Nothing to write about? 

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You promised yourself you would write an article or blog post or newsletter, record a video, or prepare a talk for your networking group, but you don’t know what to write about.

Don’t panic. And don’t force it. Skip the day and try again tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, you might

  • Republish something you wrote a year or two ago; yes, you can do that. Most of your readers won’t remember (or care). And you have new subscribers or audience who haven’t heard that story before.
  • Cut up that old 1200-word article and publish one of your points, perhaps 300 words, and call it a day.
  • Rewrite that older piece. Update the law, use different examples or arguments, add a new story, change the headline, and you’re good to go. 

Great. Immediate problem solved. For the future, here are some options:

  • Consider allowing (or soliciting) guest posts from other lawyers or experts. Or asking a colleague to co-author an article with you.
  • Ask your readers to submit questions they would like you to answer.  
  • Collect articles by other lawyers and experts that might interest your readers and use those articles to spark ideas for your next post. I do that all the time; can you tell?
  • Set up an idea file. Anything you think about, wonder about, hear about… throw it in this file and dig through that file when you’re looking for ideas. 
  • Document your days: jot down a few lines about interesting or difficult clients or cases, opposing counsel, problems you solved, or people you meet, because it’s all fodder for your next post. 

You can write about anything. And you should because it will make things a lot easier for you and more interesting for your readers.

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Blog or newsletter?

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Eventually, both. Each is different, each has advantages over the other. So, when you have more time or staff, or a bigger list, use them both. 

I do. But I make things as simple as possible by posting my newsletter on my blog and sending my blog posts to my newsletter list. 

If you’re new to online marketing, or looking to up your game, but you’re not ready to do both, decide what’s more important to you. 

If your primary interest is getting more traffic, start with a blog. Optimize it for search terms that pertain to your field and prospective clients will find you, see what you know and do, and if they like what they see, contact you to ask a question or make an appointment. 

If you’re primarily interested in enhancing your relationships with existing and former clients and business contacts, leading to repeat business and referrals, start with a newsletter. 

I just listened to an expert who said the purpose of a blog is to “inform and create more direct calls to action leading to sales,” while the purpose of a newsletter is to “entertain and build authority”. 

Maybe. 

I see a blog as a mechanism for informing, building authority, and generating leads. I see a newsletter as a mechanism for building a relationship with people who have already found you, via a blog or other means. A newsletter is usually more personal. A blog is more formal. 

Here’s an important point to consider:

A newsletter is a much better way to get people who have found your website or blog to return, something you can’t count on a blog to do because you can’t count on people who found you through search conducting that same search again, even if they’re still looking. Yes, people can subscribe to your blog and be notified when you post a new one, but I wouldn’t count on that either.

In short, use your blog to attract new people and your newsletter to get those people to call you and to return to your blog to see what else you say. 

Of course, you should also use your blog to generate sign-ups for your newsletter. 

They work together nicely. 

You know what else works nicely with a blog and newsletter combo? Social media. I found the aforementioned expert who talked about the differences between a blog and a newsletter through a video. 

I wasn’t searching, but YouTube thought I might be interested.  

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Originally is overrated

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For creating content—blog posts, articles, videos, presentations, or anything else meant to inform or inspire your readers and followers, the writing is the easy part. 

What to write is the challenge. 

You don’t want to write what everyone else writes about, or say the same things, so you stay away from certain subjects or points of view, hoping to find something unique and borderline amazing. 

But this is unnecessary. 

Most of your readers and listeners aren’t reading or listening to others in your niche and if they are, they’re not reading or listening too carefully. 

But even if you write something nearly identical to what others write, your article will still be different.

Because you are different. 

Your experience, cases and clients, stories, opinions, and writing style might be similar, but they aren’t the same. 

So, relax. You don’t have to create original content. 

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it is usually better not to. It’s usually better to write about the same things others in your space are writing about. The existence of their articles and posts and videos shows that there is a “market” for those ideas. 

People read those posts and they will read yours.

Knowing this should not only encourage you to let go of whatever might hold you back from creating (enough) content, it gives you a simple way to find all the ideas you will ever need. 

