A website without a blog is a digital brochure of your law firm and its services. Your blog is the soul of your website, which makes it unique and attracts visitors who, as a result of their experience reading your content, may turn into new clients for your law firm.
An article recently published in Seach Engine Journal and written by Julia McCoy shares fifteen tips for better copywriting on your blog. In this episode, we took it upon ourselves to explore how to implement these tips on your law firm’s website.
Whether you are writing the content of your own site or your own blog or assessing the work your agency or team is putting together, in this episode, you will hear about what makes your content stand out but, most importantly, keep your audience engaged until they become clients.
Resources mentioned in our episode:
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] According to the man metric, content marketing cost 62 percent less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media and author of Beyond Se Habla Español, How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. And this is in camera podcast, where we believe that your content is not serving its purpose unless it’s optimized for conversion. Welcome to our podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversations, Grace, welcome back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:00:59] Good. How are you, Liel?
Liel: [00:01:00] Very well, Grace. Thank you so much for asking. Super happy to be back here and ready to have a conversation with you.
Grace: [00:01:07] Same.
Liel: [00:01:07] All right, then. Let’s get started. Grace, for this week, we both chose a topic that never seems to be irrelevant. Right. And that writing good copy for your website. So I think I actually found a very, very good article that I shared with you. And I think we both agree that it has some really good and basic tips that are applicable that are easy to understand. And so, of course, we will be linking to the actual article itself, which was written by Julia McCoy. And let’s get started, Grace, with 15 conversion-copy tips that every SEO writer needs to know. Right. And even though you’re not necessarily SEO writers, if you are partaking in the content creation of your law firm, then you should see yourself as one because you want your content to drive results and drive traffic and hopefully conversions that, who knows, maybe can drive new business. I mean, that’s the goal, isn’t it?
Grace: [00:02:08] That’s right.
Liel: [00:02:08] All right. Excellent Grace. So why don’t you get us started with the first point?
Grace: [00:02:14] Let’s start at the beginning. All right. So, you know, looking at the different ways that people can really write for SEO is, I think it’s important to tell people, you know, we need to know who we’re writing for. And that kind of combines with some of the other things we’ll be talking about as we go along. But, you know, to write real content, you need to know who your people are. I mean, I think it’s pretty simple. What do you think Liel?
Liel: [00:02:39] Yeah. One hundred percent. We talk frequently about the importance of understanding who are your law firm’s buyer persona. You know?
Grace: [00:02:46] Buyer persona exactly. I know we’ve talked about that a few times. And, you know, there’s a few ways to do that. And honestly, I think the way they lay it out in the article is to tell you that you should dig deep and identify, at least I’d say three personas. And I can you know, I can agree with that to a point that if you have three personas to develop or whatever it is that you’re actually developing, it’s for the people that you’re trying to target. Right. Who are you writing for? Who is your community? Who are the people that are going to be looking for you?
Liel: [00:03:19] Yeah, and obviously doing in setting up your bio persona is something that you shouldn’t start doing just because you’re going to start writing an article that’s something that should be part of your marketing strategy as a whole, of course. Right. And basically, you just need to really look at your track record and see, well, who are our clients and what do they all share in common and why are we appealing to them? Why most of them are actually hiring us and other type of clients are not actually gravitating towards us so much. And so basically, you want to make sure that if you have identified that you are actually very appealing to a particular demographic group segment within your market, you identify them to a very granular point that you understand who they are, where they tend to leave, what they tend to or where they tend to work, what age group they are. And you’re then using that context to actually create content that’s going to be relevant to them. So that is pretty much, you know, your baseline for everything, of course, the content that you’re writing your website, but also to a whole other bunch of marketing activities. So. Right. Grace, I’m going to move on to this point number two, which I think it’s super important and it’s understand the customer journey. Consider the customer journey. Who are you writing this article for and in which stage in their conversion journey they are and here’s an example I can think of Grace, right? There’s going to be content that you’re going to write and I’m going to use personal injury as an example here for people that have already been in a car accident and there are now looking at actually hiring a lawyer and they want to make a decision as to who’s their best lawyer they can hire. But you’re also going to have an audience, some people that they may not have been in a car accident recently, but they want to make good decisions about how to be better insured. So if they are ever in a car accident, they’re well protected. Right? And so here you have two different stages in the consumer journey, one where you’re just trying to position yourself as an authority to build trust and to educate your market so that if they ever need your help, they can actually know that you’re going to be there to help them. But then the other case actually focuses very specifically to people that are actually in need of an attorney right now. And so your the way that you’re going to craft and the calls to action that you’re going to include on one article or the other are going to be different. Right. What do you think, Grace?
