So you want to write your own website copy? I highly recommend you don’t, for these two key reasons:
1. You Have More Important Things To Do
Your time is precious, which means you should focus it on performing tasks that only you can handle. Like writing a brief. Or appearing in court. Or meeting with a prospective client. The list goes on.
Your business needs you to do what you are good at, as much as possible. It does not need you to spend countless hours figuring out what pages to have on your website, what copy should go where, or which words to use. DIY marketing is not the best way for you to spend your time.
2. Someone Else Can Write It Better
This is the crux of it, of course. You went to law school to learn about law, not writing marketing copy. Even if you studied marketing in undergrad, you have not spent the past few years keeping up with online marketing trends and best practices. A copywriter, on the other hand, does just that. Such a writer also knows how to write for online users, including how to structure and format copy for greater engagement. By working with an experienced writer, especially one well versed in the law, you increase your odds of having effective website copy without sacrificing your time.
If You Insist on Writing Your Own Website Copy
Writing and publishing website copy is important when it comes to online marketing. A professional writer can capture your voice and your message. If you decide that writing for your website is best left in your own hands, however, then I suggest you embrace the following five tips:
1. Forget Everything You Learned In Law School
When it comes to writing, that is. Legal writing and website copywriting are two distinct skills. For instance, if you want to connect with your audience, you need to write at an 8th-grade level, not a 16th-grade level. You need to stop writing long sentences and paragraphs and you need to avoid footnotes and sub-clauses. And you should absolutely stop throwing around legal phrases or terms of art that people outside the legal field don’t understand. This business law firm gets it right (and may be one of the reasons it was one of this year’s best law firm websites).
2. Let Go of Your Ego
Your website is not about you. It is about your prospective clients. What has meaning in the legal community may have little to no value to people outside of it (Martindale-Hubbell ratings, anyone?). Focus instead on the fact that people are looking for your services for a reason. They need help, and they want to know whether you can help them. They are looking to see if you can answer a few simple questions before they contact you. If you deliver the basics, they will reward you with phone calls and email inquiries.
3. Put Yourself In the Shoes of a Prospective Client
What is your prospective client looking for? What are his or her concerns? What common problems may arise? How are they feeling at the exact moment they find your website? Write content that speaks to your client’s fears and future, and you will find that you have created content that truly connects.
4. Sprinkle In Some Personality
The more you can be yourself, and the more you can show your audience who you are, the greater likelihood you will make a connection with your readers. Or have fun with your site, as humor is a great ice breaker. By adding personality to your site, your have a higher likelihood of further engaging with your prospective clients, which helps bring those prospects farther down the sales funnel. One great example of personality that I’ve seen is on the lawyer profiles of this website.
5. Do Not Assume You Know How to “Do SEO”
Optimizing your website for search engines does not mean stuffing as many keywords into a page as possible. And please, for the love of all things holy, stop thinking that all you need to do is use the following combination everywhere: City + Practice Area + Lawyer. It takes time, research and experience to figure out what works right on your website from a search standpoint. So even if you write your own content, you should still hire an SEO specialist to help with your search engine optimization efforts.
Start following these tips and you will find that your content will at least begin to outperform your competition. But if you really want to make an impression on your prospects, you are better off reaching out to a trained copywriter who understands your industry and the Web.
This post originally on Lawyerist.com.
