Your Law Firm's Blog and Politics
When starting my first business nearly 12 years ago, I remember getting some solid advice from older members of the business community. The one that always seemed to stand out was “never mix business with religion and politics.”
That is generally sound advice but as a lawyer, you are in a unique predicament. Through all the bickering, fear mongering, and partisan wiles, politics comes down to the formation and interpretation of your product… the law.
Over the years, we have monitored the performance of the blogs that our law firm marketing clients contribute – and what we found was a little surprising. There is value in political commentary. This was true from both sides of the aisle.
In traditionally left-leaning areas of the law (personal injury and immigration), we found that blog entries that took on a political undertone related to their respective area of the law had higher levels of syndication, more direct inbound links to the blog entries, and higher levels of sharing across social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.
On the other side of the aisle, we looked at traditionally conservative areas of law (corporate, securities, and tax). Blog entries that spoke out for or against state and federal legislation (bills and laws) not only had greater amounts of sharing across social networks, more syndication, and more readership, law firms in conservative genres had more direct requests for republishing the politically charged article in newsletters, magazines, and journals.
Its safe to say, based on this review, that politics in your law firm’s blog is a great way to charge some interest in your firm’s website. However, you have to keep the focus on the legal aspects.
If you start getting venomous in your political writing and talk more against the individual politicians and not so much the legislation they back or oppose, you may isolate yourself from potential clients that do not fit in the stereotypical political box.
Just as attorneys in those practice areas may not fit the profile, conservative individuals often need personal injury representation and some liberal voters also own large corporations and get involved in periodic tax disputes, so you cannot assume your target clientele share in the comprehensive party beliefs. So keep the focus on what the politicians are doing, how it will affect the interests you represent, and throw in some of your own commentary. This will yield great interest in your firm through your law firm’s message.
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