I have a confession to make – I read a lot more than normal people. In fact, I read more than abnormal people. It’s a habit I picked up when I was a kid, and it kept me from learning how to play sports (my wife tells me she likes the fact that she’ll never be a football widow) and getting a proper tan (lower risk of skin cancer is good, but I’m pretty pasty).
As a lawyer who blogs, much of my legal marketing reading comes to me in the form of other blogs. Also podcasts, which are really nothing more than blogs for my ears. Television bores me for the most part, though I’m a treasure trove of Family Guy references (my dog’s name is Griffin because my wife refused to let me name him Brian).
Last year I was listening to a podcast where someone was talking about his goal of reading 52 books in 52 weeks. Kindle in hand, I set about the same goal.
Today’s purchase was ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income (that’s an affiliate link), the second edition of the excellent book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Both of these guys are successful bloggers in their own right, as well as social media icons. Darren is heavily involved in Third Tribe Marketing, and Garrett is new media consultant.
First, a confession (well, I guess this is the second) – I never read the first edition of the book.
Second confession (which is really the third) – I am currently zipping through the new version. I even bought it in (gasp) physical paper form because the Kindle version won’t be out until after I’ve gone to San Francisco for the weekend and was going to read it on the plane there. At this rate I’ll be done long before then.
I can’t tell you if it’s better or worse than the original, but I can tell you that this is good stuff for anyone who wants to use a blog to make money.
In the book they discuss tools used for blogging, and there are a bunch of screenshots and descriptions to help you along. There’s also an excellent chapter on using social media for your blogging efforts.
The really nice thing for lawyers is the back story Rowse brings to the table. He began blogging out of passion, not as a business. In fact, his Digital Photography School had nothing to do with money when he started it. What he had, however, was knowledge about a core topic and a desire to get his information out to the public.
That sounds a lot like lawyers, doesn’t it? Lawyers have information about a niche subject and can use that knowledge to begin their online legal marketing efforts using content generation.
The title is obviously a huge draw for people who are looking to blogging as a way to build a business, and most lawyers aren’t going to use some of the monetization strategies used by that crowd. But the underpinnings of social media and content marketing for lawyers is compelling and cuts across industries – right to ours.









