They propose four possible answers:

“Most widely read product liability blog” = “World’s tallest midget”: 25,000 pageviews is a drop in the bucket, and there’s essentially no institutional benefit to blogging. If the two of us — Beck and Herrmann, the blogging morons — want to waste our Saturday mornings feeding this beast, we should go ahead and entertain ourselves.

Power of blogosphere eludes firm management: Management is basically folks over 50 who start their days sipping a cup of coffee and reading the Journal. Only people under 40 start their days sipping a cup of coffee and checking [legal blogs].

Blogs attract the wrong eyeballs: The target market for big firms such as ours is the general counsel and C-level management of Fortune 500 companies. With all due respect to our visitors — and we love you guys; really! — you folks are younger and less important.

Where’s the money in this? It takes many hours of effort each week for the two of us to provide regular, fresh content to this site, and the amount of business generated doesn’t justify the effort. If the two of us get some personal satisfaction from blogging, no one will interfere, but firms do cost-benefit analyses of marketing initiatives, and this one flunks the test.

What do the leaders of Dechert and Jones Day have to say about the commentary? We’ve reached out to both firms and will let you know if we hear back.

Ok, LB readers, are firms missing big marketing opportunities by not encouraging more lawyers to blog? Internet marketing companies would say otherwise - but are they right?

Forget the television commercials, radio ads, and other gimmicks. This is a year that law firms are focusing on their presence online. Not only will a great online presence boost the brand and image of your law firm, it can also be a great tool for generating traffic to your firm’s website, which in turn can become leads, which in turn can become clients.

Here are the top online activities law firms should do in 2008.

1. Optimize your own website.

If you don’t already have a website, you have probably heard from
someone or read somewhere what a great promotion tool a website can be for law firms. If you are considering getting a website, a great starting point is to plan what you want your website to look like and write some content pages to put on the website. Then, contact a firm about building a
professional website that your law firm can be proud of. If you have a
website, but you are not getting the traffic from it you think you could,
consult an internet marketing agency. One firm, Ephricon Web Marketing
(http://www.ephricon.com), based in Baltimore, MD offers clients search
engine optimization which includes on-page optimization, content creation
and link building as well as pay-per-click services to help online
searchers find what they are looking for easier.

2. Add new content to your website.

New content can be in the form of new pages your site may need, such as information about your firm’s practice areas or informal articles about law topics in the news or tips on a legal topic for the layperson. A quality internet marketing agency can take an article and send it to various sites that accept articles. Particularly, sites on legal topics that accept articles would be especially beneficial. The main purpose of the articles is the fresh content that they provide your site but adding a couple links in an article that is posted on other websites helps boost traffic to your website.

3. Announce news with press releases.

Most internet marketing agencies can help spread your news to
newspapers, television stations and industry sites on the web through
services like PR Newswire and Market Wire. Because of their ability to be
picked up by many sites, press releases are a fantastic way to add bursts
of traffic to your website through links that you may include in them.

4. Add photos to your website.

Pictures of the firm’s partners and other staff, a photo of the office building if it’s in a desirable location, or a photo of inside an
attractive, professional office can give visitors to your website a reason to trust you and can convey that your firm is a successful one. One Baltimore, Maryland firm, Ingerman & Horwitz LLP (http://www.ihlaw.com) has a photo of their Park Avenue office location and photos of the firm’s
principals on the homepage. These help put a face on the firm, making it
easier for website visitors to relate. Photos are especially powerful for
professional service organizations, such as law firms.

5. Send an email blast a couple times a year.

Gather a few hundred client email addresses and send a mass email.
Topics in the email newsletter could be informative information from the
articles, interesting cases worked on or new laws that may be of interest
to the public.

6. Join directories that will link to your website.

Both directories that you must be paid to be listed in and directories that are free give links to websites along with a one or two sentence description. Local-Attorneys.com is a directory specifically for law firms that list lawyers by region and specialty. For example, search under tax and Maryland and you will find law firms like Fried & Rosefelt, P.A. (http://www.frtaxlaw.com), who focus primarily on tax-related legal issues.

Another worthwhile pursuit is to try to get listed on sites that are
specific to your practice area. In the tax law space, for example, exists a notable website for tax problem resolution specialists — the website for the American Society of Tax Problem Solvers at http://www.astps.org. Steven N. Klitzner, P.A. of Florida Tax Solvers (http://www.floridataxsolvers.com)
is listed on this site, which can provide quality, relevant traffic. A
handful of directories are also profile sites, which are basically the same as directories but allow you to expand upon your description, instead of a couple sentences, usually a couple of paragraphs.

If you want to improve the amount of leads your firm receives, consider the online activities above. Though offline marketing activities like print brochures can also see much value, focusing attention online is very useful because your clients come to you, searching on what they need and then
finding your site. Doing it right means you can spend less time on
marketing and more time practicing law.

