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In the ninth century, Abu Uthman of Basra, better known as al-Jahiz, the namesake of a crater on the moon, famously wrote that a book is the best companion, although perhaps not for the reasons that elementary school librarians have in mind. In his opinion, a book is the best companion because, unlike with in-person conversation, you can just flip through the boring parts, and if it turns out that the book is completely pointless or based on false premises, you can simply shut it. A book never tells you that it is too busy for you to read it. One can only wonder how Abu Uthman would have rated the companionship of blogs. Most law firm blogs are so shamelessly geared toward a target audience of search engines that they bear little of what makes human conversation annoying, or endearing, for that matter. A blog post might not replace an in-person conversation or personal email message, but they get the job done. They boost SEO rankings, drive traffic, and generate leads. Should you entrust your legal blog content to bots, or are human writers still the best choice?


In Praise of Machine Learning


A recent article in The New Yorker shows just how far the writing skills of computers have come in recent years. It shows how a bot composed a passable simulacrum of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. You don’t need to read The New Yorker to know that computers can and do write, though. If you use Gmail, then its bots try to help you write emails, and they usually do a decent job of guessing what you are going to say. Even better, bots don’t make typos.

Best of all, bots are the most cost-effective way to create blog posts. A subscription to blog-writing software is all it costs to get unlimited blog content.


Bots Have Mastered Grammar, but They Lack Social Skills


The more human-composed text bots read, the better they can imitate its style, but it lacks a certain human nuance. How many times have you tried to dash off an email acknowledging your colleague’s less than thrilling news (for example, about payroll being late or about having to postpone your meeting), and Gmail suggested “thanks for the heads up.” It’s not a bad guess, but it doesn’t really sound professional coming from a lawyer. “Thank you for letting me know” would be better, and you can, in fact, teach your bots to respond thusly.


Now, about that passable simulacrum of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Somehow, thanks to the bot author’s lack of human social skills, it ended up being even creepier than the original. The image of the neighbor picking up infants with tongs and tossing them onto the rubbish heap is an unnerving glimpse into the uncanny valley. (The bot apparently thinks “infants” is a subset of “sick animals,” which somehow makes it creepier still.) If you are sufficiently budget conscious, then, by all means, let bots write your blog, but maybe let a human edit it before you click “publish.”


Legal Blog Content By, For, and About Humans


Choose the legal content writers at Law Blog Writers compose blog content that shares the frame of reference of your law firm’s target audience.



“Thank you for visiting the Bloggins Law Firm Blog. This is Branwell Bloggins signing off.” No, it’s a blog, not a radio show. “Remember to subscribe and like our law firm.” No, you’re a lawyer, not a YouTube celebrity. “If you’re having legal trouble, call Branwell Bloggins on the double.” Again, blog posts are not radio jingles. “The end.” No, definitely not. “Love always, Branwell.” Too touchy feely. Perhaps writing the perfect ending to a post on your law firm’s blog is more difficult than it looks. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it. Blog posts that end as strongly as they begin are just one of the reasons that it pays to get professionally written legal blog content for your law firm’s website.


Why Effective Blog Post Endings Are Important



First, the good news is that if your law firm’s website even has a blog, you are already doing something right. Blog posts do not have to be perfect to increase your website’s SEO rankings or provide useful information to prospective clients at all stages of the customer value journey. If your blog posts are readable enough that people do not simply click away after glancing at the impenetrable wall of text laden with jargon and typos, even better; time on page is an increasingly important SEO criterion. People who read all the way to the end of a blog post on your website are one click away from becoming leads. What you do and don’t say at the end of the post can determine whether they contact you or whether they take the information they learned from your blog and apply it to their decision to hire one of your competitors.


Does Every Blog Post Need to End With a Call to Action?


The worst way to end a blog post is just to trail off without giving the reader a quick way to contact you and continue the conversation. (Remember, reading blog posts is an interactive activity; every time a reader scrolls down to read the next paragraph, they are making the decision to continue engaging with your site.) Yes, they can probably find your email address and phone number if they scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, but then they will have to take the initiative to call or email you, and frankly, no one on the Internet has that kind of attention span.



The best way to end the post is with a link to a contact form. You can do this with a direct call to action. It doesn’t need to be a splashy sales pitch; it can be as simple as “Contact the Bloggins Law Firm to find out more about Alabama workers’ compensation laws.” If even that is too meretricious for your tastes, you can simply add a hyperlink to a keyword such as “Alabama workers’ compensation lawyer” in your last sentence, so that readers can follow the link to your contact form. The last paragraph can just be a summary of the post, as if you were writing a blue book exam in college.


If You Hate Self-Promotion, Leave the CTAs to Law Blog Writers


Your law firm deserves professionally written blog content with effective calls to action. Choose the legal content writers at Law Blog Writers to hit just the right note to resonate with your audience.



Updated: Dec 1, 2022


Your first year of law school involves learning a whole new language of legal terms. Marketing jargon can seem just as unfamiliar, especially if you are in the early stages of developing a legal content marketing strategy; here are some terms you will encounter frequently.


Call to Action


The call to action (CTA) is the paragraph at the end of a blog post that encourages readers to contact your law firm. It should include your phone number or email address, but even more importantly, it should include a hyperlink that leads visitors to a contact form. Including your business name, practice area, and geographic area is great for SEO purposes.


Landing Page


A landing page is the page of your website where visitors arrive when they click on your law firm’s Google search result; this means that the page content is highly relevant to the user’s search query. Many law firms have a landing page for each practice area and for each subset of each practice area. For example, a personal injury law firm in Los Angeles might have landing pages for “Los Angeles car accident lawsuits,” “Los Angeles slip and fall lawsuits,” and “Los Angeles motorcycle accident lawsuits,” among others.



Marketing Lead


Lead generation is an important part of law firm marketing, but exactly what is a lead? A lead is a prospective client who is interested enough in your law firm that they have initiated contact with you by filling out a contact form on your website. Not everyone who visits your site will become a marketing lead, and that is fine. Some of them live on the complete opposite side of your state and they just visited your site to find out what your state’s laws say about the issue on their minds (such as child support, expungement of criminal records, or workers’ compensation disputes, to name just a few examples). Measuring how many leads arrive at your contact form through which blog post or landing page is a good way of determining which content on your site is performing best, so you can create more content like it.



User Persona


Student actors sometimes learn that they should deliver their lines to Gertrude, an (imaginary) elderly woman sitting in the back row of the theater. In order for Gertrude to understand their performance, they must project their voices; they must also convey emotion through their voices, because Gertrude is so far away that she cannot see their facial expressions. A user persona is similar; it is a fictional audience member, except instead of watching a stage play, it is reading your blog.

The more you learn about your user persona, the better your blog will be. If you are an estate planning lawyer, think about what Gertrude’s most valuable assets are, and therefore what her estate planning questions are. Make the blog appealing to her even for reasons not directly related to estate planning law; maybe Gertrude likes cats and going for walks on the beach as much as she fears outliving her retirement savings. Your blog should reflect this.


Law Blog Writers Demystifies Marketing Jargon


Law Blog Writers provides marketing content by and for lawyers. Choose the legal content writers at Law Blog Writers to write blog content that is based on sound knowledge of marketing principles without sounding like it comes from a marketing echo chamber.


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