Is It Worthwhile to Conduct Formal Surveys for Your Law Firm’s Blog?

One of the keys to success in the legal profession is knowing which questions to ask.  You do this when identifying claims to make in a legal complaint or refuting these in your response to a complaint.  Examining your own witnesses and cross-examining your opponent’s witnesses is all about knowing which questions will strengthen your position or weaken your opponent’s position.  If you have made it this far as a lawyer, you have the mind of a researcher.  You observe trends in the cases you represent and imagine yourself designing research studies that could inform policy decisions that would remove obstacles to the pursuit of justice.  You read everything, including published research, with a critical eye.  Is your blog the place to venture into original research in ways that you cannot do in your own cases?  Probably not, unless you have so much free time that you can afford to engage in research while also working as a trial lawyer.  Your legal marketing content is, however, a good place to showcase your analytical abilities by commenting on existing research.

Original Research, When Done Well, Requires a Big Investment of Time and Money

Formal research, of the kind published in peer-reviewed journals, requires multiple steps of planning and preparation; market research to determine how audiences will respond to a new product is less rigorous.  Furthermore, you must get permission from regulatory bodies before conducting research on human subjects, even if they are only responding to multiple-choice questionnaires or answering open-ended questions in interviews.  In other words, formal research is a full-time job, and if you have ever visited the Retraction Watch website, you know that even professional researchers do not always do it correctly.

You Can Get Plenty of Blog Content Inspiration From Existing Published Research

A lawyer’s relationship to research is different from a researcher’s relationship to research.  Sometimes, the deciding factor in a successful outcome to a case is when an expert witness interprets published research for the jury.  Pursuant to the Daubert standard, before the jury can hear the research, the judge must review it to make sure that the research has sound methodology.  Your blog is an ideal venue for discussing research methodology and the flaws and ambiguities in published studies.

Discussing published research on your blog gives you the opportunity to show your wide-ranging and detailed knowledge of the content of the type of cases you represent, as well as the laws surrounding them.  Almost any research study that gets a lot of media coverage is at least a little bit overhyped and has room for reasonable doubt.  Instead of using your blog to cheer about how you always win, use it to show how much you know and how willing you are to share your knowledge.

Conquer Your Own Corner of the Internet

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can help you show readers a unique perspective on information they have heard about before in the mainstream media.

Law Firm Social Media Campaigns That Invite Audience Participation

When you scroll through the Lifestyle feeds on BuzzFeed, you find that many of the entries are lists of responses that readers gave about topics such as which discontinued food items from the 90s they miss the most or which of their views changed after they became parents.  Inevitably, some entries are calls for contributions on some of these topics.  Sure, the authors of listicles can scroll through Reddit or X, formerly known as Twitter, but it is more fun if readers respond directly.  You can use this same format for your law firm’s social media strategy.  Ask readers to send you messages on a given topic; ask them to submit them by email, rather than posting public comments.  This way, you can curate them and post the ones that are most consistent with your law firm’s mission and brand identity.  This way, your legal marketing content will be more interesting and easier to write than if you simply rehash existing social media content.

Ask Me Anything

It takes less than a minute to write an “Ask Me Anything” call for participation.  All you have to say is, “I am a personal injury lawyer.  Ask me anything.”  The questions you get in response may surprise you, and since it is your social media account, you get to decide which ones you respond to.  You will learn more about how your audience thinks, and some of them will probably even ask questions you have never thought about before.  You might even be able to turn the results into an “infrequently asked questions” page on your website.

Red Flag Green Flag Posts

In another call for participation post, you can ask the community about red flags and green flags related to your practice area.  For example, your call for participation can say, “Divorced people, what were the red flags and green flags about divorce lawyers you consulted.”  When you publish the results, edit out names of law firms, if the responses mention them, as well as anything that could be perceived as identifying details about your competitors.  The results will make for entertaining reading, and you might even be able to borrow a page from the playbook of lawyers that the audience listed as green flags.

Day in the Life Videos

To invite participation in this campaign, post a one-minute video about the daily happenings at your law firm; do not show clients, of course, unless they agree to be in the video.  Ask people who have been involved in cases like the ones you represent to send videos about their daily lives.  If you are a personal injury lawyer, ask readers to send videos about living with a severe injury.  If you are a family law attorney, ask for videos about a day in the life of a divorced parent.

Law Blog Writers Provides Content and Ideas for Content

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A Small Law Firm’s Guide to Dealing With Competitors

The goal of marketing for small law firms is to get more clients to hire you; in most practice areas, the same client will only need your services once, so you are always on the lookout for new clients.  Likewise, the other law firms in the same city have the same goal and the same base of potential clients, so the competition is fierce. 

Conventional wisdom in the marketing sector, especially when it comes to digital marketing, holds that you should pay close attention to what your competitors are doing and try to do it better than they do or reach a segment of your audience that they cannot reach.  Learning more about your competitors can always teach you more about yourself, but there are lines you should not cross with your legal marketing content.

Think of Them as Referral Partners Instead

In the legal profession, the easiest way to get your competitors’ customers to become your customers is if your competitors refer them to you.  Therefore, you should not think of the other law firms in your city as rivals, but rather as referral partners.  For example, imagine that two solo law firms operate in the same small city, advertising to family law clients.  Branwell Bloggins has an initial consultation with a woman whose husband has just surprised her with a divorce petition.  He makes suggestions about how she might approach her divorce case, but the client does not seem convinced; everything he says seems to make her more upset about her husband’s betrayal.  At the end of the consultation, he decides to refer her to Evelyn Enterprise, whose law firm is located in the next zip code over, and who is also in her element with family law cases.  Branwell thinks that, because Evelyn is also a divorced woman, this woman will trust her more and will feel like Evelyn understands her.  In turn, Evelyn refers a DUI defense client to Branwell because Branwell is young and single and can afford to work around the clock practicing door law, but Evelyn must pick and choose her cases so she can make her work schedule accommodate her parenting time.  This would not be possible if Branwell and Evelyn had decided to see each other as enemies.

Don’t Go After Your Competitors

The worst thing you can do is to mention your competitor’s name in your marketing content, especially in a negative context.  If the home page of Branwell’s website said that his clients get an average of 20 percent more parenting time than Evelyn’s clients, it would only make him look like a jealous hater.

Don’t Go After Your Competitors’ Clients

Another stinky move is to use underhanded tactics to find the contact information of your competitors’ clients.  If Branwell were to email a complete stranger whom he believed to be Evelyn’s client and say, “I can get you a better divorce settlement than Evelyn can,” the best possible outcome would be that the recipient would delete the email.

Marketing Content Can Be Catchy Without Being Sleazy

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