Blogging For Lawyers — Legal Practice Pro

Why I Use Headway

February 9, 2011 By Jay Fleischman

A handful of times each week someone – usually someone for whom I’ve done one of my $0 WordPress installations – asks me which theme to use for their WordPress site or blog. After all, there are a ton of them out there. Some of the freebies are pretty nice to look at, and some of the paid themes and frameworks are terrific as well.

But over the past year or so I’ve been working primarily with Headway. It’s a solid choice, especially for someone like me who believes that it’s important to concentrate on content before blowing big bucks on a designer for your website or blog.

Why did I spend the bucks on a premium theme when I have gone on record as saying that free is good? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers Tagged With: Headway, Search Engine Optimization, WordPress

Why Your Law Firm Blog Doesn’t Need A Professional Design (Until It Does)

January 25, 2011 By Jay Fleischman

law firm blog design

The lawyer who is new to blogging is told that a professionally-designed law firm blog is critical to ensuring long-term success in marketing a law firm online. That’s true, but it’s only part of the story.

Starting a law firm blog is a daunting task, isn’t it? You’ve got to think about platforms, how to write content, search engine optimization, and finding the time to get it all done without sacrificing your practice.

Not only that, but statistically there’s a good chance that your first blogging effort won’t be the successful one. I’m not the only lawyer who started a few blogs before finding my groove.

In spite of the uphill battle you’re facing, there are a bunch of well-meaning designers and blogging companies who are going to tell you that you must – MUST, I tell you – have a professionally designed blog for your law firm.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, lawyer blogs, legal blogging

6 Ways To Market Your Law Firm Online Without A Blog

January 12, 2011 By Jay Fleischman

online legal marketing without a blog

When lawyers think about content marketing the default ideal is a blog. And when most lawyers think about blogging, they begin to get heart palpitations and sweat profusely. Blogging, after all, conjures up that overwhelming fear of technology we just talked about. But if you’re not interested in blogging that doesn’t mean you’re shut out of the content marketing game.

Web hosts, domain names, WordPress installations and graphic designers cause confusion and difficulty for lots of lawyers. But when it comes to content marketing options, the blog is a good but not necessarily critical piece of the puzzle.

Content Marketing Takes Many Forms

Your online legal marketing must involve the creation and promotion of content. It’s what leads people to your doorstep, enables you to expand your influence, and showcases your expertise. But it need not occur on your own domain.

Sure, having your own domain and blog is preferred. You own your content, control the way it’s handled, and can maintain the visitor experience to accomplish all of your law firm marketing goals. If you can do it, you should. But if the technology is getting in your way, you should know there are other options.

I’m a huge fan of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as a way of connecting with others, promoting my content and getting the conversation going. That’s a part of content marketing, but not all of it. You’ve still got to create content as part of your online legal marketing efforts.

The good news is that you’ve got options. Plenty of them. Here are some of my favorites.

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Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, lawyer blogs, legal blogging

Boredom And Silence In The World Of Bankruptcy Law Firm Blogs

November 17, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

bankruptcy law firm blogging roadkill

Do you blog as part of your law firm marketing initiatives? Did you ever?

This past weekend I had some spare time on my hands and decided to clean up my Google Reader account; that’s how I keep track of hundreds of blogs and news sources, and the well from which many of my ideas are sprung.

One of my folders is dedicated entirely to bankruptcy blogs. As a consumer bankruptcy lawyer, this is one of the well-worn spots in Reader. What I found was astounding.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers

6 Non-Sleazy Ways To Promote Your Law Firm Blog

November 5, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

You can create a law firm blog with real value, but if you don’t let people know it exists then it’s all wasted. How can you promote you blog posts without being sleazy?

We’re uncomfortable with sales and promotion; that goes for the attorney marketing a law firm just as much as any other profession, but I think lawyers are hit particularly hard in this respect. We’ve been trained to behave conservatively, and in our minds the notion of promotion (hey look, I made a rhyme!) is distinctly NOT conservative. Add in years of being compared to hucksters and you’ve got most lawyers believing that promotion of any sort is unseemly.

Done the wrong way, promotion can make you feel dirty. If you look at most of the marketing online you’ll see scads of yellow highlighter and exclamation points that tell you to BUY! BUY! BUY!!! Is it any wonder why some fairly prominent legal bloggers think that marketing is a word to be expunged from the next edition of Black’s Law Dictionary?

But there’s another side to this coin, and that’s the realization that marketing need not make you want to take a bath in lye and burn your clothing. If you’re marketing a law firm you want to be not only ethical, but mindful of your professional standing in the community.

