Essential law blog pages needed to promote yourself

Amir Helzer, a blogger and webmaster who runs ICanLocalize, a technology-based translation service, guest posts this morning at Problogger offering some ideas on how a website could be run on blog software.

Helzir reviews the specific ‘static pages’ necessary for a business services’ website that would need to be set up with the blog software.

I’ll take it a step further – every law blog being used to enhance your reputation as an authority and grow your business needs to have such static pages.

The essential pages per Helzir with a little commentary from me:

• Information about what you’re offering. Describe your practice and clientele. Often they are broader than the niche practice area or industry focus of your blog.
• Benefits – how what you’re offering serves to make someone’s life better. Features lead to benefits, but the benefits are what really matters.
• Examples, testimonials and case studies.
• Support information – let people see answers to common questions. This may be included in blog posts as well.
• Contact information, preferably with a brief intake form.

Such blog pages are needed for two reasons.

1. The obvious. Potential clients need to know what you do and who you do it for. They need to know how to contact you and feel very comfortable doing so.
2. For the amplifiers. More important than prospective clients are the people who amplify your content to the world. The ones who do your PR and marketing work for free. Bloggers, reporters and the connoisseurs of social media (Twitter, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Facebook et al) need to be able to identify you as an authority with street creds in a nano-second. Otherwise your content is not going to get cited in a blog. You’re not going to get a call from the reporter who finds your blog. And your content is not going to be spread via other social media.

Customary in blog user interface design is the use of ‘About,’ ‘Services,’ and ‘Contact’ pages. In addition, you may wish to have a page listing ‘My Books,’ ‘My Litigation Philosophy,’ ‘Speaking Engagements,’ or ‘Blog Purpose.’ Those additional pages add credibility and a personal feel.

Do keep these pages down to 4, 5 maximum, in total. Less is more here.

Though those pages may be described as ‘Static’ or ‘Promo’ pages, there is nothing static about them. You should be regularly editing those pages to reflect changes in what you are doing, your successes, and the like.