Legal Practice Pro» content marketing

4 Easy Steps To Syndicating Content On JDSupra

Jay Fleischman — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:57:20 +0000

Online legal marketing involves content creation andcontent distribution; doing so enables us to showcase our knowledge and establish trust with our prospective clients.

One of the best content distribution sites for lawyers is JDSupra, run by a team of awesome and smart people who want nothing more than to give you the widest possible exposure for your content. JDSupra is not only highly-trafficked and well-indexed, but the service provides a number of feature-rich Facebook pages and widgets to pump content out far more effectively than would otherwise be possible.

In the interests of full disclosure, I had the chance to meet with the JDSupra team while in California last month for the annual National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys convention. Aviva Cuyler bought me a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke while I was hanging around with Adrian Lurssen (I think she was worried I’d pass out from hunger because I’d been talking with Adrian for so long). That might be something warranting FTC disclosure, though I did offer to pay her for lunch.

In fact, this graph from compete.com shows that JDSupra has grown by 226% in the past 12 months alone. Pretty impressive, no?

But using JDSupra as a distribution mechanism is still new to lots of lawyers, so I thought I’d share how I use it as part of my online legal marketing efforts.

4 steps, that’s all it takes. Ready? OK, here we go (and by the way – if you click the pictures they will open up full-size so you don’t have to squint):

Step One: Choose “Post A Document”

Step Two: Choose “Legal Article/Newsletter,” upload the PDF document, add the title of the document (which should be the title of the blog post), and add the “Document Date” (which will be the date on which you are uploading the content.

Step Three: Scroll down and choose your category. My stuff is usually related to either bankruptcy or legal marketing, so those are my go-to categories. Then, for document summary, enter the first 1,000 characters of the content.

Step Four: Click “Continue,” then “Submit.” (or “Submit & Post Another Doc” as the case may be).

That entire process should take you about 3 minutes. Greater distribution for your content marketing, better results from your online legal marketing efforts, and the basic level of service is entirely free.

So are you using JDSupra?

6 Reasons To Syndicate Your Legal Marketing Content

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:17:23 +0000

Legal marketing is only as effective as the audience it reaches. Our goal is to educate as many people as possible with our content – why shouldn’t we leverage the tools available to us?

There’s an old cartoon about a guy who finds a frog in a box. The frog can sing and dance, top hat and all. Elated, the guy begins taking the frog around to theatrical producers in an effort to get the little green guy to put on a show.

Each time, Michigan J. Frog would utter a lone ribbit and nothing more. Seems as if he wasn’t so into the public spectacle, and preferred to perform in private.

Of course, we all know the end of the episode. The guy realizes that his buddy isn’t going to be the ticket to wealth and throws him and the suitcase he came in into the time capsule for a skyscraper. Froggy is found in 2056 and repeats the story.

The frog was valuable only if someone else knew about him. But without widespread knowledge of his abilities, he was … just a frog.

So, too, your legal marketing must be promoted and syndicated across multiple channels in order for your content to be more widely seen. Here are 6 reasons to syndicate your legal marketing content in order to maximize your results:

