Is a Teacher the Right Person to Write Your Law Firm’s Blog?

In the midst of the Great Resignation, a lot of people are starting to feel that their jobs are pointless. You know that your work is providing some value to someone if you can easily explain to someone else what you do during your work day. When it is as simple as “I drive a bus,” “I fry eggs,” or “I repair woodwind instruments,” you know that you are not a mere bureaucrat in a sea of cubicles. Teachers never feel that they don’t have enough to do, but no matter the age of their students, teachers often feel, rightfully so, that they do not get paid enough. As a result, many teachers have second jobs during the hours when school is not in session. Freelance writing is a popular source of additional income for teachers, since they can work on it from almost anywhere. If you are thinking of outsourcing your legal blog content to professional writers, teachers might be a good choice.

Teaching and Content Writing Require Similar Skill Sets

According to Eric Walker, who has worked both as a teacher and as a professional content writer, these are some ways that teachers can apply some of the skills they have developed in the classroom for successful web content:

· Content writing requires you to develop short-term and long-term plans and work toward them simultaneously; so does teaching.

· Both teaching and content writing require you to know your audience and to respond to them in real time. Too much web content is no more informative than those unsuccessful teachers who simply read from canned lectures provided by the textbook publishers.

· Successful teachers and successful writers can learn new information quickly and adapt it to the appropriate audience.

· The best teachers, like the best writers, are always refining their technique. Even if your class went perfectly this year, you will still do it a little bit differently next year.

Lawyers Make Good Writers, Too

Of course, most of the skills of successful teachers and successful content writers are also applicable to the legal profession. Lawyers must also explain complex material to a variety of audiences and respond quickly and appropriately to challenging questions. Many lawyers considered going into the teaching profession, and some have even taught classes; in many cases, the decision to choose the courtroom over the classroom was a financial one. If you have any free time in your schedule to write blog content, then you should do it, because you know your law firm’s client base better than anyone else does. Of course, the legal profession is famous for taking up every moment of your time, so outsourcing your blog content could be the most time-efficient choice.

And Then There Are the Writers Whose Only Job Is to Write Law Firm Content

The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers can use their talents for adapting to audience response and their ability to make short-term and long-term plans simultaneously to implement and adapt your law firm’s content marketing strategy.

ContentBot Can Help You Save Time on Writing Content for Your Law Firm’s Blog, but It Has Some Limit

Examples of the most egregiously awkward and tone-deaf writing that natural language processing (NLP) bots can produce make for effective clickbait, but they do not do a very good job of showing how artificial intelligence is and is not useful for writing website content for law firms and other kinds of businesses. The fact that bots can be creepier than Kafka does not tell you much about how well the bot can write understandable blog posts about car accident injury claims. A recent article by Robert Marshall describes the functions of a content writing software called ContentBot and its applications and limitations for writing various types of online content. Whether you decide to write your own legal blog content or entrust the task to bots or to professional human writers is your decision.

How ContentBot Works

ContentBot uses GPT-3 technology. GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. Like other NLP software, it quickly reads a large corpus of texts and remixes them in order to generate the content you ask it to write. It has a feature where it can write an entire first draft of a blog post (or content page, FAQ page, or whatever other text you are asking it to write), as well as one where it can simply suggest titles and subheadings. Marshall shows a screenshot where you can ask ContentBot to draft content, rephrase existing content, or generate topics.

The Pros and Cons of ContentBot

According to Marshall, ContentBot is very effective at writing product descriptions and other texts that do not require subjective experience. He also recommends it for revising human-written content to make it more SEO friendly. He advises that, like other content-writing bots, ContentBot works better the more thoroughly you communicate with it. In other words, if your instructions are sufficiently detailed, ContentBot will rise to the challenge. Perhaps this is another way of saying that, no matter what, you have to do the thinking yourself, but some people find it helpful to communicate their thoughts to a bot instead of simply to themselves.

Since ContentBot uses GPT-3, its frame of reference only goes as recently as 2019. This means that, if you ask it to write about a pandemic, it will assume that you mean the bubonic plague, not COVID. Although Marshall does not directly address law firms, the time-limited corpus could be an obstacle for law firms, since new legislation and court decisions form an important part of blog content for law firms. By this logic, it is probably more useful for generating evergreen content and guest posts than it is for creating blog posts about recent developments in your practice area.

If You Can Communicate With Bots, You Can Communicate With Humans

The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers can use their up-to-date knowledge to compose readable, factually accurate blog content, with or without the help of natural language processing bots.

Read These Copywriting Books to Get Inspiration for Your Law Firm’s Blog

No matter the topic, the hardest part is the part where you just have to sit down and put words on paper, and the hardest part of that is getting started. Being a lawyer requires a lot of writing, and after writing all the documents that require hard intellectual labor, such as affidavits, petitions, and responses to petitions, or even sharply worded emails to the opposing party in a pending legal case, it is hard to have much energy left to write blog posts for your law firm’s website. It is important to keep updating your site’s blog regularly, though, because it helps your blog continue to rank on the first page of Google search results, and it helps attract prospective clients to your law firm. Sometimes the best way to get the words flowing is to read material that has a similar tone to what you want your blog to say. Copywriting blogger Elna Cain says that, if you want to see examples of effective copywriting, look no farther than the Promotions tab of your email inbox. Most lawyers do not want to spend their lunch hour reading about Old Navy’s upcoming sale on sweaters, so perhaps a better place to look for inspiration is in books about writing. Cain has recommended 16 books about writing business blogs, but these are the ones most relevant to legal blog content.

Best Books for Blogging Inspiration

These are some books to help you get started on a blog for your law firm’s website or add content to your existing blog:

· The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert Bly provides practical advice about various genres of commercial writing for law firms and other businesses, including but not limited to blog posts, email newsletters, and landing pages.

· The Copy Book by D&AD is a collection of 50 essays by 50 professional content writers, sharing their best advice about writing effective content.

· Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman is a content writing guide for beginners, so this book is a good choice if you are just getting started on a blog for your law firm’s website.

· How to Write Magnetic Headlines by Copyblogger Media focuses on titles and subheadings for your blog posts. Some writers find that, once they have the title and subheadings in place, the rest of the blog post practically writes itself.

· Read Me: 10 Lessons for Writing Great Copy by Roger Horberry advertises various aspects of the writing process and challenges that professional content writers often face in creating content that ranks highly on SEO and has a high conversion rate.

Wisdom Is Knowing When to Ask for Help

The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers can develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy for your law firm. If you prefer to have more direct involvement with your law firm’s own blog, they can also do only the parts you need help with, such as blog posts or researching blog topics.