Guest posting is important for blogging, search engine optimization, and legal marketing in general. When you guest post you have the ability to reach a new audience, expand your reach, and spread your message. You also get the chance to add a quality backlink to your arsenal, which is a major SEO boost.
That having been said, not all guest posts are created equal from a legal marketing standpoint.
Two weeks ago I undertook a familiar legal marketing tactic by doing a guest post on the subject of estate planning as it relates to bankruptcy. Rather than ask, I did the guest post and sent it off to the firm for which I wanted to see it appear. This particular firm has a nice blog and I assume it does well for their legal marketing efforts if for no other reason than the fact that it ranks well for a particular search term.
My post was about 450 words of solid content, and well written. Within 12 hours I got a response from the lawyer that he thought it was very good post and he’d get it up immediately.
About 10 minutes later I got the following email, sent to me by a “Legal Communications” person who apparently didn’t understand the concept of “reply all.” The email said:
This is how it works. Nice tie in. Now, we can identify some bloggers for <name of lawyer’s paralegal> to write the same kind of email to.
I’m not worried at this point. It’s good that someone who gets paid for this sort of thing has been taught the “hidden secret” of guest blogging as legal marketing vehicle.
The following day I get an email from the lawyer saying:
It looks like it needs a partial rewrite now that I have reviewed it (since there are some other alternatives) so I will simply borrow most of it, give you attribution and link to your site.
A partial rewrite? OK, no problem. A little editorial control in the interests of clarity is a good thing. After all, I’m not an estate planning lawyer.
Now remember why we guest blog, people – to increase our reach and audience, to provide value, and to get noticed in a field in which that may not otherwise be the case. Legal marketing in the online world, this is. Tried and true content marketing.
In hindsight my mistake was clear.
Fast forward to the other day. I get an email from the “Communications Director” of this law firm (my oh my, they do have a lot of people working in the field of communications) telling me as follows:
Sending you a link to the blog with <lawyer> did based on your recent email. Please note that you are quoted in the blog and we have provided a link to your website. Thank you for the suggestion.
The content is noted as having been written by the attorney, and encompasses the content I provided. Of course, it’s wrapped in pure promotion for this attorney’s firm and not offered as a substantive piece of content written to inform and educate.
I am quoted with a link to one of my sites, but it is not my post. I did not give this attorney an interview, and I did not agree to ghostwrite a post for him. I did not offer to feed him ideas, and I certainly did not knowingly give him a “suggestion.”
What this proves, however, is that this attorney does not necessarily control his own content. His “communications” people are handling that, thank you very much. And rather than either accept or reject a guest blog post they chose to co-opt the content for their own purposes.
No, I’m not telling you the name of the other lawyer. It’s not relevant.
What is relevant is this – guest posting is a valid form of legal marketing. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. But before you submit a proposed guest post you need to remember that it is your intellectual property. You need to retain full editorial control or, at the very least, final say on the content being published.