Here’s the plan.

Once or twice a month, browse through the list of blogs and newsletters or channels you follow, whether lawyers, industry experts, or other creators who inspire you, and bookmark several posts you can use as fodder to create your own. 

I do it. Sometimes, I get the “perfect” subject to use for my next article or post. Sometimes, I get nothing and those posts go back into the slush pile or get deleted to make room for something new. 

And sometimes, I zero in on a small part of something someone said and I’ll say something about that. 

In a few minutes, I have my subject. I’ll add a headline or title and my new post is almost nothing like the original. 

If you aren’t doing this now, try it. Nobody owns ideas. Besides, they are only a prompt. A place to start. And when you’re crazy busy cranking out billable work, a place to start is your best friend. 

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Invert your pyramids

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Some prospective clients want to immediately know everything about what you can do to help them. All the details, the entire process, and as much proof as you can provide. 

Others don’t.

When they first encounter you, most people simply want to know if you have something to say they want to hear. If looks like too much work to find out, they often don’t stick around. 

One solution is to write shorter pieces so visitors can see at a glance what you have for them. 

For longer pieces, the simplest thing to do is to fashion your marketing documents and website content with an inverted pyramid. Newspapers used a journalistic style to do this, with the most important information at the top, followed by increasingly less important details. 

Use a headline to capture attention and give readers the big picture and follow that with the “Five Ws” (who, what, when, where, why) in descending order of importance. This way, the passing reader can quickly get the gist of your message and move on if they aren’t interested, while others, with more interest in your subject, and more time, can continue reading and learn more. 

In the digital age, you have other options than they did in the 1800s when the inverted pyramid structure was first used. You can link to additional pages, use call-outs, charts, photos, and other visuals such as larger or colored fonts, and other graphic flourishes, to call attention to elements you want to emphasize, “hide” others from immediate view (and link to them), or “stage” how and when certain information is delivered to the reader. 

Pay attention to how bloggers and online publishers make it easier for their readers to consume their content and emulate them. 

No matter what you do, if you want more people to read your words and decide they want to talk to you about representing them, follow this rule of thumb: don’t tell them everything at once. 

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What do you like best about this article?

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What would you like me to change? How often would you like to hear from me? What topics would you like me to cover?

Just a few of the questions you can ask the readers of your blog or newsletter via a survey or poll.

You can find out if they think you publish too often or not often enough. If they like the topics you write about or want to you write about other subjects. If they have questions about the subject or any other subject.

And they’ll tell you.

You’ll get valuable feedback about what you’re doing, ideas for future content, and learn how often your readers want you to post or publish.

Maybe you need to make some improvements. Or maybe you’re doing things just right.

But be careful. You won’t always get the truth.

Readers often say things they think they should say (or they think you want to hear) rather than what they really think or want. So take everything with a grain of salt and look for patterns.

If a significant percentage want you to write shorter pieces or publish less often, or they want you to write a follow-up to your last post, you should at least consider it.

The goal is to find out what they want so you can give it to them, get more engagement with your content, grow your following, and ultimately, get more clients.

You can do this with surveys or polls or by simply asking readers to reply to your email or add a comment to your blog post. You can use Google Forms, plugins provided by your web host or newsletter service provider or by WordPress.

You can ask simple yes or no questions, multiple-choice questions, or fill in the blank questions.

When they reply, you’ll learn more about what your audience wants in terms of your legal services, get ideas for future content, and grow your subscriber list as readers share your content with others.

And yes, you can do that without using additional software. Just ask readers to reply to your email or add a comment to your blog.

Even if only a few readers reply to your questions, everyone will read them and your replies or follow-up posts where you report the results of your poll (if you do that), all of which makes it more likely that your readers will respond to a future poll, or decide they need to contact you about their issue because your poll prompted them to do that.

Make sense?

If it does, reply to this post and tell me you’re going to ask your readers a question or two in your next post.

See, as easy as that.

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Education-based marketing 

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One of the best ways to market your legal services is to teach clients and prospects about the law. That’s what they want to know when they go to a search engine or click a link. They want to know how bad their problem or situation is, available solutions, the risks, and their options. 

