There is no doubt that blogging is an important part of online marketing, and one of the best ways to increase public awareness of your firm, as well as public trust, in an effort to become an authority in your field. I have no doubt you’ve seen these statements countless times, and have wondered how to effectively apply them to your firm.

It’s easier to be energized about an endeavor when you have a clear grasp on the process and how it will specifically help you reach your goals. Well, when used as a marketing tool, as opposed to an online diary or journal, blogging can help you increase the number of people, businesses, and organizations that come to you for legal counsel. When you create and maintain a blog, it gets indexed by search engines and ideally shared by the people who read your content. When your content is valuable to your reader, they return to read more, and share your posts with other interested parties via social networking. Search engines recognize increased activity on your blog which helps you move higher in search results pages, resulting in more potential clients finding you through searches.

The Power of Blogging

To help you determine how important blogging is to your goals, consider this: the number of firms writing blogs and the number of posts they’re writing has continued to increase since 2008. In fact, according to the Am Law 200 Blog Benchmark Report 2015, in the past seven years the number of law blogs has grown twelve-fold, while the number of firms publishing blogs has quadrupled. Legal blogging continues to increase because it can be incredibly powerful and effective. It’s so powerful in fact that 163 of the Am Law 200 firms blog, with most publishing two or more blogs and some publishing as many as 20 different blogs.

What makes blogging so powerful? Interestingly enough, when affiliate network affilinet conducted a survey of more than 2000 consumers in the UK, they found that bloggers are more trusted than social media contacts, colleagues, journalists, religious leaders, celebrities, brands, and politicians. Consumers surveyed said that only their family and friends are more trusted than bloggers.

The Importance of Frequent Blogging

Ruth Carter over at AttorneyAtWork.com brought up a great point when she said “If you’re considering starting a blog, you have to think in terms of the long game. You’re not going to see results overnight,” in her post Blogging for the Long Haul. She emphasizes that for a blog to start working for you, you have to work at it regularly, and make it part of your weekly schedule.

Before you have a steady readership, you’re going to have to share your content with interested parties and get ranked well in search engines. Post valuable, original, and sharable content regularly. Building a readership takes time, and at first it may seem like your blogging for yourself, but if you post quality content on your blog each week, your blog will attract an audience and begin to perform like the powerful marketing tool that it is.

Teresa Shaw is an SEO consultant with 10 years of experience helping attorneys and law firms across the country increase public awareness of their services.