One of my primary marketing efforts is devoted to blogging.  The key to effective blogging is blogging often and writing about something of substance.  Naturally, I get asked this question all the time, “How do you consistently blog?”  The concern is that after a while, you run out of ideas.

I currently run or contribute to 6 blogs (including this one and 7 if you include Mass Bar e-Journal’s Tip of the Weeks) and I’ve been legal blogging for 3 years.  Needless to say, I know a thing or two about problems with finding fresh and new materials to blog about.

Answer Questions

As a lawyer, we encounter clients asking us questions everyday.  They’re not always the same questions.  They’re similar but usually with a twist so you have to tailor your advice to suit your client’s needs.  Why not take those questions that you encounter in everyday practice and convert them into blog posts?

Break it Down

Many new bloggers think about the big picture too much and don’t focus on the details.  For example, if you’re blogging about divorce, you might get stuck after blogging about “How to get an uncontested divorce”.  However, you might want to break it down into manageable pieces for your readers by posting follow-up posts such as “What is a Separation Agreement” or “How do you fill out a financial statement”.  If you think about the steps you take in your field of law, you’ll see that you routinely perform many steps to get to the end of a case.  Each of those steps is a blog post.

Reuse, Renew, Recycle

After you’ve blogged for a long time, you might want to go back and reuse some old posts and recycle them.  I don’t mean copying it word for word and reposting it.  Take a post, and put a fresh spin on it.  Update it with new law and new rules that applies.  There are a lot of ways to say the same thing.  Sometimes people need to hear it more than one way to understand.  And with law, it’s often incomprehensible the first time around.  Recycling is good for the environment and good for your blog.

A Current Affair

Take current affairs, breaking news stories and interesting articles you’ve read in print or online and talk about them.  Your legal posts don’t always have to do with being in court or negotiating a contract.  Talking about how it applies to real life scenarios and talking about the human element will soften up and lighten up your blog for easier and more interesting reading.