Not everyone is everywhere. Some people with an interest in your services are on Twitter. Others, Facebook. A few are on LinkedIn but nowhere else. Your content, by reaching those people allows you to gain the attention of a far wider potential audience.
Your blog is puny. Even the most robust legal blogs and websites are far smaller than the firepower represented by site such as JDSupra, Ezinearticles, HubPages and other content-sharing sites. With tens of millions of users, these sites have more PageRank, more SEO value and greater weight in the search engine algorithms than your presence.
Different platforms have different personalities. When people visit Facebook they’re in a certain mindset. So, too, with LinkedIn and Twitter and Martindale-Hubbell Connected and one and on. Allowing people to consume your content when and where they are willing to do so is a critical part of your legal marketing.
Suck with a straw. Your content is the driving force in your online legal marketing efforts. When a prospective client reads it, they are exposed to your expertise and your point of view. From there, they follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to your hub – your site or your blog. This lets you begin the relationship and continue the process of education and trust-building. It’s pure inbound marketing nirvana.
Create once, not repeatedly. You’ve taken a significant amount of time to produce remarkable content. You can either duplicate your legal marketing efforts by saying the same things in a million different ways in a bunch of different places, or you can create content once and send it out to the world. Which is a better use of your time and resources?
Charlie Brown couldn’t kick the football. Peanuts was an awesome comic strip – my dad had a bunch of books as a kid, and every Halloween I (half) jokingly wait for The Great Pumpkin. Syndication of the comic strip by United Feature Syndicate was what made those books and television specials possible. If it hadn’t been for syndication, nobody outside of St. Paul, MN would have known about the little kid who couldn’t kick the football.

Your legal marketing efforts take time, and content is precious – your words, your point of view, and your thoughts require effort to be crystalized. Why wouldn’t you want to spread your message as widely as possible?

Law Firm Marketing With Content – Counterintuitive, Or Money Maker?

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:57:09 +0000

Marketing a law firm is time-consuming, costly, and rife with risk. What if your headline sucks? What if someone’s offended by the photo you chose for your snazzy (and super-expensive) display ad? Will it make money or lose money? You’re marketing a law firm to bring in business, after all – and if the new clients don’t show up, you’re out of luck. And potentially out of your home.

Marketing Your Law Firm With Content Is Counterintuitive

You went to law school for three years, spent ages digging out of student loan debt, and now are struggling like hell to make enough to keep your law firm profitable. Some months are flush, some are lean. Heck, these days a lot of lawyers are contemplating their own bankruptcy filings. Including bankruptcy lawyers, mind you. Your law firm marketing efforts need to reliably pay out every month.

So you read about this concept of content marketing, which essentially tells you to market your law firm by giving away your expertise.

The companies that were selling you on beautiful law firm websites last year are now pushing blogs as the best thing to happen to law firm marketing. They aren’t telling you how to blog or what to blog about, but they’re pushing this blogging thing like drug dealers outside the playground. It’s the bee’s knees, they claim. Use a blog for your law firm marketing efforts and the world is at your feet. Empires crumble, the little lawyer wins the day with the power of a law firm blog.

Maybe you “get” it, maybe not. But the bottom line is that everyone is telling you to give away your hard-earned knowledge day after day, month after month. For free.

What they don’t tell you is how you’re going to earn a living off all giving away this free stuff.

Let’s Play A Content Marketing Game

Pretend for a moment that you have a multi-million dollar business. Not a law firm. You make widgets of some sort, highly technical widgets. And each one costs about $200 to the consumer.

You are required to hand-make each one of these widgets when a customer wants one. Making a widget takes about an hour, plus you’ve got to keep a huge overhead of widget-making parts on hand. Those parts go bad pretty fast, too. In fact, if you don’t use it in a short period of time it rots and you’ve got to toss it. So you’ve got to make a lot of these things, and quickly.

Top it all off with the fact that you have to hire a bunch of people to help sell and deliver these doo-hickeys. Those folks like to get paid on a regular basis, so you need to keep them working for paying customers.

Oh, and did I mention the profit margins are stupidly thin?

Now Here Comes The Bad Business Promotion Strategy

You know you need a truly great marketing strategy. Instead, you enter the universe of stupidity.

You spend a year or more writing a $29.95 book detailing exactly how you create your product. You get so specific it becomes readily apparent to you that anyone could do exactly what you do. The metal pieces, the clips, the entire production process is so breathtakingly simple you could do a how-to on cable television and everyone could create it.

What a terrifically preposterous idea. Give away the entire process, show people exactly how to do it, and make absolutely zero dollars from the customer!

In fact, the customer can now sit at home and make your thingies in the comfort of their own home. And it costs less than going to your place to have you do it.