Grace: [00:05:57] Definitely. I mean, you know, it goes hand in hand with what we were talking about. I know who you’re writing for. And so the customer journey is the most important part when you’re actually crafting the content, like where are they in the journey to reach you? Are they only at the weirdness phase or are they at the ready-to-buy phase or where? And that’s what you have to consider when you’re doing the customer journey, agreed.
Liel: [00:06:21] Absolutely, Grace.
Grace: [00:06:22] So do we want to move on to the next one?
Liel: [00:06:24] Yep.
Grace: [00:06:25] OK, well, very briefly, touch on the one where it talks about make your audience a promise because as we said before we even started, I feel like that kind of goes into the customer journey and writing the content for the user. So we can just very briefly talk about make your audience a promise. You identified who they are, you know, your customer persona. So what, you gotta write for them?
Liel: [00:06:48] Yeah, I think, Grace, make our audience a promise. Right. Is a good opportunity to remind them what they can expect by taking you as their partner in whatever journeys that they’re getting into. Right. And while you may not be able to promise them that you are going to win their case, you can certainly promise that you will be available, that your team and you do everything in your hands to be able to provide the support they need and to, you know. Do everything in your hands to get them to the best results and outcomes, correct? So I think you certainly want to make sure that you are using that as an opportunity to make yourself stand out as to why they should consider you in their decision-making process as their partner. Now, Grace, I think the next one. And I think it’s actually two of these points that tie very nicely together. One of them is think of your content as a construction site and the other one is to break up the monotony of text blobs. And I think Grace, that they are both relate a lot to user experience. I think, you know, there is no mystery in saying that when you actually land on a page that just has a lot of text from top to bottom, you automatically get overwhelmed. But when you line into a page that has blocks of text headlines, some graphs, it’s all become more digestible, more easier to read, more easier to navigate as well.
Grace: [00:08:30] I mean, to me, it’s always been a super important concept as the user experience. And when someone lands on your website, it needs to be a fantastic foundation of content and it has to be broken up so that people can actually follow it. I mean, think about, you know, somebody age even. Right. If I look at a website and I have problems with my eyes or my eyesight and there’s tons and tons of text, I can’t read that. I’m just going to close it out and I’m done. In marketing, we have a term it’s called graphical highlighting. So when you’re breaking up and even on restaurant menus. Right. Like if you see boxes everywhere and everything’s boxed up in big boxes and stars and, you know, look at this. Look at this. Look at that, don’t you? Doesn’t your eye kind of drove all around the menu. And you at that point, you’re like, I don’t even know what to look at. Is the same concept as your website. Break it up, make it clean, make it easy for people. Make make it so that you want to read it. I mean, really, that’s what it boils down to, wouldn’t you say?
Liel: [00:09:32] Yeah, absolutely. Grace. I think you need to make sure that you’re not overwhelming the user with a lot of distracting elements. But at the same time, you don’t want to take an approach where you’re just saturating the page with text and not actually making it a more dynamic experience in the way that they read and the way that they are transitioning from one paragraph into another. Add elements that are going to add to the experience and to the understanding of the topic. And they always do not have to be infographics, which have been very popular over the past few years. Right. You can use bullet points. You can use images, you can use screenshots again. Right. From the examples that you’re potentially talking about. So I think there is a lot of ways that you can do that. And it’s important that you take that into consideration, follow some good user experience, best practices. Now Grace, let’s move on to our next point.
Grace: [00:10:34] So the next point I know you and I kind of said I feel like it really falls in with the content copy and customer journey and all of that. It’s your reader’s level of awareness. So, I mean, I feel like we can kind of just skim past that one to the next one, which, yeah, those are really more important to really the both of us, right. Where we talk about content all the time and, you know, the headers in this that so what it talks about is put more effort into your intro and that ties in perfectly with the one below it, which is incorporate the latest headline best practices. In other words, make sure that the content is good and including the intro. I mean, I think most of us remember English class in elementary school, even where they told you the beginning, middle, and end. All right, guys, beginning, middle, and end. It’s the same thing for your content. Your intro needs to be on point. It needs to grab their attention. Then why are they going to care? And then you’ve got to move on to the closing. And I mean, even starts. Right. Obviously has to start with the headline, you know, the subject. What’s the content about? Is it capturing people’s attention enough to actually click on it and read? And that has a lot to do with the headline and then you go into the content. So I think it’s super important for people to really understand that when they craft content, there needs to be a clean, concise beginning, middle, and end. And that includes the subject line or the title of the page or whatever it is that you’re looking at. It needs to be cut up in the right way and needs to be appealing. And that includes when you’re talking to somebody, you know, when you speak to somebody, don’t you start at the beginning of something and then you want to keep their attention. So you keep telling them, you know, something that’s important or why they should continue listening just naturally. And that same thing has to translate to your content on your website.
