Law firm blogs that haven’t been updated in weeks, months, or years are doing more harm than good. Law firms should keep them fresh — or kill them off.
Have you ever visited another law firm’s website, checked out its blog, and saw that it hasn’t been updated for a while—maybe weeks, maybe months, maybe even years?!
That’s a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️.
If you or your law firm has a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️, you need to put it out of its misery.
The problem with ZOMBIE blogs
🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️ are a problem because they send two unflattering messages about lawyers and their law firms.
But before we get there, let’s remind ourselves what the whole point of a lawyer’s or law firm’s blog is.
By regularly writing and publishing content on a blog, lawyers are showing visitors to the blog that they are knowledgable about the areas of law they practice in and that they stay abreast of developments in those areas of law.
And by sharing this knowledge (and wisdom), lawyers can assure past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources that their law firm is the right firm to handle the legal issues they, and in the case of referral sources, their clients, are facing.
Lawyers don’t have to update their blogs on a daily or weekly basis for them to be fresh. But they should update them between twice and four times a month for them to be perceived as such.
If they don’t, well, that’s when they become 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️.
And when they turn into 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️, they begin sending two unflattering messages about their law firms.
First, 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️ send the unflattering message that lawyers at those firms are not staying abreast of developments in the law nor are they knowledgable about them. After all, if they were, they’d surely be writing about them.
Second, 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️ ️send the unflattering message that lawyers at those firms aren’t organized enough to consistently write and publish content regarding developments in the areas of law that they practice. 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️ suggest lawyers and their firms may not be well-oiled machines and are thus unable to provide efficient and effective legal counsel.
Three ways to prevent—or kill off—ZOMBIE blogs
Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️ can be dealt with easily in three ways.
First, law firms can build an internal content creation process that formalizes how content is conceived, written, edited, and published. The process would cover all of the tasks that go into publishing content on a firm blog, as well as include all of the people who should be involved. And, of course, the process would aim for a desired publishing frequency of between twice and four times a month to prevent a firm’s blog from becoming a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️.
Second, law firms can simply outsource their content creation process to their external public relations or marketing firms, or they could outsource elements of the process to external graphic designers, ghostwriters, etc.
Finally, for law firms that cannot—or do not want to—figure out their blog strategy anytime soon, they can take their blogs offline. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but this can be done in a way so people searching for a law firm’s blog content online could still find it.
These firms can remove links to their blogs from the home pages of their websites. That way, website visitors cannot visit the blogs directly from the firms’ homepages and be rubbed the wrong way by any 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blogs 🧟♂️.
However, the posts that are on those blogs would still stay online. That’s because the firms are simply taking down the equivalent of a table of contents. The chapters the table of contents points to would remain untouched (and online).
That way, people searching online for topics covered by those posts would still find those posts in their search results. And, anyone who wants to visit a firm’s website after reading one of its posts could do so if the firm has links to its website on its blog posts.
Put ZOMBIE blogs out of their misery
All law firms create blogs with the best of intentions. But many times, the firms’ lawyers and staff prioritize other tasks, namely billable client work, causing those blogs to not be updated for weeks, months, or even years.
A blog overflowing with fresh, compelling content can be a boon to a law firm’s marketing and business development efforts.
But an out-of-date blog, a/k/a a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️, can do more harm than good to a law firm’s reputation in the eyes of past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources.
That’s why if your law firm has a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️ on its hands, it must put it out of its misery—or suffer the consequences of an undead marketing and business development initiative.
Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm prevent one of its blogs from becoming a 🧟♀️ ZOMBIE blog 🧟♂️? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.