Writing blog posts can sometimes feel like reaching out in the void hoping to grab onto something useful. You might be unsure about whether the content will truly interest or attract potential clients.
Thus, as an experienced attorney, you might feel compelled to highlight your many accolades and relevant experiences – your multi-million dollar verdicts and impressive resume, for instance. Perhaps you’ve worked at a big firm or went to an Ivy League university. To be clear, all of this is impressive, and you should by all means be proud of your accomplishments. But when it comes down to it, writing an effective blog post means prioritizing a reader’s needs over highlighting your own accomplishments.
Understanding Your Audience
The average person is not going to fully comprehend the weight of certain resume points, meaning they won’t know, immediately, that your impressive experience translates to meaningful benefits that apply directly to their situation. Put another way, advertising your firm based solely on your achievements fails to connect to a person’s emotional and practical needs.
Within the marketing realm, you will often hear about the distinction between benefits and features, and the relative importance of the former over the latter. It’s not that features are meaningless; it’s more that features do nothing if they are not accompanied by a series of associated benefits.
Benefits vs. Features
But first, what is the difference between benefits and features?
To begin with, this distinction is usually applied to products, but it works with services as well. For instance, a store might advertise that it is open for 24 hours. This is a feature, as it merely describes an element of the business’ operation. A benefit associated with that feature might be that a person can do their shopping whenever they want. We might call this convenience.
In short, a feature (24/7 service) describes an element of the product or service, while a benefit (convenience) reveals what the product or service can do for the customer.
When it comes to marketing, benefits are clearly more important, as they directly apply to the client’s needs, as opposed to the business or law firm’s qualities. In short, it’s always a good idea to focus on the client.
How This Applies to Law Firms
When it comes to law firms, the principle is the same, even if the details change. So instead of writing hundreds of words on your firm’s achievements, awards or relevant experiences, you want to focus on what you and your team can do for potential clients.
Even if you mention your achievements, be sure to highlight how those achievements apply to the potential client’s needs. For instance, if you mention a major case, make sure you explain how the expertise you employed to win that case can be effectively used to bring justice to the potential client. Spend more time talking about what you can do for your client than about how amazing your firm is.
Writing an Effective Blog Post
So how does any of this apply to writing an effective blog post? Well, there are a number of things to consider in writing a solid post, but for our current purposes, it’s important to highlight one important aspect: You want to focus on a need you can fulfill and you want to highlight that need in the very first paragraph. In fact, if you can grab the reader in the title, that’s even better. Take the following example: the title, “Law Firm Wins Major Case,” can get lost in the fray. A reader can take it or leave it. But the title, “How Our Law Firm Can Help You Find Justice,” implies a direct benefit to the reader and thus is more likely to grab potential clients’ attention.
In the end, it’s all about the client. Keep this principle in mind when tackling each new blog post.
To learn more about sharing your blogs, articles, and news on one of the largest legal networks online, contact us today. Altrumedia is a full-service, altruistic, media agency.
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