A few weeks ago I was looking to compile a list of all the bankruptcy blogs I could find.  I figured it should be a pretty simple task, what with legal blogging being all the rage and such (though it’s de rigeur in the rest of the online marketing world, we lawyers aren’t so much into the cutting edge).

So I did a search for bankruptcy blogs on Google and was surprised – no, shocked – to be confronted with a virtual graveyard of old, dead blogs just hanging around and taking up space.  So I did a little research and found that the issue of dead blogs is a pretty big one.  So much so, in fact, that WordPress.com numbers show that only about 22% of their registered blogs are active.

Wow – nearly 80% of all blogs are just dead properties.  Crazy, huh?

Truth be known, I’m sure many of those blogs are of the, “I just ate a bowl of corn flakes and am watching my cat,” sort.  Either that, or they’re spam blogs (which have a lifespan of about 32 seconds).  But even if we cut those out, what are we looking at?  50% of all blogs are dead?

Whatever the number, this all made me wonder WHY so many blogs – particularly legal blogs – die.  After all, legal blogs are marketing vehicles for viable businesses.  They should stick around forever …. right?

Some time ago, Lorelle did a post on when to stop blogging (by the way – if you don’t know who Lorelle is, shame on you.  She has forgotten more about blogging than most of us will ever learn.  Her posts are smart, well-informed, and helpful.  Read her site.  Now.  Well, after you’re done read this post).  And from that I’ve culled my list of …

4 Reasons Lawyers Who Blog As Part Of Their Online Marketing Strategy Just … Give Up

1. Now, Now, Now! We’re all impatient, and we want results immediately.  Someone sold us on the notion that all advertising pays off right now, and we’re all bent out of shape that blogging for a week doesn’t result in a flood of new multi-million dollar clients.
2. The Empty Brain. I have no idea what the heck I’m supposed to say here.  I’ve repeated the same 4 things I said on my website.  I guess there’s nothing left to say, so I’ll just stop.
3. Too Full For A Doggy Bag. I blogged for a few days because my phone wasn’t ringing that week.  My phone started ringing, and now I’m just too darn busy for this foolishness.  Maybe I’ll go back to it if the phone stops ringing again.  Probably not.
4. Shiny Objects Get Dull. I read something that talked about how blogging was an excellent way to market my law practice.  I hired a designer to make a really cool legal blog for me, and I hit it hard for awhile.  But then I discovered Facebook, and I’m spending all of my time there.  It really seems as if blogging is dead, just like the pundits say.

5 Ways To Avoid Blog Death

Realize This Is Not A Short-Term Fix. Blogging is all about making connections and establishing a long-term rapport with your audience.  In doing so, you establish your value in the legal market by virtue of the content you’re putting out there.  As much as we’d like it to be otherwise, you can’t create trust and rapport in a day.  Nor, for that matter, in a month.  It’s going to take some time to build a blog, so get used to it.

Create A Content Marketing Strategy. Blogging involves the regular creation of new, unique and creative content – words on electronic paper.  Take some time to map out what you want to say, and when you want to say it.  My blogging calendar contains about 6 months worth of posts (that goes for this blog, as well as for Untethered Lawyer and my bankruptcy blogs), and I find it to be very liberating.

Set Aside An Hour Twice A Week. By scheduling an hour to do a blog post, and setting that time aside twice a week, you’re sure to get at least two posts out the door in a 7-day period.  Once you get comfortable with blogging you’ll find you can knock one out in about 30 minutes.

Read More Than You Write. When you read the news and other blogs, you gain knowledge as well as ideas on what to write about.  Whether it’s a listserv, another blog, or the newspaper – there’s a ton of information out there for you to use and comment on.

Remember To Have Fun. You’re blogging, not writing for the Pulitzer Prize.  If you see a funny YouTube video, use it on your blog.  Share a story about yourself, even if it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.  Why?  Because if you’re looking to establish a relationship with your readers (and you are) it’s more likely to happen if they know something about you as a person rather than as just another lawyer.  Show your humanity, have some fun, and laugh.  Your enjoyment will show through, and your readers will be infected with it.