This, my friend, is exactly what I mean by marketing your law firm with content.

Give away the entire store for free.

Not As Stupid As It Sounds

The social media intelligentsia will tell you that by putting content out there and making it free, you become invested with social capital. People look to you are the de facto expert, and they’ll flock to your law firm when they need your help. What they don’t explain is why anyone with half a brain would hire you once you tell them everything you know. They merely assure you it’s the case.

Luckily for you, I’m not so smart. I don’t follow the rules that someone else sets, and I don’t expect you to, either.

I want to prove to you that content marketing works.

Last week I had the privilege of having dinner at Bottega, a restaurant in Napa Valley. My wife and I had been a fan of the chef, Michael Chiarello, for years. We had his books, had watched his television shows, and had organized our entire trip around this meal.

I won’t bore you with the details, but it was the best meal we’d had in years. The chef came around to the tables and met the patrons (he folded my napkin for me), the ambiance was outstanding, and our service was perfect thanks to Murph, the seasoned server who made it all seem effortless.

How Does A Celebrity Chef Prove Content Marketing Works?

Chiarello has been showing me exactly how to cook his recipes for years. I can follow every step in his cookbooks, mimic every technique he shows on television, and even swirl a glass of pinot noir the same way he does before taking a sip. In spite of that, I planned an entire trip around a reservation at Bottega.

Why? Because through his content marketing approach he’s established himself as the go-to guy for rustic Italian cooking. His personality comes through, and has made me like him. He puts himself out there, which makes me trust him.

In other words, he’s let his content speak for itself. He’s shown me that he knows what he’s doing time and time again.

To be sure, he’s made money along the way. I’ve spent about $40 on his books over the years, and I’m sure he gets a decent salary from the television networks that air his shows. Those dollars don’t come directly from my pocket, though, so I can’t count them.

None of that matters, at not much. What does matter is that he’s poured literally everything into my brain over a number of years.

And when the time came for me to buy, I didn’t go across the street to French Laundry or down the road to some other famous place. I pulled out the credit card and went to Bottega. I also had the chance to buy his cookbooks again, visit his store across the street, and pick up some of his family-made wine.

Just Because You Can Does Not Mean You Will

I can buy Michael Chiarello’s cookbooks, but when I want a masterful meal I’m going to the restaurant.

I can buy every Home Depot DIY book out there, but when I need to install a bathtub I’m calling a contractor.

I can read the tax code but when I need to get the taxes done for my business I’m calling my CPA.

Maybe some of your potential clients will try to use your law firm content marketing efforts to do some of the legwork, and that’s fine. But when push comes to shove and the big deal issues present themselves, the clients are going to call you.

Because what you do is not merely technical, it’s infused with years of experience. Knowledge of your judges and trustees doesn’t translate effectively into content. You can’t replicate finesse and analysis of difficult scenarios.

And that’s why you can market your law firm with content and never have to worry about going hungry. Ask a chef.

Online Legal Marketing – 11 Reasons Why Content Is King

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:07:54 +0000

Online legal marketing efforts typically consist of a thin website or a blog that collects dust. You’re all fired up about “getting online,” that you forget one critical point – if you’re using your website as a brochure filled with platitudes and hollow verbiage then why would someone ever consider hiring you?

Answer – they wouldn’t.

Consider the text of this website, created by an excellent law firm with high hopes for a killer online legal marketing effort:

is a full-service bankruptcy law firm providing legal assistance to individuals and families in . As a Board Certified Bankruptcy Attorney, has the legal knowledge, experience and resources to help you, just as he and his legal team have helped thousands of clients.

Your may now proceed to enter your name and location in that paragraph. Once you’ve done that, substitute the name of your closest competitor.

Can you tell the difference? I didn’t think so.

It’s boring and doesn’t provide any useful information. Online legal marketing at the lowest possible level, indeed.