Liel: [00:12:26] I totally agree with you, Grace. And I 100 percent believe that you need to start with a bang, right? You want to make sure that your capture your audience, you want to keep them reading, you want to give them enough information to keep them hooked. And just going back again to the structure of the way that you create your content, use that in order to create more interest as the way that you are writing your text, want to keep them wondering what’s you know. Let’s move on to the next paragraph. Let’s see what’s going to be written next. So it one hundred percent is important to set the tone at the beginning and. Definitely put up statements that are going to be attention-grabbing to the point that the reader is going to want to continue reading. So, Grace, let’s move on into… I’m going to skip number nine because it’s about actionable copy. And I think we’re going to eventually you’re going to talk a little bit more about CTAs and then we can talk about actionable copy at the same time. But I really like this one. And I think you did as well. And this is using your language and such a basic one. Right. But it helps you connect such a level with the reader and make it personal. And I think that is really a big differentiator. And it’s definitely it definitely helps a lot more engagement.
Grace: [00:13:49] So, yeah, I mean, I took AP English. So for me, when it comes to writing and writing for the reader, it’s always been super important to engage them. And how do you engage somebody? You talk about them, you know, how is it going to affect them? Not I. I will do this. I will explain. I will show you. No, no, no, no. What do you think about this? Do you think this is going to land you at the top of Google, as they say in the article? Think again. So you’re speaking to the person in your writing. You are not speaking about what you’re going to write about and how you’re going to do this and that. No, I am explaining to you about you and how this information is going to help you.
Liel: [00:14:34] Yeah, totally. 100 percent change is completely the perception, how it is received when it’s written in that form. Grace, let’s move on to the next one.
Grace: [00:14:48] So the next one is it’s kind of interesting, it kind of combines with some of the other things, even like CTAs and that kind of stuff, because when I talk to people about actionable copy and CTAs and everything like that, I talk about using proper language. And what they’re talking about here in number 11 is dig deep for better verbs and adjectives. So it’s, I know it’s hard for people when they’re not really thinking grammatically right, because we’re not all English teachers or we haven’t all taken AP English. I mean, most of us are used to using spell check and grammar check the editor. Right. So it’s important to remember that when you are writing, it can’t be boring. Right. So how do you make things interesting? How do we do that with verbs and adjectives? Right. It’s how we describe actions and we describe people or things. So think about when you’re trying to describe something that makes you excited and apply that to your writing, because I’m sorry, but if someone writes. Oh, yeah, that thing, how does that go? Bah, bah, bah… But I lost interest after the first thing that you said. Now, if you say, “Oh, it’s extremely difficult to do this…” You know, that’s a little bit more spiciness to the conversation. Right. Why is it extremely difficult your you know, what adjective are you going to use next or what verb are you going to use to describe that? What do you think about that?
Liel: [00:16:17] It’s not just about delivering your message in the easiest and most reduced format. It’s all about connecting with a reader. And I think it’s super important when you’re writing that you’re setting a mood, right? You are actually using the opportunity of your text to actually explain to your audience that you understand the intricacies of what they go through, that you understand exactly how things look like. How do they feel? How do they happen? How do they evolve when they’re at a certain stage? And then you want to be as descriptive as to how things continue to evolve in transition as they’re moving into different stages. So verbs, adjectives help you create that mood, set that scene. Right. And so that’s super important. And that basically ties very well with point number 12 is, which has become a storyteller. I think we’ve all seen and heard the example of like you need to be able to explain things like the most efficient approach to the result or one of the most effective ones is like following the Disney sample, which is like the once upon a time there was this princess. And every day she would do this, the one day this happened and then this happened and finally, this was the outcome. And so I may have wrongly delivered some of the steps in there. But I guess I guess you you get the idea of storytelling. It’s just a great way of actually not just engaging your reader, but actually bringing messages across in an efficient and effective way. Right. Not for everything that you were going to write. You were going to have an antagonist. But when there is, make sure that you are leveraging, positioning your antagonist, and be descriptive about it, and such. Right. Be that the insurance companies be that other type of roadblocks that could be on your reader’s way. And so you want to address them and you want to make sure that you are descriptive about who and what they are.
