I have not met a lawyer blogging just to practice his or her writing skills. I am confident that if you are blogging, you want it to be well worth your time. That is why I am writing 5 Days to Make Your Blog More Valuable.
This is Day 3 in our series: On Day 1 I discussed selecting a topic. If your topic is not important to clients or potential clients, they won’t read your blog.
On Day 2, I offered ideas on your headline. If a client or potential client did a Google search, would he find your blog?
Today, I want to share ideas on your first paragraph.
Don’t bury the lead.
If you want to get a better idea, read this blog: Keys to Copywriting: Don’t Bury the Lead about a story Chip and Dan Heath tell in their book: Made to Stick. The story is about a journalism professor who gives his students an assignment to write a story about a local high school that has announced the entire faculty will travel to a nearby city for a colloquium on new teaching methods next Thursday, and he provides details about who will be speaking, where it will be held, etc. Can you guess what the professor thought should be the lead?
When you are writing your blog, ask yourself why a reader should care about your post. Why would your post be important to your readers? I frequently review blog posts by lawyers and find that their last sentence answers those questions. The problem with that approach is that most of your readers will never get that far in your blog post.