Should work on your website delay launching blogs?

Could you imagine a law firm asking their lawyers to put their business development work on hold until the law firm got its new website done? That would be crazy.

But it’s happening every day at law firms across the country. Large firms and small firms.

Someone makes the decision that because websites and law blogs both live on the Internet, the work on each should coincide. Worse yet, at some firms because the website costs more and takes more of the firm’s time, law blogs should wait until after the website is done.

Law firms making these decisions are failing to grasp the purpose of law blogs.

Blogs enable a lawyer to network through the Internet. Blogs are all about building and nurturing relationships with key people, including influencers, and building a name for yourself as a “go to” lawyer.

The best lawyers and the best law firms generate their work through relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation. Blogs merely accelerate the pace of relationship and reputation building.

Sure, law blogs ought to complement the law firm’s brand. But bear in mind we’re talking a publication here, not a website. A blog should focus on the reader’s experience first, not on the design first. Elaborate design often detracts from a reader’s experience.

With the amount of content being read on mobile devices, responsive blog design is critical. This will further limit what some in a firm may wish to do with elaborate design.

The answer? Move on a blog as soon as you have a lawyer who is willing to network online. Look to blogs as perhaps the best way to capitalize on strategic opportunities you are working on.

If you have the logo and general colors for a law firm website, that’s enough to move forward with a blog. You need not wait for the website to be done.

If you’re a lager firm, the style guide, including the color palette and typography, and logo are enough.

If things need to move any sooner on business development, working with a clean design based on existing branding could well be enough. The design can be modified later.

What about manpower for running a blog and website launch? A website is going to take a lot of time working with design, development and data. A blog should not take nearly that amount of time. Time on design can be minimal compared to what’s important, that being to make sure the lawyers know what a blog is and how to blog. It is an art and they need to pick up the skill.

If anything, the fact that it takes time for a lawyer to learn how to blog makes it more important to get started now. Rather than six or twelve months before a lawyer gets blogging well, you may push it back to two years from now.

Perhaps it’s easy to delay blogs. But at the end of the day delaying law blogs does not make a lot of sense.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Leo Grübler