I am on the train right now, going to one of the greatest cities in Central Europe. The train is in a hurry. The landscape is beautiful but, unfortunately, disappearing very quickly. It is autumn and you can see it and smell it in the air.
Today promises to be a very interesting day. One of my (our) dear clients, a strong woman and an energetic lawyer, is taking part in a transplantology conference. She has just published her first book where she writes about the numerous interviews she has conducted with doctors, nurses, patients, etc. who are part of the Transplantology field in Poland.
As you can imagine, lawyers are not loved by most doctors. A lawyer usually represents trouble for a doctor or a hospital. But this is not the case with my spirited client, who now is also a writer. Unlike most lawyers, she is celebrated by many transplantologists, and rather than being shunned, her presence is welcomed and she is treated with a great deal of respect by that community.
She is not only an exception as a lawyer, but also an unusual presence amongst doctors.
Why is this the case? The main reason behind her success in building a bridge between these two opposing fields, law vs medicine, is the effectiveness of her Law Blog. She has adapted the right formula for her blog and sticks to a set of rules which help her blog stand out amongst others. As a result of this approach, her blog is followed by thousands of people, many of them doctors. Her posts are engaging and her opinions are well respected in the community.
Great content generates traffic
In my previous post [Content vs Traffic in a Law Blog], I mentioned that two factors – great content and traffic – are critical to have an effective Law Blog. You can have engaging content, but if you have no readers, you are lost. Therefore content alone is not enough, you also need traffic to exhort influence. Just like an actor or an actress seek an audience, so does a law blog needs traffic.
The good news is that great content has the potential to generate traffic. Perhaps a couple of years ago, you had to devote great effort not only to writing posts on your Law Blog, but also to promote it. Having a Law Blog was a time-consuming endeavor. Nowadays, the need for heavy marketing is slowly dissipating. More and more, excellent content can be enough to do the marketing for your blog and generate traffic.
Why does great and engaging content generate traffic?
It’s because of search engines, which really do work. They look at what your readers do with your Law Blog. They follow their clicks online. They – yes! – investigate them (and you as well). They check, if your readers are truly engaged by your content (and literally by you).
If the search engines detect that you’re doing an effective job on your blog, they place your blog on a high position in their search results. And therefore also promote it. It sounds simple, but it’s much more difficult to execute.
What does the engaging content mean?
Let’s suppose that you have a reader who sees your content, reads it, and then goes away. He or she doesn’t leave any comment, doesn’t read the next article, doesn’t come back to your Law Blog, doesn’t share it with his or her friends nor do they even remember your blog. Is he or she engaged by you? Certainly not.
This is exactly how it works in the real world: imagine your work commute, walking on a busy city street. As you’re walking amongst hundreds of other people with a similar need to get to their offices quick, wearing their navy suit or a gray jacket, you’ll likely blend in and most people will pass you by without noticing you. But if you are interesting in some way, if you smile, look great or even say something useful for them (not to everyone!), some of them might even pause, curious, looking at you and waiting to see what will happen next. It means that you are engaging.
In the world of law blogging, being engaging means that your readers are interested in reading what you write. And they want to read more of your articles. They spend time on your blog, they are eager to come back to you, they remember you and your words, they anticipate your next post. They even want to leave a comment and share your content with their friends, both on digital platforms as well as in the real world.
This is a sign that you and your content are engaging
When search engines detect this level of engagement, they will value of your content jumps up, and your blog will be evaluated as something important and worthy of being shown to a bigger audience. Essentially putting the words in your posts higher in their search results.
This is why your content alone is often enough to promote your Law Blog. Conclusion: you need to invest in generating great content, if you want to have more readers visit your blog.
*****
Now, the question is: How to be an engaging blog writer? Or: what to say so that others will listen?
I will answer that question in the next article…
[If you want to be in touch with me, subscribe the “Amazing Law Blog” blog on the left side, please.]