Photo courtesy of mira d’oubliette.

People say that marketing is a conversation, and that blogging is a cornerstone of the whole social media, Web 2.0, thing.  It’s a means of attracting an audience, talking about things that matter to them, and engaging them in a conversation that will eventually lead them to your door as a client.

We say that lawyers who blog need to create compelling, original content in a unique voice in order to engage people.  We caution against being boring, and we encourage lawyers to give out real information as a form of content marketing.

In so doing, we neglect to remind the lawyer who blogs as a form of legal marketing that they might want to get the entire staff in on the action.  And to give you a push in the right direction, here are (drum roll, please) …

6 Reasons Why The Entire Law Firm Should Be In On Your Legal Blogging Efforts

1. The non-lawyers are on the front lines and often have terrific insights on what’s important to clients and prospective clients.
2. Getting the non-lawyers involved in the law firm blogging efforts will remind them that they are part of something larger than just their job.  They’re an active member of a law firm that does good work and helps people get through a difficult time in their lives.  And in realizing that they are an active participant in the firm, they are more likely to be an active participant in the solution – the service of the client.
3. People love to see their names in print.  When the non-lawyers are given the opportunity to have articles published on your law firm blog they’re likely to send out links to their friends on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.  This will increase the chances of blog posts going viral and reaching a wider audience.
4. When you increase the number of bloggers, you increase the diversity of voices on the site.  This will allow prospective clients to get to know the other people in your office, and to develop confidence in their abilities and ability to help.  When this happens, you’ll experience far fewer incidences of clients refusing to speak with anyone except you.
5. Being the only blogger can get … lonely sometimes.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a blogging buddy (or a few of them) in the office with you?
6. Sometimes the lawyers just run out of time to blog.  When you add more people to the efforts, it’s easier to pump out a steady stream of content.

Will you need to formulate a firm-wide blogging policy of sorts?  Sure, you’ll need to put together some guidelines to make sure nobody goes off half-baked when they’re blogging.  And you’ll have to remind everyone of their duties of confidentiality and dangers of the unauthorized practice of law.  But once the administrative minutiae is over and out of the way, it’s clear sailing.

Do you let your non-lawyer staffers blog for the firm?  Why or why not?  Make your voice heard by putting your comment below.

Photo courtesy of UrvishJ.

People talk about the need for great content on your legal blog, and I agree completely. But once you get over the hump of, “What the *&^&*&^ do I talk about?” you’ve still got a huge hurdle to overcome – your voice.

It’s one thing to have something to say. It’s a whole other ball of wax to be able to say it in a way that’s interesting and compelling for your readers and potential clients. Because if you’re not interesting, the content won’t get read no matter how good it is.

Take, for example, a consumer bankruptcy lawyer. He’s looking to reach out to people who are in financial trouble so that he can educate them about their rights. His client’s tend to be consumers (as opposed to businesses) and, though sophisticated, they aren’t lawyers or academics.

Convinced by the blogpunditry (I’m using my word again – has it caught on yet? No?) that he needs to hop on the blogging bandwagon, our friend the lawyer hits on an issue that surely will interest his potential clients. That issue is whether the bankruptcy trustee will interfere in the right to sue someone for personal injury damages.

So off our friend goes to write an article that he titles, “Choses Of Action In Bankruptcy Court – Assignments To The Estate.” And guess what? The article gets no major traction, his readers flee screaming, and even the lawyers in his community are left wondering what the heck he’s talking about.

Now let’s change the story just a bit. Our friend writes an article that is titled, “The Effect Of Filing For Bankruptcy On Your Right To Sue For Personal Injuries.” Eureka! People who are interested in the topic read it (because they can understand what our friend is talking about). If the rest of the article is valuable, maybe they save it or pass it along. People hire our bankruptcy lawyer buddy because he clearly understands what he’s talking about.

Why? Because in the second illustration, he’s got congruence.

