At LexBlog, we've been at this a long time—we've got a good sense for how to get a blog off and rolling, and you might say we've even developed some habits in the process.
Every LexBlog blog comes with eight key items, regardless of plan level. We hit seven of those during the launch process, with the other—free ongoing support—available throughout the launch process and the blog's entire lifecycle.
Here are the specific steps in the lead-up to the launch of your blog:
- Strategy Consultation
- Professional Design
- Platform Training
- Publish Posts
- SEO & Analytics
- Syndication & Email
Strategy Consultation
The LexBlog Strategy Consultation is set up to ensure the success of your publication, by evaluating the goals you have set for the blog and discussing how to best reach them.
This call is for the lawyer or lawyers writing the blog and they should be present. If a lawyer plans to contribute heavily, this call is for them. Other involved professionals are more than welcome but the call is tailored to the lawyers themselves.
On the LexBlog side, the call will be conducted byLexBlog Founder & CEO Kevin O’Keefe. After serving as a trial lawyer for more than 17 years, he’s widely seen as bringing blogging to the legal profession—and has been empowering and inspiring legal bloggers since 2004.
We will cover:
- The goals for the blog and how to achieve them
- The blog’s focus and why it’s important to cover a niche
- Your team’s experience and passion for blogging
- The blog’s branding, including setting a title.
- Networking through the internet
There are two important items to accomplish before the strategy consultation.
- First up, we have our Strategy Questionnaire, which will full us in on the details of the blog and best prepare us to help consult on how to make it a success. Fill that out here.
- And of course, you need to schedule the call itself. Schedule your Strategy Consultation here.
Professional Design
Your blog comes with world-class professional design from the team here at LexBlog—it's a design that, if desired, closely matches your law firm's branding and, where applicable, the rest of your publishing network.
Obviously, this step's on us, but we do need a few things from you first.
- Brand guidelines—if your firm has a style guide, fire that our way.
- Vector-based logos—.eps or .ai or .svg files work best.
- Any imagery you'd like to be included. If you don't have any, that's totally fine.
- The title of the publication, which hopefully we were able to help with during the Strategy Consultation.
- List of authors, editors and administrators and their email addresses.
We ask for authors because, when we design the blog, we'll deliver you a full staging site you can play around with, to see what the blog actually looks like in a browser on your desktop, phone and tablet.
Platform Training
We promise, our enhanced WordPress-powered platform is easy to use. And we try to make it easier all the time. And if you need a little help, we're here for you and your entire team.
You're more than welcome to take the platform for a spin first, but if you find you'd like someone to show you around the place, reach out to our Customer Success team set up a call to walk through the publishing platform.
Or, if you'd like to go it on your own, utilize our full Support Center for articles on how to do everything you'll need to do.
Publish Posts
It may go without saying, but we're going to say it—you can't launch your blog without blog posts. Ideally, you have multiple, probably three or more.
But, this doesn't need to be some big undertaking. Posts don't need to be massive treatises, they can be as short as a few hundred words.
Here are a few ideas for you or your lawyers:
- Answer a question you frequently receive from clients.
- Conduct a quick email interview with someone you want to strengthen a relationship with—could be a referral source, a client, an industry leader.
- Write a recap post of a period of time—or a prediction post. What were or will be the big developments in your field of law in the coming year?
Check out this webinar for more easy post ideas to get you going.
While you're writing, be sure to flesh out what we call your promo pages—the About page, the Services page and so on.
SEO & Analytics
This is where we take over a bit and get you ready for launch.
As part of the final steps for launch, the LexBlog Customer Success team configures important elements of your publication to be in line with SEO practices. That includes, among other things, custom-tailored title tags.
If there is a term or terms you would like you or your site to be known for—something we may not have thought of, please let us know.
During this process, we will also get you set up with the latest edition of Google Analytics. Our Customer Success team will surely ask for it, but as a heads up, all we need from you is a good Google account or accounts to use.
Syndication & Email
When you're ready to go, we make sure you're blog is set to reach as many people as possible.
That includes syndication on LexBlog.com, with a profile available for your firm, your lawyers and your blog. Your posts will appear on the site and be distributed to its subscribers based on subject area.
Also in the email area, we'll get your blog set to distribute email notifications—so every time a new post is published, an email will be sent to your subscribers to give it a read.
Blog Launch
You made it! Now the real fun starts.