Guest bloggers can provide benefits for firms that already have an established online presence. Before considering hosting a guest blogger, make sure your blog already has a strong “personality,” or voice of its own. You should already have a website with your own domain name featuring high quality content, a social media presence, and curated profiles on legal services review sites such as Avvo. Guest bloggers can drive traffic to your site, so you want to make sure you have a solid presence when people get to your doorstep.
If you think you are ready to take your blog to the next level, hiring a guest blogger is a great way to start. Generating high quality content is not easy. Particularly when your main objective is to run a successful law firm. Hosting a guest blogger is a great way to bring in fresh content, without having to do all the work yourself. However, make sure that you approve the topic proposed by your guest blogger in advance. They may not be familiar with your blog archive, and you don’t want to pay someone to write an article on a topic you have already posted about.
Hosting a guest blogger is a great way to stake your claim as an expert in your niche practice area. Don’t be afraid to seek out non-lawyers who can offer an interesting perspective. For example, if you specialize in Workers’ Compensation or personal injury law, consider having a medical expert guest blog. This can really help your blog stand out from the crowd.
Guest bloggers are also a great way to increase traffic to your website. If you choose your blogger wisely, they may already have a following of their own. If they post a link on their own social media, page, or blog to the guest blog spot they have written for your firm, you will likely get cross-traffic. If your blog has its own regularly updated high quality content, the new traffic just might start following your firm’s blog too. To maximize traffic, you can expressly ask your guest bloggers to promote your page, or link to the guest blog on their social media accounts. You may even consider making this a condition of the opportunity to guest blog for you.
Hosting a guest blogger is not without its risks. Some guest bloggers may not be invested in the work, and give you factually inaccurate content that harms your firm’s reputation. Or even worse, their work may be poorly written, or rife with typos and grammatical errors. Cleaning up the work of a poor guest blogger can be more time consuming than if you had just written the blog yourself.
You also run the risk of losing some control over your blog. Make sure that you select guest bloggers very carefully, and that they understand and share the values of your firm and the message you want to send.
If you want to accept guest blog contributions on your blog or webpage, you should set up a written contract with the blogger, spelling out who owns the content, and other terms of the arrangement. Putting in the work to find the right guest blogger can save you a lot of headaches in the long run, and improve the overall strength and quality of your online presence.