Getting more traffic to your legal or professional services blog

Lawyers and professional service people publishing blogs need to be more concerned with the value they are providing people than quick fixes via search engines and the like meant to draw traffic to their blog. I’m always telling clients and prospects you will not be able to keep people away if you provide valuable information.

Seth Godin has a nice post today explaining the concept of getting traffic to your blog.

The problem, of course, is in the ‘get.’ The request has at its foundation the assumption that what you’ve built has somehow earned attention. ‘Our business model is working great–we just need more traffic…’

People never say, ‘how can I earn more traffic?’ or ‘How can I rethink the core of what I’m offering so that it organically attracts people who want to see it?’

Getting traffic is a little like getting a date. You can probably manipulate the system for a little while (I had a roommate in college who was great at it) but self-reinvention is a markedly better long-term strategy.

Long term value will always be measured by your blog content. Your target audience and those people who influence your target audience (reporters, bloggers, program coordinators, thought leaders etc) don’t spend all their time hanging out at search engines. They’ll learn about you via word of mouth on the net as well as offline. To get that word of mouth thing going, you have to provide value.