The rest of this lawyer’s site is filled with similarly empty-sounding paragraphs, providing zero substance and consisting of the online legal marketing equivalent of a brochure.

There’s no meat on those bones. Nothing’s there but something for the dog to gnaw on.

Online legal marketing, if it’s going to be effective, must be formed around a content-based strategy. That’s anathema to most lawyers because there’s still that annoying voice in their head that says:

If you give prospective clients a ton of information for free, why would they pay you for it?

It’s a point I used to brush off, dismissing the concerns as those of dinosaurs who refused to embrace the “new rules”of online legal marketing as it progressed from a one-dimensional brochureware approach to an interactive and content-based strategy. But as with the stock market and the world of business, the old rules are exactly the same as the new ones. The only difference is that the new rules wear more stylish clothing.

My law practice has engaged in online legal marketing using a content strategy for 5 years, and it’s paid off in myriad ways: people come to me with more information under their belt, a sense of confidence in my abilities and, to a large extent, a level of preparation I’d never seen before I started marketing my law firm with content.

More to the point, they’re pre-sold on my services – I don’t need to quibble over legal fees or convince them that I’m the right choice. They’ve already gotten to the point where they have made the decision on their own, which is far more effective than trying to sell them.

This isn’t a “new rule” of marketing your law firm. None of this stuff is particularly new, in fact. It’s easier to get a client when you’ve had the opportunity to educate and convince that person about the need for, and value of, your services.

Online legal marketing strategies consist of nothing more than a using a new platform. The Internet enables you to get it done more effectively and on a larger scale than pressing the flesh or direct mail. All we’re doing here is using a new delivery mechanism for reaching out and educating people.

Here are my top 11 reasons why online legal marketing efforts must be centered around the creation of real content instead of marketing fluff:

Content informs people about the basics before they pick up the phone to call you for an initial meeting;
Your online legal marketing efforts need to be designed to prove that your law firm is well-educated in solving client needs, and can communicate those solutions effectively;
When you show how much you know, you don’t need to tell your prospective clients about your competence – the proof is in the pudding;
Informative content gets passed along from one person to the next, providing exposure to more people than would otherwise be possible using other marketing techniques;
When your law firm creates useful content – not fluff – it helps you learn more about it even if you’ve been practicing law for years;
Valuable content allows your online legal marketing efforts to weed out those people who do not need your help – someone reads your stuff, they realize the solution you offer isn’t for them, and they move on without wasting your time or theirs;
Providing information as the basis of your marketing efforts gives people the ability to do some of the “grunt work” that you’d like them to do before meeting with you. Stuff like writing a letter to a debt collector to stop contacting them, initiating an effective credit reporting reinvestigation request, or putting together all of the documents they’ll need to start a bankruptcy case. Why would you not want them to do this legwork before coming to you in the first place?
While you’re marketing your law firm by providing valuable information, others are marketing with the bland and forgettable 30 second TV spot (and people are skipping it to hit the bathroom or grab a snack);
Creating a blog post, article or other form of content takes time but no money;
You can re-purpose your content by taking blog posts and turning them into an ebook or informational package to provide to clients, so you can create it once and spin it out to use over and over again;
More content marketing = more search engine saturation = higher placement on the search engines = more traffic to your website or blog = more clients = more money.

So here’s my question for you: if you’re not using a content market strategy, why not? What’s getting in your way? And how can we break down those roadblocks to make you more successful?

Photo courtesy of badgerxx.

Are You A Grain Of Sand?

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:25:09 +0000

Marketing your law firm online means one thing to every attorney I know – get to the top of the search engines, ideally in the organic (unpaid) part of the index. Being in first place means getting the lion’s share of search traffic for your keywords of choice, guaranteeing you dominance in your online legal marketing efforts.

But the reality is that there are tens of millions of web pages that are competing for that top position. Other lawyers, self-help guides, legal directories and the like are all clamoring for that same brass ring.