Congruence is a simple concept.  It pertains to a state of rapport, of consistency.  In psychology congruence is perceived by others as sincerity, which yields increased trust.  But in the context of blogging, that rapport is established by writing the same way your prospective clients talk in their heads.

I’m not talking about being grammatically correct. I’m not talking about using proper punctuation. Heck, I’m not even talking about using real worlds (notice my uncanny ability to insert the word, “blogpunditry” here?). Rather, it’s important to find a tone that engages the reader.

Rather than go into lawyer-mode when you write, take some time first to listen to the way your clients talk.  Not the gist of what they’re saying, but the actual words and phrases.  How they structure their sentences, their thoughts and their ideas.  Once you’ve done this for a short time (it could be as little as a single day) you can start to write.

When writing a blog post, pretend that you’re writing a personal letter to one of your clients.  You can even put “Dear John,” in the draft version if that helps your imagination.  By writing to an individual client, one who you know already, you can more easily establish congruence and find a voice to which that client can relate.

Is it easy?  Not at first.  You’re so used to writing like a lawyer that it’s difficult to break free and regain your humanity.  But I promise that once you’ve been at it for a little while it gets easier.

So what’s your tactic for getting people to read, stick around and come back to your law blog? Share in the comments section below!

Photo courtesy of yugenro.

Blogging is the biggest movement in online legal marketing since the first lawyer put up the first online storefront way back in the day.  And we’ve all been sold on the notion that blogging is, in and of itself, a terrific marketing tool.  Blog blog blog, the blogpunditry says (I just made up that word – maybe it will stick).  But the lawyers who are out there, plugging away at it, often fail to see results from their efforts.

Why?  Simple.

Blogging is terrific legal marketing – but it’s not so good at finishing the job.

Allow me to explain my point before you start throwing rotten fruit at me.  Marketing is the way we inform our prospective clients about solutions to their problems.  It includes persuading people that we’re the right people to solve those problems.

What marketing is not, however, is a means for getting them off their (ahem) to take the action we want them to take – pick up the phone, send an email, whatever.  And that is exactly what blogging does not do – it doesn’t move people.

Wait wait, you say, that isn’t right at all.  Blogging informs people that you can help.  From there, they naturally call or click.

Wrong-o, my friend.  There is no natural progression of any sort.  In fact, here’s a cardinal rule of marketing (and you may not like this, but it’s true):

If you don’t tell someone what to do, they will do nothing whatsoever.

Don’t believe me?  Go into a store or look online at any retailer.  You see stuff for sale, and right next to the pretty picture is this nifty graphic that tells you to order the darn thing.  If that button wasn’t there, people wouldn’t order.  They’d look around, learn all about the items, and then move on.

This is not rocket science, but apparently it’s something the legal community fails to grasp.  I think it goes back to the sense of entitlement that’s instilled into us when we pass the bar.  It’s that belief of, I’m a lawyer.  If I show people how much I know, they’ll gravitate to me.  And though that might be true in the long-run, you’re leaving it all to chance unless you take the step of telling someone what you want them to do.

Here are some ideas to help get you started):

1. Put a contact form on the upper-left hand corner of your blog, right below the header.  Eye-tracking studies show that people look to that area as informational in nature rather than ad-related, which is why you should put it on the left side rather than the right side.  Also, by putting it “above the fold,” you’re not forcing people to scroll on your site to figure out what to do.
2. Put your contact information in the header itself – phone, address, email, etc.  This makes it easy for people to find you.
3. Add a page to your blog and title it something along the lines of, “Work With Me,” or, “Become My Client.”  Giving the reader somewhere to look for those next steps is a great way to move them from Point A to Point B.
4. At the end of each blog post, tell the reader what you’d like them to do next.  Maybe you want more subscribers to your RSS feed, or people to sign up for your mailing list.  Whatever it is, be clear.

These aren’t the only ideas, but you can (hopefully) see ways in which your law firm blog can become a more effective legal marketing tool.

Share your ideas in the comments section!

Photo courtesy of billolen.