to industry news.
Set a Google alert for popular topics or keywords in your field. Bookmark lively blogs that discuss industry developments. Scan the headlines of relevant websites in your field. When an interesting article or topic comes up, share it with your audience. Include your response to the latest in what’s happening.
This positions you as a trusted source of new information. By responding to the news, you share your viewpoints or provide analyses of topics that often directly affect your clients, proving to them that you continue to keep their best interests top of mind.
4) Discuss big changes and new developments in your field.
New developments bring new challenges. Give advice on how clients and prospects can manage upcoming challenges. Show how you can be a valuable partner on the road ahead, whatever may come. Provide details about how you are handling any changes and how your efforts are going to improve your clients’ lives.
5) Share relevant court cases.
You can not go wrong here.
Well, I suppose you could if you went off the rails and shared cases that are completely unrelated to the legal fields you serve.
Assuming that doesn’t happen . . .
Nothing convinces attorneys like judicial rulings. Now you’re talking their language. Writing a post about a recent ruling on a case that is at the heart of your clients’ practice area is cause for notifying them with an email when it goes live, too.
You can also discuss how decisions on undecided cases could affect your audience one way or the other. The ramifications of what may happen in pending cases can be fertile ground for interesting ideas. Staying up to date with the latest legal decisions and court cases reassures attorneys that you’ve got their backs and cover what’s important to them.
6) Share infographics or charts.
Nothing can tell a story quite like an infographic. Charts and infographics can convey information faster and are much more easily understood than chunks of texts with numbers and percentage signs all over the place.
The infographics you share don’t even have to be yours. Many businesses create infographics hoping others will share them. Check out LinkedIn’s Slideshare, click “More Topics” and search for keywords in your field. If you find an interesting infographic, write up a quick intro and share it on your blog.
7) Target specific keywords and phrases.
Go on AnswerThePublic.com and type in a keyword or phrase related to your field. The tool will pull up a collection of actual searches made on Google and other search engines containing that word or phrase.
Within this treasure trove of information, clear topics for blog posts will jump out. For example, here’s AnswerthePublic.com’s response to the keyword “ediscovery” that include the word “and”:
Use AnswerThePublic and other keyword tools to discover what words and phrases your target audience uses. Then, write posts that contain the results in their titles. This optimizes your site for search engines, improving the likelihood that you’ll land in the top results. And it also keeps your content in line with your audience’s interests and concerns.
8) Publish or discuss research findings.
Original research is a trophy in the field of thought leadership. Obviously, if your company is involved in creating original research, you’ll promote those through your blog and published whitepapers.
But you don’t have to stop at a single post about the full body of research. You can pick a single statistic or a few related points and create a more focused blog post on individual issues.
If you can’t pull off completing original research of your own, look for recent studies, surveys, and statistics that might interest your audience, and do the exact same thing.
The goal is to be the first to bring the latest data and discoveries to your audience to be viewed as a valuable resource and thought leader in your field.
9) Discuss the future. Or the past.
Share your predictions for how upcoming changes may affect your field. Discuss how hot topics such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and blockchain technology may improve how your clients do business. Conversely, pick a topic and write a “history of” post. Or share how your business overcame a challenge – but always be sure to relate it to how it improves your clients’ lives.
10) Share important upcoming events and conferences.
If you’re planning on attending an upcoming conference or event, write a blog post about it. Tell who will be there and why you’re going. Share what you hope to learn or discover at the event and how it will help clients.
11) Discuss conference and event takeaways.
Then, of course, when you are back from the conference or event, share what you learned. Keep the focus on how the information you brought back with you will benefit the reader.
12) Analyze regulatory changes.
Certainly, you have your finger on the pulse of the regulations affecting your corner of the legal industry. You can share your opinions on issues that are being discussed. You don’t have to wait until regulation changes are final. This is an important part of relationship building that gives clients a sense of your values.
If you don’t want to risk offending anyone in sharing an opinion, that’s fine, too. You can discuss both the pros and the cons of any proposed regulatory changes and present a well-rounded, informative blog post.
In any case, you are positioning your business as an authority who can be trusted to keep up with the latest information in your field.
13) Discuss your views on key issues and concepts in your field.
Many known issues are not completely settled. Many beliefs are not shared by everyone. Sharing your thinking on a known issue or common belief is another great way to allow readers to get a sense of who you are and
your business values. You can only achieve the, “Yes, me too!” effect if you share a specific point of view.
Lawyers appreciate well-reasoned arguments with supporting facts, statistics and research. Make your blog post as informative as possible so readers can appreciate your stance on the subject. You will not win attention or respect by publishing “fluff” pieces.
Here again, perhaps you want to argue the pros and cons and not take a particular stance one way or the other to avoid potentially offending a particular audience segment. That can also be done well as long as you are thorough in your approach.
14) Share third-party resources.
Did you just discover a great app that helps prioritize emails? Could you create a list of important blogs lawyers in your audience might want to follow? What about a collection of research studies or surveys that demonstrate salient points about strategies to improve workflows and processes? You can become a valuable resource to your audience simply by passing helpful resources on to them.