That’s where the big-money companies come in to help you in the onerous and arcane task of marketing your law firm. Large and small firms that promise to get you on page one of the Google search engine results page for any term you choose. I’m pretty sure we’ll see a bunch of them at the NACBA convention in San Francisco at the end of April, and every other legal conference will find the same story played out over and over again.

Promises with money, that’s what they are. Give us a lot of money and we’ll get you where you want to be. We’ll do everything when it comes to marketing your law firm online. Link-building, on-site optimization, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead – it’s all a variation on a theme.

Don’t worry about actually (gasp) putting relevant and useful information on your site. All we need you to do is write us a fat check and we’ll do all the marketing your law firm needs.

They play on your fears, and on your lack of information. You’re sucked in by the promises that “all it takes is a single new client to pay for this.”

Sounds like the old Yellow Pages sales script, doesn’t it?

But the reality is this – you’re a grain of sand in the Sahara. Someone finds you more by luck than anything else.

And even worse, there is more sand coming into the desert every minute. More websites pop up, more blogs, more directories. Content is everywhere, and it continues to pile up on top of your site.

You can paint yourself a different color, make a prettier website, and pay all the money you want. Sorry to bear the bad news, but it isn’t going to save you.

Don’t have time to add content to your blog?

Don’t know what to write about?

Think it’s a waste of time?

Consider this:

if you blog, you’re going to get 67% more leads from your online legal marketing efforts;
having more pages of your website indexed leads to more traffic and, ultimately, more leads from your site to your firm;
more leads means more clients;
more clients means more revenue;
more revenue means … well, a more rewarding life overall.

Most of the bankruptcy lawyers I know have flimsy websites with fewer than 20-30 pages of content. Most of that content is stale, outdated and, quite frankly, not incredibly interesting. Routine discussions of Chapter 7, Chapter 13, and the like – none of them saying anything in a way that particularly engages their prospective clients.

Just look at the search result at the top of this post – 2,880,000 results returned for a search of “bankruptcy lawyers.” That’s a lot of sand.

So I urge you to consider this – what steps will you take to formulate a content marketing strategy that multiplies those grains of sand and helps you get noticed?

Guest Posting – The Dark Side

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:00:32 +0000

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 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 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.

Photo courtesy of chick pea pie.

Blogging For Your Law Firm? There Is No Middle Ground.

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:44 +0000

Marketing your law firm with a blog is a romantic notion in a certain sense.

Law firm marketing folks – heck, all marketing folks – extol the virtues of blogging. Create a law firm blog and your business will soar, setting you apart from the competition and bringing you accolades of all sorts. Your law firm marketing efforts should center around a blog, they say.

Actually, that’s not true. Creating a law firm blog as part of your marketing efforts will set you apart from the competition, but maybe not in a good way.

Blogging is a content marketing mechanism that’s designed to provide useful information and show your stuff. By creating a law firm blog you build trust your prospective clients and the public, enhancing your reputation. It’s also terrific for search engine optimization, which exposes your words and thoughts to a wider audience and increases the reach of your message.

But unless you’re adding content on a regular basis, you’re not going to look so terrific to people to visit your law firm blog.

I’m not telling you to create content every day because I know it’s not realistic for lawyers to take that kind of time. But would it kill you to put down something on your law firm blog once a week, something valuable and helpful?

There’s a lawyer in my area who, in a fit of “I want to market my law firm,” went out and hired a designer to do two new sites for his bankruptcy law firm. The sites are beautiful, and very easily navigable. And they both have blogs.

OK, I can see someone creating more than one law firm blog – in fact, I have more than one. The problem is that both of the blogs cover exactly the same topic, with the only difference that one site allegedly covers New York City and the other covers Long Island (a distance of under 60 miles).

Since he launched these beautiful sites over six months ago, he’s suffered from a bit of over extension.

On one blog he’s done 10 posts since September 2009, which is respectable.

