Don't forget to stop by Blog For Profit where we are discussing all things about blogging to market and promote your professional service firm. In addition, we discuss using social media tools such as twitter too.
Also don't forget to subscribe to the Blog For Profit Newsletter. We include information in the newsletter we don't feature here on the blog. And when you subscribe, you get a free copy of our eBook , Blogging Tips to Help You Blog.
I am so very pleased to announce that I have joined the faculty at Solo Practice University™ (SPU). SPU is a web-based legal educational and networking community for lawyers and law students created by Susan Cartier LIebel, publisher of one of the best legal blogs on the web, Build a Solo Practice, LLC.
SPU is an online source for law students and legal professionals who want one place to go for information and resources on the practical aspects of running their own law practice. This is exactly what law schools should be doing and aren’t.
When I was asked to join the faculty at SPU, I considered it for a total of 2 seconds before I said, “yes”. I told Susan, “this is something which has been missing from the legal profession from the beginning of time.” Where else can you go for a complete source of information and resources then the web. And Susan saw this. She has taken the charge by bringing to those who are starving for such information and resources in one location by founding SPU.
I will be teaching, talking and interacting with the students of SPU about blogging. Specifically, how to effectively use blogging to market and promote their law practices. With the mini-communities SPU will be providing, this is a unique opportunity for students and other legal professionals to enter into a conversation and learn from each other about how to use a blog in their own marketing programs.
My goal as a faculty member of SPU is to encourage those who enroll in the university to engage in that conversation about blogging. By taking advantage of the interaction which I hope takes place between the faculty and the students, each will walk away from this experience with tools and ideas and those all important connections they will need to have a successful marketing program for their own law practices.
I also want those who are enrolled in SPU to always feel like they can contact me anytime to ask questions or discuss their concerns about blogging. It will be these conversation which will make this a great experience for all. I look forwarded to meeting all of those who are enrolled in or will soon be enrolled in SPU. Let the interaction and learning begin!
I received that question not too long ago from one of our readers. I am not going to use his name, but I will tell you he is an attorney. A professional service provider as I also like to call attorneys. However, what I tell him really applies to anyone working from a home based office. And it will work to start getting you clients and customers now.
Here is what I wrote him in an email in response to his questions:
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you with your question. You really answered this question yourself when you said blog. I am serious, if you want to position yourself as the place to go for legal help, you need to position yourself as the place to go for information first.
And since you are, as you call it, basically a brand new attorney starting out, a blog is one of the best and lowest cost marketing tools you can use. But don’t stop there. Incorporate a well thought out and designed email newsletter to your blog too. Give your readers a way to subscribe to the newsletter. And if that is not enough, come up with something you can give them for FREE. A short ezine series on something you are going to be practicing about. Take for example divorce. An ezine on how to prepare and meet with your attorney would be a good one. Anything you can do to show you are the place to go for information is what you want to do.
(A little self-promotion coming up).
If you are not reading my blog, Blog For Profit, go read it and subscribe. And while you are there subscribe to my Newsletter. I talk a lot about blogging for businesses and professional service firms. Not about monetizing a blog with ads. Which there are too many of those.
I hope this helps. Oh, and don’t forget some of the other traditional marketing tools. Network, both on and offline. Join a civic group and get involved in your community. If you are going to work at home, where is home? Do you live in a subdivision with a neighborhood center. If you do, offer to give free seminars on something people are wanting to know about. Estate planning is a good one. Bring in other professionals to do them with you. Financial planners for example. They may need the PR with today’s market ups and downs.
Drop me an email at grant@g2webmedia.com if you have questions about blogging or working from home. I would be happy to visit more by phone too.
Please leave your comments on other suggestions on how you can get clients or customers if you work out of a home office. The more we can share the better off all of us will be in these uncertain times. Instead of sitting back worrying about the economy, lets get out there and make our own. Lets keep the conversation going!!!!
“Should you be the one to write your blog post?: “
A week or so ago, there was a lot of discussion on other blogs about who should be writing for your business blog. They included:
The options presented originally were four; the business owner, employee(s) of the business, freelancers, or canned blog posts. I have my own opinion on this, but before I give you that, I wanted to take a look at what has been suggested from others.
To read the rest of this post, please visit our blog, Blog For Profit.
In order to continue to build the Blog For Profit community, I am thrilled to announce a way for our readers to become even more involved in the blog and that is by subscribing to our FREE members only newsletter.
The newsletter will start out as a bimonthly event and may go to a weekly. Best of all, other then giving you a brief update on the most popular posts for the last two weeks, the content will be new and fresh. It will be content only the newsletter subscribers will get. We will also include links to other blogs and even products we feel you will be interested in. And yes, when we highlight products, we may just have an affiliate with that product. But we never recommend anything we do not or would not use ourselves.
There will be special features of the newsletter, including a “Featured” blogger for each edition. Which is why we ask that you submit by email to me at grant@g2webmedia.com who you would like to nominate to be included. And yes, you can nominate yourself. Just make sure you include your email address and blog’s URL.
Submit your name and email address in the below form to be added to the newsletter community. Your privacy will be valued and your email address will not be used for any other purpose than to send this newsletter. You may unsubscribe at any time.
On submitting your email here you will be sent an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Please let me know if you have any problems with our subscription process.
While you are there, subscribe to Blog For Profit to keep up to date on new post.
Been visiting a lot lately with solos and small firms about blogging in connection with our new business, G2Webmedia. And what I have discovered, there is a huge amount of interest out there right now for blogging.
It appears to me more and more lawyers are beginning to see the benefits of blogging. Especially for the solo and small firm. More and more are seeing blogging as a way to put the solo and small firm on the same “footing” as the larger firms in establishing a web presence.
Blogging for what it cost to get started is one of the best marketing investments you can make. Even if you have firm professionally design your blog, you will spend only a fraction of what a large yellow page ad will cost you.
In an effort to answering as many questions as I can and to also keep the conversations going on blogging, submit your questions here. You can either leave a comment to this post or drop me an email at grant@g2webmedia.com. We will hopefully get enough we can do a continued series here on Home Office Lawyer where we discuss blogging.
And no question is a stupid question. There is no such thing.
This is just one more reason if you are a new lawyer or law student thinking about blogging and wondering if you should sign up for Solo Practice Univeristy.
Solo Practice University will be giving away a free blog to its members. You are reading that right. Here is what they are saying:
To that end, the Solo Practice University™ platform will enable its members to —
create an unlimited number of blogs within seconds control privacy settings for each blog (private/SPU community/public) import/export data with a single click …and we’ll be using one of the most flexible and state-of-the-art blog publishing platforms in existence.
If you are not signed up to get updates on Solo Practice University, you should be. And you can do that HERE.
I read Problogger daily. And I read Chris Garrett also on a daily basis.
Well, now you can read something I am so excited about and actually already preordered. Problogger Book is coming and you can pre-order for a May delivery.
Everyone who blogs or is thinking of blogging should jump on this one. It will be the best $16.49 you will spend this year. You can pre-order the book by using my link to the left.
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When I'm not working with other lawyers, I'm out there helping people in the fields of consumer bankruptcy, debt collection abuse, and credit reporting errors. [Read More …]