And if they are searching for a lawyer, they want to know why they should choose you.

Educate them and they will be much more likely to choose you, because the information you share not only helps them decide to do something about their situation, it shows them you have the knowledge and experience they need and want. 

Which is why you do seminars and presentations, write articles and books and newsletters, and create other types of what we now call “content”.

One of the simplest ways to do this is through a blog. You can add a blog to your website, or set up a separate blog, easily and inexpensively (WordPress is free), and use it to write anywhere, even on your phone. 

A major benefit of a blog is that you own all the content. You don’t have to send people to other platforms that might bury your content, censor it, or distract visitors with content from other lawyers. 

A blog also supports any other marketing you do—networking, social media, advertising, and referrals. People hear about you and visit your blog to learn more. As they consume your content, they sell themselves on taking the next step. 

That next step might be to contact you and ultimately hire you, or sign up for your newsletter, which allows you to stay in touch with them until they hire you.  

Okay, before you ask, the answer is no, you don’t have to be ‘blogger’ to benefit from a blog. You don’t have to do all the things bloggers do: SEO, engaging with visitors, curating comments, or creating a never-ending series of fresh posts to please the hungry search engines. You don’t have to post continually on social media, appear on other people’s podcasts or channels, or advertise.

You can do any of that if you want to, or use your blog as a sort of online brochure, a place YOU send people to learn more about you and what you do. 

To do that, set up a simple blog (it takes ten minutes) and write 5 or 10 posts about your area of expertise. Link to your blog from your website, put the url on your business card and in the “signature” of your emails, and when you talk to someone and they want to know more about what you do, send them to your (website and) blog. 

This is an easy and extremely effective way to educate prospects, clients, and referral sources about what you do and why someone should hire you. 

How to set up a blog for your law practice

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No, it’s not cheating

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Yesterday, I was busy with (something) and didn’t have time to write a new blog post/newsletter article. So, I re-posted an article I originally wrote ten years ago. I changed the headline, did some minor editing, done. 

Did you notice?

No, you didn’t. Because you weren’t a subscriber ten years ago. Or didn’t see it. Or can’t remember. 

That’s good news for content creators like you and me. Re-posting gives us another way to create content, especially when we’re busy with other things.

Yes, you can re-publish old posts. No, they don’t have to be ten years old. And no, you don’t have to change the headline. It’s your blog, your newsletter, your content, and you can do what you want. 

I hope this encourages you to do that.

I wouldn’t do it too often. Uncle G might object. But it’s better to be spanked occasionally by The Masters of the Universe than to deny your new subscribers the opportunity to learn something valuable or interesting because they weren’t around a few months (or years) ago and never had the opportunity to see it.

Besides reposting, you can also update old posts with new information, statistics, cases, or trends. You can re-post and offer a different opinion, because your thinking has changed. You can add new resources, ideas, or quotes from other experts, or stories about cases you’ve had since you first wrote about the subject.

And thus, turn an old post into a new one, without spending a lot of time.  

Another way to save time is to do no writing. Invite another lawyer or professional to write a guest post for you. Or, interview them, which can be as simple as sending some questions via email and posting their answers. 

A “listicle” is another way to create a blog post or article without doing a lot of research or writing. A listicle is a list of resources, tips, ideas, or quotes,often just a few sentences on related topics. For example, you could write a listicle about important new laws in your field, or changes to old ones.

So, there you go. Alternate ways to get new content, without slaving away at the keyboard. 

For more ways to get more content, see my course, Email Marketing for Attorneys

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Writing without a net 

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There are good reasons to create an outline before you write and with longer pieces, I usually do. I choose an idea, a working title, a list of points I want to cover, and some examples or stories to include. I often change these, but it gives me a place to start. 

Which is usually the most difficult part of the writing process. 

With shorter pieces, I rarely outline because I have only a fragment of an idea floating around in my head. 

Someone asked me a (marketing or productivity) question; I saw an article about a subject that interested me; I learned something from a video I wanted to share. That’s usually enough to prime my writing pump and I start writing, often with little or no idea of what I’m going to say. 