On the second blog he’s done 2 posts since September 2009. And one of them is a duplicate of a post on the first site.

A failure of consistency tells a visitor that you’re not serious. And if you’re not serious about this aspect of your marketing, how reliable are you as a service provider? Your law firm blog signals a commitment to provide information and share knowledge; your lack of consistency signals a failure to live up to that commitment.

In addition, failing to consistently publish content onto your legal blog will lower your site traffic. If there’s a blog I like, I’m going to visit it more frequently (as much as I love it, I recognize that RSS readers never really caught on with the masses). Once I show up a few times and see nothing new, I’m not visiting anymore. It’s like when I turn on the television every week to catch Big Bang Theory (which you should watch), I expect to see Sheldon in a new episode. If all I get is repeats for a few weeks I’m going to find something else to do on Mondays nights.

So, too, with your legal blogging activities. If you’re going to do it, understand that you’re in this for the long haul. If you’re in that’s cool. And if not, you need to go find some other way to market your law firm.

7 Simple Steps To Getting Started With A Law Firm Blog

Jay Fleischman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:00:41 +0000

You’re convinced that you need to incorporate blogging into your law firm marketing efforts. But there’s a problem: you have no idea where to start. If only there were a roadmap to help you get on your way.

Well, there is now. And here it is:

Buy A Domain Name: I am partial to purchasing your name as a domain name (i.e., johnsmith.com) or some variation on a theme. By locking up your name and using it as your home base, you establish yourself as a brand and can use the platform as you see fit. If you put all your eggs into a geo-targeted domain (www.MyTownBankruptcyLawyer.com or something like that) you run the risk of losing your identity if you ever move or change practice areas. Whatever your choice, just make it – every day, more “good” domain names are snapped off the market. Check out www.GoDaddy.com to buy your domain names.
Set Up Hosting: I used to host my sites at GoDaddy until I realized just how slow their servers are. That, and someone alerted me to the fact that if you keep your eggs all in one basket then your risk is higher. By splitting up the domain registration and the hosting you are protected in case the host yanks your site for any reason – all you need to do is open a new hosting account and keep the domain name intact. My host of choice is www.HostGator.com. Fast servers, excellent pricing, fantastic customer service.
Install WordPress: I’m talking about www.WordPress.org, not the hosted version at www.WordPress.com. Many hosting companies, including HostGator, will install WordPress using a one-click installation that takes about 2 minutes and requires no technical skill whatsoever.
Write Your “About” Page: This is one of the most important pages on your blog because it tells visitors who you are and why they should listen to what you have to say. Without a strong “About” page, your visitors may not get a full vision of your reason for blogging.
Create Your Categories: Most bloggers recommend keeping the category list to 5-6 at most. Categories are the “big picture” topics that you’re going to cover on your blog, and you should choose them wisely.
Start Writing: Having a content marketing strategy is important to ensure long-term blogging success, no doubt about it. But if you spend weeks on formulating a strategy before your blog gets off the ground then you’ll likely never get it off the ground at all. For the first few posts, get your feet wet by simply writing – without any regard for keywords, search engine optimization, or anything like that. Write as if you’re talking with a client, answering a question in your office. Once you get comfortable you’ll be better able to map out where you want the blog to go, and the topics you’d like to discuss on a going-forward basis.
Have Fun: Blogging is a lot of work, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different. But it’s also liberating, giving you the chance to flex your creativity and provide useful information to your audience. You’ll eventually get good at it, but the only way to stay motivated is to have some fun with it. Add some pictures to your posts, put up a funny YouTube video from time to time, relay a funny story. All work and no play … well, you know the end of that one.

One final point – don’t panic! There’s nothing you can do to break the Internet, so if you screw up you can always start over with a fresh piece of electronic paper. Most successful bloggers tried at least once before they got it right, and others keep their mistakes buried in the deepest recesses of their existing blogs.