Your law firm blog is a marketing tool, no matter how you slice it. A law firm blog showcases your capabilities, exposes people to your message, and enhances your standing. It informs, inspires to act, and serves as your online face. You need to promote the content in order to gain an audience, and you want to do so without being sleazy.

Send Links to Select People Who May be Interested. If you read an article about the foreclosure crisis and are doing a post about TILA, RESPA or any of the real estate-related “alphabet soup” of statutes, send an email to the author of the other article to let him or her know what you’ve done. Be polite and offer up an invitation to visit the link. Three lines should do the trick, and it will help to gain one more viewer. That viewer may send the link along to others if it’s a good enough post. One thing you need to know, though – do not spam your email address book. I’m talking about sending the article out to 1-3 people who you know will be interested in it. If you spam, you suck.

Post the Article to Facebook. 500 million people are registered on Facebook as of this writing; when you post a link it shows up on the stream of all of your friends. If something interests you enough to write about then it’s probably interesting to the people you know and connect with on Facebook.

Tweet a Link. Twitter is a hive of activity, with people sharing links to content that interests them. Though you may choose to post your links automatically (I do this), the secret sauce is to create a compelling question rather than sending out the title of the post (which should be compelling anyway, but I know sometimes you just can’t make it sexy enough. For example, I recently sent out a tweet to someone else’s blog post. Her title was, “Is Bankruptcy Right for Me?” My tweet was, “Is bankruptcy a good idea or best left to others? Ask yourself these 22 questions.” Which one looks more interesting?

Hit The LinkedIn Group. If you’re a member of a LinkedIn group associated with your field of law then you’re already associated with a bunch of people who are interested in the topics you’re blogging about. When you’ve got a particularly interesting post (not one of those, “who is the Chapter 7 trustee in my area,” ones) head over to the LinkedIn group and post a link with a description. Your colleagues may find the content interesting enough to pass along to others.

Comment On Related Blogs. Blog commenting is an excellent traffic generating tactic for your law firm blog because it gives you exposure to the other blog’s audience. But let’s say you’ve got a meaty post on your site that you’re itching to share. Chances are pretty good that there is another blog out there talking about the same issue. In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that your article may be yin to another blog’s yang. Go to the other blog and comment appropriately (again, no spamming please); in the area where you enter your URL, paste the URL of your article rather than the main law firm blog URL; in this way, when people click to learn more about you they will be taken directly to your related post.

Ask Your Readers To Share Your Law Firm Blog Content. Using blog plugins such as Sociable, Tweetmeme and the FBLike you’ll make it easier for readers to share and pass along your law firm blog posts to other people. Good content has a way of traveling fast, so if you’re providing real value to readers you should expect the traffic bump.

Your law firm blog isn’t going to take off into the stratosphere overnight. It’s a slow build, but when you consistently use these promotional techniques you’ll have a greater chance of reaching more of the people who may find your content interesting.

Image credit: victoriafee (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, facebook, law firm blog, lawyer blogs, legal blogging, linkedin, online social networking, promotion, social media, Twitter

The Fastest Way To Grow Traffic To Your Law Firm Website Or Blog

November 3, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

online legal marketing and guest posting

You launched a website or blog for your law firm, and it’s got awesome content. You know that the traffic you get from the search engines is going to take some time to build up a head of steam. But you need to get clients today, not in six months. How do you jump start your law firm marketing?

You look to other law firm websites or blogs in your area, and you boot-strap your way to success.

Seems simple, right? Find a law firm that has a highly-ranked web property and borrow some of their visitors for a few minutes. In the process, win the visitor over and get them to visit your blog. Believe it or not, it’s actually as simple as it sounds.

In the old days people would start dashing off emails to the site owners and ask for a link to their new site. But over time the professionals started to realize that those links in the sidebars and the footers, called “non-contextual links,” didn’t really do much. They pass very little search engine optimization authority, and only a small number of visitors click them.

Some use article directories as a law firm marketing tool. I’m a huge fan of those places for my law firm marketing, but it’s just a baby step for when you’re first getting started. Your content is going on a site with high Google rankings, so you’re betting that someone enters in a search that matches with your title. For a lawyer, much of the traffic will be hit-or-miss because the visitors aren’t broken down by geography. There’s also some indication that the search engines are looking at backlinks from article directories as less valuable over time. Not much help for my law firm marketing if I’m in New York and getting a ton of visitors from halfway across the country.