Local-Attorneys.com is a law firm directory that sorts attorneys by
practice area and region. For example, someone who visits the site having
been involved in an auto accident will click on auto accident and the state where they are looking for an attorney. With over 1,000 law firms listed so far, Local-Attorneys.com continues to grow. For more information on getting your firm listed, visit http://www.local-attorneys.com. Local-Attorneys.com
is owned by Net Focus Media. Visit http://www.netfocusmedia.com/lawfirms/
for more info.

On LexBlog, Kevin O’Keefe points to a study by my alma mater, Northeastern University, on “What Makes a Successful Corporate Blog?“

The study identified five factors as important to the success of a blog:

1. Culture- If you’ve got culture traits that are interesting to people (think Google) or if you’ve got culture problems (think Dell or Microsoft), showing what your company’s culture is really like is a great reason to blog. With the Google scenario, you’re giving customers a glimpse into a fascinating company, and giving behind-the-scenes info on a universally loved brand. On the other hand, when you’re dealing with consumer distrust or bad PR, blogging (if done correctly) can help repair a tainted reputation.
2. Transparency- Blog readers want to read authors they can trust. They don’t want to read blog posts by a company that is trying to take a thinly veiled approach at hawking their products. It really is a balancing act. Sure, your company’s blog can help sell products/services. But at the same time, you don’t want to seem like like you’ve got too much of an agenda.
3. Time- It takes time and research to write a worthwhile blog.
4. Dialogue- You’ve got to talk with your audience. You’ve read the cliche “Blogs are a conversation.” Well, they are. And successful blogs are conversations between the audience and the writer(s).
5. Entertaining writing- When the blogger brings a unique style to the blog, it makes the blog so much more interesting.

How does this relate to law firm blogging?

Culture- I don’t see how law firms would offer a glimpse inside their inner workings on a blog. Unlike Google or Microsoft, law firms aren’t trying to persuade the masses  to use their products. A law firm’s target is much more narrow in scope, and would not likely benefit from showing how business is conducted (not to mention issues of confidentiality).

Transparency- Law firm bloggers have seemed to do a great job with transparency. Rather than having huge, blinking ads saying “BE A CLIENT!!!!!! WE’RE THE LAW FIRM FOR YOU!!!!!!!”, attorney blogs are best when they establish the author as an expert on an issue. And since that expertise is essentially the service clients are purchasing, there is more benefit in the content and the writing than advertising the firm. Am I saying attorney bloggers should get rid of any mention of their firms, or get rid of links and contact information for their firms? Absolutely NOT. That’s the point. But the idea is to gain trust, then gain the clients.

Time- This is a big issue with law firm bloggers. When the time you spend writing can be so easily calculated into opportunity cost figures, the question of “is it worth it?” will always come up.

Dialogue- For the most part, law firm blogs are good at encouraging conversation. When the attorney is an expert on an issue, they’re likely to embrace discussion.

Entertaining Writing- Without style, reading a law firm blog, regardless of the expertise of the author, can be, well, boring. But when you have a writer that can make a sterile subject seem interesting, you’ve got something.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something for legal bloggers (and with a name like LawFirmBlogging, I probably should post on-topic articles from time to time), so today I’d like to share a new site with you.

Zippy.co.uk is a technorati-like search engine for blogs, but it has a LOT of information. Type in the URL of your blog, and you’ll get the following information:

• Internal Links
• External Links
• External/Internal Link Ratio
• Total 2 Word Phrases
• Total 3 Word Phrases
• Total 4 Word Phrases
• Textual Content
• Alexa Ranking
• Google PageRank
• Google Backlinks
• Number of Indexed Pages in Google
• Yahoo Backlinks
• MSN Backlinks

Aside from providing a way to centralize data from the different search engines, the 2, 3, and 4 word phrase count is especially useful. Since most people only enter 2-4 words in their search engine queries, knowing your keyword density is very important. Clicking on the Total 2,3 and 4 word phrases reports will give you a rundown of your frequently occurring keywords, with both a count and the keyword density.

If you’re looking for a quick, dashboard-like application that gives a very good overview of how your blog is performing, it’s worth doing a quick search with Zippy.co.uk

Godin Nod- Involuntary head movement that denotes a moment of clarity as a direct result of reading anything by Seth Godin.

His latest post is entitled “Nobody Knows Anything“, and in it, he really breaks down the idea of marketing to the most basic level. And it could be a little scary to those of us in the marketing professions!

Rather than throwing in my two cents about his idea that “There are two kinds of marketing analysis, both pretty useless”, I’m telling you: go read his post.

You need to read this.

Then I went on with my day……until I saw:

Flame: My birthday present to me

In this post, Wil Shipley just rips into Larry Bodine’s article. It’s absolutely brutal. Shipley goes through Bodine’s post line for line, adding commentary and completely bashing everything in the law.com piece.
And the result: The Shipley post is now on the first page of Digg.com. Right now there are 64 comments. Needless to say, this article is generating some buzz. And it’s not the good kind I’m afraid.

