Your Law Firm’s Website Is the Cure for America’s Social Distancing Blues

Like most lawyers in the country, you are probably working at home this month. Officially recommended, and in some cases mandated, social distancing is making millions of introverts realize how much they appreciate human companionship.

As the inhabitants of many of the nation’s largest cities are under orders to work from home and to stay six feet away from other human beings at all times, the Internet’s role as people’s connection to other individuals and to society as a whole has only grown more prominent. While you are working from home, you can use your modest amount of additional free time to adapt your law firm’s website to the spirit of the times and make your digital marketing strategy address your prospective clients’ current needs and concerns. Just what are your prospective clients doing online these days, now that they can no longer socialize or collaborate in public?

Social Media: A Reminder That the World Outside Still Exists

Before the coronavirus outbreak, people used to complain that social media distracted them from their work and families and gave them an inferiority complex, but now that so many of us are stuck at home, it feels like a lifeline. Everyone from seasoned social media influencers to people whose previous participation was limited to liking and sharing other posts is sharing their experiences in the form of texts, memes, and videos. It is a way of staying connected in an age of forced isolation. If your law firm does not already have a social media presence, now is the time to establish one; it is a great way to engage with the public and let them know that you are still there.

Googling Their Worries

People have been Googling their worries since long before the novel coronavirus COVID-19 was first detected in humans, and your keyword strategy is probably already based in part on the problems people worry about that your practice area can fix. You have probably already addressed blog posts like “can my ex garnish my paycheck for child support,” “punishment for drug possession,” and “how to remove a partner from a business.” Perusing social media will give you a good idea of what to blog about now to hold readers’ attention. From germophobia-discordant co-parents to disputes over scarce toilet paper, you can find out all about your prospective clients’ current worries and frustrations on the Internet.

Reevaluating Their Priorities

Today, the Internet is buzzing with advice on short-term distractions to pass the time in quarantine and think pieces on how the COVID-19 pandemic will cause lasting changes in society. People who are thinking about going to law school, thinking about trying to expunge their criminal record, and thinking about getting a divorce are Googling, and if you follow the right marketing strategy, they can land on your site. Abundant, informative content can lead readers to your site and make them stay, and when they are finished reading your site, they will think of you as an authority in your field.

Contact Law Blog Content Writers

If you need to spend your social distancing days working communicating with your current clients and keeping your kids focused on their online classes, you can entrust your content marketing strategy to professional writers. You can count onLaw Blog Writers to create web content to give your prospective clients guidance even in the most trying of times.

Law Firm Marketing from Home

Now that households and businesses across the country are trimming their budgets in order to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its economic effects, you might worry that your small law firm will have to dispense with its marketing budget entirely. You may, in fact, need to reduce your marketing budget, but making it easy for prospective new clients to contact your law firm is essential to the survival of your business, and so is making a good impression on prospective clients once they reach your law firm’s website and legal blog.

In his podcast on law firm marketing in the age of coronavirus, Richard Jacobs of Speakeasy Marketing focuses on interactions with prospective clients who, like you, are stuck at home suffering from cabin fever and worrying about their financial future, rather than on SEO to beef up your law firm’s website.

Tips for a Successful Consultation While Working from Home

It is fine if your law firm’s website remains much the same as it was before the coronavirus pandemic. The main difference what happens after a prospective client calls you or fills out a contact form on your site. In the old days, prospective clients used to come to your office for a consultation, or at least you would do phone consultations from your office. Now your only choice is to do phone consultations from home. Here are some ways that you can make virtual consultations a positive experience that will make prospective clients want to hire you:

· If you do not already offer free initial consultations, you should. Otherwise, you will miss out on everyone except the wealthiest clients.

· If possible, hold virtual consultations using a video chat app. Even if you do most of your work in your cluttered bedroom, set up an area of your house as a virtual office for video chat sessions; it can even just be whichever side of your dining room table has the nicest backdrop. Wear your work clothes from the shoulders up.

· Let the initial consultations last longer than your pre-coronavirus consultations did. People are desperate for a human connection with someone outside their immediate family. If you spend an additional ten minutes talking to a prospective client about your pets or your favorite sports team, you are making society more productive, not less.

How Your Website Can Help

Updating your law firm’s blog regularly was important before COVID-19, and it is important now. Your virtual consultations can inform your choice of blog post topics. You can address concerns that prospective clients have raised during your virtual consultations. In other words, you can write about frequently asked questions as you find out about them.

Legal Content Writers

There are only so many hours in a day, even one spent at home, and it is more important for you to communicate directly with clients than to write blog posts. You can count on Law Blog Writers to create blog content that addresses the concerns of your new virtual clients.

How to Stay Productive at Law Firm Marketing While Working from Home

Transitioning to telework as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response is not nearly as much of an adjustment for lawyers as it is for many other professions. Even before the novel coronavirus had achieved community spread in the United States, you were probably putting in 40 hours per week at the office plus another 40 hours per week at home, while also being a primary caregiver for your children.

When you were still going to the office, you had probably worked out a strategy for which tasks you did at the office and which you did at home. Maybe you were already in the habit of doing most of your legal content writing at home, anyway. Now that your favorite coffeeshop has closed its seating area, and your kids are at home for the rest of the school year (so you can no longer sit in the bleachers and write emails on your tablet while your child is at after school marching band practice, for example), you will have to think of a new productivity strategy for the age of social distancing. Here are some suggestions.

Make Marketing Tasks a Reward for Working on Your Cases

Law firm marketing is one of the more recreational parts of your job; it allows you to write in a less formal tone and to observe trends in pop culture. As a reward for finishing one of your work tasks for the day, such as drafting a response memorandum for one of your clients or reading a long court decision that relates to one of your cases, you might treat yourself to something that doesn’t feel like work but actually helps you market your law firm, such as:

· Read a social media page where people are discussing an aspect of current events that relates to your practice area (for example, co-parenting while schools and daycares are closed, or the moratorium on evictions)

· Download Google Analytics or a similar SEO analytics tool (downloading software isn’t fun by itself, but checking an item off your to do list after something as simple as downloading an app is)

· Video chat with a colleague and snark about how clients’ behavior has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and then write one or more blog posts based on the conversation (taking a tone that empathizes with prospective clients, of course)

Embrace Your Lack of Productivity

If you try to be as efficient while your whole family is quarantined under one roof, it will only lead to frustration for everyone. Set a reasonable lawyer work goal and a very modest marketing goal, and then accept that there are periods of the day when it isn’t possible to work. It is possible to spend three hours and seven minutes in one day arguing with your kids about schoolwork, chores, and being quiet so you can work. Three hours and seven minutes is also the amount of time it takes to watch Barry Lyndon. Which would you rather do?

Hire Legal Content Writers

Another solution is to accept that you cannot focus on writing blog posts while your house is abuzz with video games, Khan Academy videos, and myriad versions of the Baby Shark song. (Pro tip: Barry Lyndon is probably the only Kubrick movie that will not traumatize toddlers, although they may find it boring.) You can count on Law Blog Writers to compose blog posts for your law firm’s website, so you can work on surviving the days of social distancing.