But what if you could put your name in front of people who are in your area? That would be good, right?

Guest Posting Can Rock Your Law Firm’s Online Marketing Results.

Other law firm websites and blogs in your area are already getting traffic from local people who are looking for answers to legal problems.

One thing those law firms need for their websites and blogs is more content. They know that online content is key to their law firm marketing efforts; content is what gets noticed by search engines, and it’s what helps their law firm blogs and websites continue to attract visitors (and clients). And these law firms know that content marketing is a never-ending cycle; if you fall behind, you’re vulnerable to the upstart down the street. If you’re marketing your law firm online, that’s exactly what you’re producing. So why not make a trade?

Let’s say you’re a family law attorney in Los Angeles. You probably have a fair amount of overlap with lawyers who do bankruptcy, foreclosure defense, criminal law, and immigration. Your clients probably have those issues to some extent, and you’ve become used to answering questions such as, “what happens to my immigration status if I get divorced?”

Bearing that in mind, I’d recommend (to keep with the scenario we’re discussing) that you write a blog post on this subject. Make is awesome, filled with useful information, and devoid of all promotion but for a two-line bio with a link back to your site.

Then hit the search engines and find an immigration lawyer in your area (go as far as the state border if there’s nobody local) who’s got a blog and ask them if they’d be interested in publishing it. Provide them with the title and a thumbnail sketch of what the post is about.

They Have Traffic. You Have Relevant Content.

You win because you get in front of the other law firm’s audience, people who may be looking for a family law attorney. You also win because you get a contextual link from another site that points to your site; this is a big deal in the eyes of the seatch engines.

Your host blog wins because your post represents more content that the other lawyer need not create. In addition, the host blog can provide value to existing readers on a related topic. And there’s no downside because you’re not looking to poach their clients.

You’re Already Doing It, Aren’t You?

If you’re marketing your law firm online, you’re engaged heavily in content creation. Once a week, twice a week – whatever your schedule, you’re sticking to it. Would you rather have an awesome blog post that gets 10 visitors or one that gets 100? Yeah, that’s a rhetorical question.

If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, you could guest post on Bankruptcy Law Network. Just an idea, of course.

I’ve personally seen the benefits of putting my content in other places, and continue to use guest posting for my law firm marketing. It’s resulted in a significant uptick in traffic, clients, and goodwill among my local colleagues. They love the content, I love the traffic.

How about you?

Image credit: bigarnex (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers

The Easiest Way To Blog By Email Using WordPress

September 10, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

You want to blog, but it’s such a pain in the ass to go to WordPress, enter the post, and click “publish.” And though there are some excellent programs to enable you to blog from your desktop (MarsEdit for the Mac, or the ScribeFire extension for Firefox), what if you’re sitting at a public computer and just want to get out some thoughts?

I’ll sidestep the issues of using Posterous or Tumblr to do your mobile blogging, as well as using the WordPress applications for your mobile phone, in favor of something more straight-forward.

That is, just sitting down at a computer, firing up an email client, and typing out an email. Coincidentally, that’s exactly how this blog post is being done – by sending an email. And it’s easier than you think.

How I Get Traffic To My Law Firm Blogs And Website

September 1, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

You put up a blog or a website for your law firm, full of hope that this will solve your online legal marketing woes. But how do you get people to show up and read what you’re writing?

Once upon a time, I fancied myself a writer. A fan of short form fantasy and science fiction since I was a teenager, all I wanted was to be the next Harlan Ellison – master of short speculative fiction, turner of words and thinker of interesting thoughts. So much so that I took nearly as many creative writing classes in college as Economics, my chosen major.

As with most writers, I have a stack of manuscripts sitting around. I began writing too young to have much in the way of skills, and stopped before I got good enough to make a living out of it. Of course, this was before the Internet took hold or I probably would have started blogging as a teenager.

Yet here I am again, essentially writing for a living. I’m a lawyer, and our stock in trade is language to a large extent. I’m also a blogger, writing anywhere from 300-1,000 words or more each day. Harry Chapin said, “all my life’s a circle,” and I suppose that’s true. Began as an aspiring writer, now a working writer in various forms.

There is, however, one critical difference between my original goal and the current state of affairs. As a writer of books and short stories, the publisher often handles promotion and distribution. Not so with the blogger or website publisher. My world involves worrying not only about my words, but also how to get those words in front of people who care about them.

I’m guessing that’s a concern of yours too, isn’t it? What happens after you publish that blog post or launch that website? The Internet is a big playing field, and getting found is no easy task.