reasons for lawyers to blog

Be heard....

Reasons for lawyers to blog, in no particular order:

1.Attract new clients: yes, occasionally a potential new client will find you via a blog post. This may be rare, but will happen, especially if you become somewhat if an expert or go-to authority for your particular niche.

2. Become a recognised expert - if you become the person who is always commenting, early and often, about trending topics in your field, then you acquire a valuable reputation.

3. Bring your expertise to the attention of media, get approached for comments, get quoted.

4. Raise your ranking in the search engines. This involves understand the best use of keywords and SEO (search engine optimisation), but it also needs regular blogging with lots of fresh new content. It’s value? You’re found first (or at least sooner) in searches, and searches are the new Yellow Pages, folks.

5. Drive more traffic to your web site, where you keep the more in-depth stuff that will give a full picture to prospective clients or media people.

6. Be in the ballgame with IT clients, sophisticated corporates and social media-savvy clients, who are probably all blogging themselves.

7. Brand awareness - have people heard of you? Like publishing an authoritative book, a good blog will bring you to the attention of your peers, the media and potential clients.

8. Provide a resource for your existing clients and your general audience. Your blog posts can become an archive of valuable, easy to access advice. Posts with more depth and longevity can be kept in a ‘vault’ on your website for easy searching by topic.

9. Don’t just tell people you’re an expert - show them.

10. The discipline of keeping up to date and writing fluently about your interests in your field is remarkably good for you!

ghostwriting for blogs

Writing

I recently came across this interesting blog post on the subject 'Are ghost-written lawyer blogs unethical?'

It raises some crucial points, as do the comments left by readers. Setting aside the question of whether a ghost-written legal blog offends US advertising laws for attorneys, it seems to me that having a blog of any hue ghost-written by an unrelated provider misses something fundamental about blogging. Posting your thoughts, musings and reactions to events on the internet grew out of bloggers’ personal desire to connect. The style of blogs retains something of those origins, even when transplanted into the business world. If you merely wish to give information or pontificate, that’s a newsletter. A blog has much more of the personal stamp of its author.

Which is both its strength and its weakness in the world of blogs for business. Despite my initial reaction, which I stand by, it doesn’t take much further thought to conclude that busy lawyers (for example) are going to need some help with content if their firm is to run a regular blog. Using such help is far from unusual for busy attorneys - from having the in-house marketing people draft some information for the firm’s newsletter, to co-authoring a longer article with a junior associate, collaborative authoring is everyday. A couple of things need to be highlighted, however. No such work should be done by people with no expertise in the field. And no such work hits publication without review and sign-off by responsible attorneys.

The same rules should apply to a legal blog (and the idea is transferrable to many business blogs). Certainly there is no sensible, let alone ethical, basis for hiring a bunch of students to pump out content. How is that keeping you connected with your clients?

I’d also suggest some transparency. The contributors to a blog can be identified with a brief introduction or bio. There is nothing wrong with a blog having multiple authors, so long as one person doesn’t pretend to be the lone author. That’s deceptive, and a bad look. In fact, for a legal or business blog, having reputable and interesting co-authors or guest contributors keeps things fresh.