3 Reasons Why Lawyers Should NOT Write Articles

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3 Reasons to Not Write Articles. Evelaw.png

Summary

Lawyers typically believe that articles are important to boosting their visibility. However, for most lawyers, their articles attract surprisingly low levels of readers.

If you are using articles to make yourself more visible to clients, you might want to rethink your strategy unless you can address any of the following conditions:

  • You can prove that your articles are receiving a sufficient number of target readers; or

  • You are using your articles to effectively engage with target clients and referral sources; or

  • You are using your articles to boost your social media profile.

Read on to learn about how to address the above conditions.

Introduction

When we start working with lawyers on their visibility boosting, we ask them about the success of their article writing programs. Although they almost always feel that their programs are successful, 90% of the lawyers are unable to provide any evidence to support their feelings. (Even worse, after we audit their programs, they are usually surprised by the low performance of their articles.)

In our experience, most lawyers are wasting time with writing articles because:

  • They are not aware of their low readership rates;

  • They are not getting their articles to their key audiences: (i) target clients and (ii) referral sources.

  • They are not even using their articles to boost their social media profiles.

However, if you insist on writing articles, you can find below some practical tips to address the above problems.

Readership Awareness

If you want to learn about the readership of your articles, start with the publisher of your article. In particular, ask them to provide you data on the following:

  • How many visitors clicked on your article over a specific period of time (e.g. 1 month)?

  • What was the average amount of time that readers spent on your articles over the same period of time?

With this minimal information, you will obtain two important benefits. First, you will start to understand the actual number of people reading your articles. With this insight, you can also judge whether the numbers justify the amount of time that you put into your articles.

Second, you will also be able to compare the results of different articles. We encourage our clients to use these comparisons in order to identify the types of articles that are most appealing to their readers.

Unfortunately, some publishers are unable or unwilling to provide the above data. In this case, you should consider posting your articles on your firm’s website. In this case, you can easily collect important data about your readership via Google Analytics. (Don’t worry if you don’t know about Google Analytics - your IT people should be able to help you.)

Getting Articles to Key Audiences

We are always surprised that most lawyers do not email (or mail a hard copy of) their articles to their key audiences, i.e., target clients and referral sources. Once you start to understand the low levels of readership for most articles, it becomes quite obvious that the likelihood of your key audiences reading your articles is close to 0%.

Lawyers write articles precisely because they want them to be read by their key audiences. Don’t leave this to chance. Stick your articles in a newsletter and send them to the people who control the fate of your business.

Social Media Boosting

At the very minimum, you should at least be using your articles to boost your profile on social media (e.g. Linkedin and Twitter).

When you post your articles on social media, you not only increase the likelihood of people reading your articles but you can also receive valuable feedback on your topics. For example, if your article receives lot’s of likes, shares and/or comments, you know that you have written about a hot topic, a topic that you should address in follow-up articles. (On the other hand, if you get no likes or other types of engagement, you might want to avoid wasting time on this topic in the future.)

Conclusion

We hope that you find the above helpful for your article writing efforts. Please contact us if you would like help on further boosting your visibility.