Grace: [00:18:30] Of course, I mean, unique people want to see, they do want to see a story or at least something that’s appealing. And that’s the whole point of engaging content, you know, to include things that make them want to continue reading things that make it easy for them to read, but also stuff that is exciting to read, at least to a degree, meaning that solving my problem.
Liel: [00:18:50] It has to be interesting, Grace. I mean, most people, they’re not engaging in
Grace: [00:18:55] Technical documents?
Liel: [00:18:57] They want to get informed. They and I think that. That’s what your book should be doing, they should be conversational, they shouldn’t feel like an essay that your hand at the law school. So I think it’s important to differentiate that. Now, Grace, let’s move on. Right, because we have a couple of well, actually three more points to go. And one of them, which I think really relates very well to what we’ve just mentioned, which was maintaining positivity, I think, particularly as a business and one that job is to offer solutions is very important. That there always has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Right. I think there may be a few exceptions where you don’t necessarily need to show that type of emotion, but in most cases you do because that’s what you are for your clients. I guess most of time you’re a problem solver. So positivity is something that I think needs to be communicated and needs to be present, particularly in some specific points throughout the text. And I think that’s a really good segue way into the next one. Right. Which is your call to action. And I’m going to bring back another point that was just skipped intentionally so we can talk about it here, which is right up. Yeah, right.
Grace: [00:20:17] Actionable copy.
Liel: [00:20:18] Actionable copy. So, Grace, explain a little bit why is it important to have actionable copy and CTAs?
Grace: [00:20:25] So, I mean, you’ve got to make the ask, right? I mean, in sales and marketing and just about anything we do completely do, period. You have you need to always be closing. And I know a lot of people hate that terminology because it’s more of a sales terminology, but truthfully, that’s what it is. You’ve got to make them ask. Right. And I think that makes it a little easier for people to absorb when you say it that way, rather than always be closing. And it’s because if you don’t make them ask, how do I know what action I’m supposed to take at the end of what I just read? I mean, am I going to finish reading something? And then if you don’t tell me that you’re you’re not necessarily the expert, but at least you’re the one that can help me with what you just solved, I’m going to probably go somewhere else having that knowledge in the back of my head. I may just go search for someone else another day and say, “Oh, look, this person told me to call them right away.” You know? And I know this sounds somewhat simplistic, but the reality is if you don’t make them ask, you won’t get it. So a call to action is that it is making the ask that you want them to do. What do you want them what action do you need your person to take on your content?
Liel: [00:21:37] I totally think that it’s correct, Grace. And I think it’s important also to go back to the user to in which stage the user is on their journey. Right. Your call to action needs to be relevant to the text that you’re writing. Obviously, if you’re writing and going back to the example that I gave if you’re writing an article as to how to be well insured, then chances are that, again, the person has not yet been into a car accident. So there’s really no point in you writing down at the end of an article IDE’s to give you a call so you can help them out with their car accident. I think it’s more important to focus more on the actionable elements that you can say. Right. And so that could be a list of things. So contact your insurance, make sure that you have this coverage at this coverage, get quotes from additional providers, and that sort of thing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a CTA that leads to conversion because that’s not a present on every single step of the journey.
Liel: [00:22:40] Now, another thing that we’ve mentioned, Grace, as we were discussing this before the podcast, is that sometimes the CTA is and is an introduction to another piece of content. Right. Or an invitation to explore more information in another section of your site so they can get more education again. That’s why it’s important that you understand your user journey and understand where they’re most likely to convert and where is it important that you actually will actually have calls to action that are going to be relevant to users who are engaging with a particular type of copyright? And that’s why practice areas are important to be very, very conversion centered, optimized, whereas your blog articles again, are more informative and what you’re trying to do is provide valuable educational information to your audience and then guiding them through gathering as much information as they need on a particular topic so that they can end up converting when they’re ready. And so that’s why managing your CTAs and actionable content is going to be important and Grace, our last point. What is it?