Which is what I’m doing right now. 

The genesis of what you’re reading is an article I read about writing blog posts. I zeroed in on the subject of outlining and realized I had something to say about that—that despite the value of outlining, it’s not always necessary, and sometimes, makes the writing more difficult. 

You can just start writing and see where it goes.   

Yes, it’s usually messy. Without an outline, sometimes you waste a lot of time trying to find your message and the best way to present it. But the other way, outlining first, can be equally messy and time consuming, especially when you think you know what you want to say (but don’t) or, as I often do, you change your message (often several times) before you finish. 

I also find that writing without an outline often leads to “fresher” writing. Instead of pure logic, you’re guided by what feels right, just as extemporaneous speaking often does.

It sounds like I’m saying, “Don’t force it, do what works for you” and I am. As a busy professional who has other things to do, strictly adhering to what your English teacher (or law professor) said to do isn’t the aim. It is to get something on paper and out the door.

IRAC be damned.

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Create content about what you do

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Your clients, prospective clients, subscribers, friends and followers, and even your business and professional contacts, want to know about you and your work. 

Even more than they want to know about the law. 

In fact, unless someone currently has a specific legal issue or question, or has a client or friend who does, they probably don’t want to hear you talking about the law.  

It’s boring. 

It’s people who are interesting. And you are one of those people. 

Tell them about your typical day, the kinds of clients and cases you handle, your staff, how you stay productive, and even the software you use. 

Tell them how you do research, the forms and docs you depend on, and how you get new business. (Perfect opportunity to talk about all the referrals you get—and plant a few seeds for your readers). 

They want to hear what you like about your work, and what you don’t. They want to know about your favorite case, and about your “client from hell”.  

You may think what you do is dry and uninteresting, but you’re too close to it. What you find humdrum is fascinating to others. 

However… don’t make your content all about you.

You also need to talk about the law. Because some people find you by searching for a legal topic, and when they do, they want to know everything you can tell them. 

But more than you or the law, your content should be about your reader. 

Their issues, their industry, their market, and the people in their industry or market.  

Yep, talk about clients and prospects and the people in their world. Because there is nothing more interesting to your readers than reading about themselves. 

Email marketing for attorneys

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Running out of ideas?

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If you ever have a difficult time coming up with ideas for your newsletter or blog or social media posts, I have a very simple solution for you. Not the only solution, of course. There are many sources of ideas. But when it’s crunch time and you’re looking at a blank page and a deadline, this should be your “go to”:

Find something you wrote (or said) before and write it (or say it) again. 

You may notice that I do this all the time. In fact, the subject of this post is something I’ve written about more than a few times. I don’t feel guilty about that and (if you do it) neither should you. Because not only is it good for us to be able to repeat ourselves, it’s also good for our readers. 

Here are 4 reasons:

  1. Repetition is the mother of learning. Hearing an idea more than once helps the reader or listener understand and remember that idea.  
  2. Hearing that idea again may prompt the reader to actually do what they have learned but aren’t doing, or stopped doing.
  3. Many subscribers or followers may not read what we have written. They were busy, didn’t think they needed the information, or didn’t open the email or visit your blog.
  4. Many subscribers are new and never saw your article or post. 

One more reason: the preeminence of fundamentals. 

In my case, it’s much more important to remind you why you should prioritize referrals in your marketing, and tell you (again) how to get them, for example, than to tell you my latest strategy for keeping notes.

Okay, repetition for the win. But… a few guidelines:

  1. Spread it out. Don’t write about the same idea 3 times this month, write about it 3 times this year. 
  2. Use (different) stories and examples to make your points, to keep it interesting and give your readers something different they might relate to and remember. 
  3. Vary the style and length of your articles and posts. One time, you might have a lengthy and comprehensive article, the next time you might rhapsodize about a portion of the same, or simply refer to the idea parenthetically as part of another article or post. 

Finally, if you’re really in a pinch, it’s perfectly fine to write nothing new but simply copy and paste your old article as though it is new. (You may find this especially handy when you’re going on vacation).

Most readers won’t notice and those who do won’t care.

Email Marketing for Attorneys

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