Grace: [00:23:49] Oh, honestly, it’s funny because it ends the end. Your content, right? So the last point fifteen is end your content with powerful closing sentences. So, you know, once you get to the end of something. And they’re what they’re saying here is at the end of a race, they don’t just stop right before the finish line, nobody does that. Let’s say you’re you’re you’re trying to get to the end. And I’m sure most of us, even as kids like you used to race our friends and that type of stuff, you wouldn’t pull up at the end. No. You’d put the last bit of your energy and you want to get that get over that finish line with every last bit that you have. That’s the same concept with the end of your content. Don’t just fizzle out. End it with something that pushes it over the finish line for your reader, engages them, makes them do something, and it’s basically your closing remarks, right. And in a trial, let’s make this a little easier for the attorneys that might be listening in a trial when you have your closing argument, isn’t don’t you put all of your salient points, everything that was super important, and you bring it into a summary at the end and that’s how you finish with a bang. That’s the same concept with your content. You need to finish with a bang. What do you think, Liel?
Liel: [00:25:02] Yeah, Grace, I said we just started with a bang. You definitely need to finish with an impactful statement. And again, going back, you want to make sure that you’re keeping your tone positive. And I think one hundred percent, you want to make sure that you combine your balance of the ending, whether it’s by your actionable content, your CTA, and your closing statement there, to really have some sort of level of an impact. So, again, I mean, you see another episode where we’re talking about the importance of putting a lot of thought into your content. That’s why it’s such a central and critical element of your strategies. It’s a balance, right, between really having the right type of content and then having the right technical optimizations to let that content shine. So, Grace, I think this is a good reminder of what are the trends, what is actually what makes for great content? What are some of the ideas that you should keep in mind? Principles, best practices. You should definitely keep this in mind as you are considering writing new content for your website. Grace, let’s go with our takeaways, right? We’ve just gone through fifteen points. Let’s talk in more simple terms, what are three things that we can do for better content on our sites?
Grace: [00:26:21] So three, very good and actionable things that you can do is start with a bang, right? I mean, actually, I think we need to put that towards the end because really you need to look at your customer journey and who your personas are. I think that’s number one.
Liel: [00:26:38] Yeah, yeah. I, I would say, you know, engage the reader from, from the get-go make sure that your title is appealing and make sure that after they going through your title, the first paragraph they read hooks them up, it makes them want to read the rest. Right. So again that goes back to a storyteller, be descriptive, use adjectives to set the scene. And that’s definitely going to help you in making your content interesting to the reader. So great point, Grace. Let’s move on to point number two. And I would like to go for this one because I do want to bring up the importance of understanding who you were writing for, your buyer personas, and as part of understanding who your buyer persona is. You should also use that information to understand how their buyer journey looks like. Right. What are the different touchpoints that are likely to have with you so that you can write content that is specific for those different stages? So again, one hundred percent, if you are writing content primarily for an audience that they are ahead of households or married. Right. You want to definitely make sure that you’re using examples that are relevant for them so that you are going back to engaging them and going back to the point of using the you one. You can use examples that are actually going to be specific to them and relevant to them because there is no point in you using “the you language” when there are not actually going to be relevant to them. Write one more or do you need to add anything else? Got one, Grace?
Grace: [00:28:18] No, because I think hopefully by now they understand that if you don’t have in mind who you’re writing for, you can’t do anything. I mean, that’s where it starts. You need to know who your personas are, why you’re writing this, and who they are. You don’t. Do you agree?
Liel: [00:28:35] Mm hmm. I do.
Grace: [00:28:37] OK, so I feel like the next one would be just like we ended it. It’s got to end the same way. Powerful closing sentences, CTAs. And when you’re writing these things… end the content, like bring it together and finish it up. And to me, that also includes when breaking it up, making sure the headline is good. But the very end part of it is where they’re going to finish, hopefully. Right. So when they finish there, what action are they going to take? Include that CTA, that call to action! That is what it stands for. You need to include it. And I think that people miss the mark so many times when they have this wonderful, beautiful piece of content that people enjoyed throughout, and then they are left at the end with nothing to do with that.
Liel: [00:29:27] Yeah, you definitely need to make sure that a call to action is suitable, it’s there, it’s present if it’s a selection of other topics of interest, there are available for the reader as well to be able to move on to next. And obviously, you want to make sure that your content itself has actionable insights within, so that it’s actually something that at the end of it all they can say has helped them to improve something in their troubleshooting journey, no matter which stages they are. So, Grace, I think we’re at the end of another conversation and we’ll be back next week.
Grace: [00:30:11] That’s right. Next week, another week for us.
Liel: [00:30:14] All right, Grace, thank you very much. And have a great rest of your day.
Grace: [00:30:17] You too Liel.
Liel: [00:30:20] And if you like our show, make sure you subscribe, tell your co-workers, leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com, We’ll see you next week. Right.
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