I think the lesson to be learned from this (if any) is that what we write in our blogs (and for other websites) have the potential to end up in places we’ve never expected. In this case, an article from a legal marketing consultant landed in the hands of a software programmer, who decided to repost his criticism for the whole world to see.

Law

Web sites for law firms, legal service providers, pro-bono legal services, litigation support, and self-help legal information. Sites that feature content on legal issues, trials, law and business issues, court decisions or legal advocacy.

From the email I received:

The awards, hailed by the New York Times as “the online equivalent of an Oscar”, officially launched their Call For Entries last week. Justice Learning took home the top prize at the 10^th Annual Webby Awards, while sites from Court TV, Jurist, and FindLaw were among the nominees.

If your firm has a site that you think is Webby-worthy, I would definitely encourage you to enter. While designing your firm’s site with an award in mind is an absolutely awful idea (you’re trying to get clients and make money….not have a pretty site), the converse is also true: If you’ve got a great site that is really working well for you, maybe you deserve an award!

And as any law firm knows, a little bit of nationwide good publicity never hurts.

When I’m reading, I have to admit that I’m not consciously looking for parallels to legal marketing. Thank God. What a tortured existence that would be! But after processing the text, I started thinking about the “New Necessity” as something that, in our modern capitalist society, businesses and entrepreneurs are constantly striving to find.

An invention, a piece of software, a new gadget: all good enough. But if you really want to make a splash, you have to bring something to market that everyone “must have.” Now, I’m not going to debate the definition of “must have” here. Surely, as a species, we don’t need iPods. In fact, I don’t have one and I’m able to function just the same.

Getting out of the realm of physical products, there are several new necessities in legal marketing that have developed over the years.

1) The Logo- As competition among law firms increased, firms realized that a visual representation- something that triggered thoughts, feelings, and remembrance of a firm could be beneficial. Though the results and efficacy of law firm logos are often debated, that is beside the point. A logo is just something a firm has to have.

2) The Web Site- Like smashing at stones in a cave, the early WWW was seen as an academic exercise. But when the broader business community saw the web as an opportunity to promote products and services, competitors had to follow suit. If the firm down the block has a web site, you better have one too. The law firm web site became a new necessity.

One thing that can be said of the new necessity is that it is a game of innovation followed by assimilation. The new necessity has a life cycle.

1. Someone does something completely different and stands out.

2. People notice that the new thing has a potential to be beneficial.

3. Some jump on the bandwagon, others see this new thing as just a fad.

4. The people that resisted the new give in and join the rest.

5. The “new” isn’t new anymore. It’s a given. Now no one stands out.

So what will the next new necessity be? Will it be blogs? I don’t think it will be. Because right now, the quality and frequency of blog posts have a direct relationship with the blog’s success. In other words, it takes effort. So those people in law firms that say “Blogs aren’t worth our time” won’t be the people that finally give in and say “Fine, everyone has one. Guess we should too.”

With blogs, you can’t just phone it in. Just having one doesn’t put your firm on par with the early innovators.

So, what’s the new necessity in legal marketing going to look like?

But are any of these new services useful to the attorney or blawgger?

The answer, in a word: sure.

But the problem, to me at least, is finding the time to try these new services out. There are just so many of them! So, in this post, I’d like to highlight a few 2.0-ish services that may be useful to this blog’s readers. If you’ve got others, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

RSS:

Bloglines. I’ve been using bloglines as my RSS reader since the day I’ve heard about it. You sign up for an account, add your favorite RSS feed addresses, and you’re done. Exactly what a “Web 2.0″ service should do: simplify the complicated and be reliable.

Project Management:

Basecamp. This is a great “project collaboration” tool that allows you to assign “to dos”, post messages, schedule meetings, share files and track time.

Business Networking:

LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is basically an online rolodex of connections. I can’t say I’ve used it much, but I do like the idea.

Connecting With Entrepreneurs:

BuildV1. Still in its infancy, BuildV1 is an interesting idea: Entrpreneurs ask for help from advisors, service providers, etc through the web.

Blog Traffic:

Technorati.  I have a love-hate relationship with Technorati. Sure, it can be very slow. Sometimes it takes days for a post to be indexed. But either way, technorati sends readers to blogs. If you’ve got a blog, you will want to set up a technorati account and add their small piece of javascript code. Your posts will be indexed in technorati, you’ll get traffic, and you’ll be able to see other blogs that link to you.

Blog Message Board:

BlogString- This is a very shameless plug. BlogString.com is something I’ve been working on for some time now, but it’s going to be at least four more months before the “service” is launched.

Until then, I’ve put up a message board with one simple premise: I haven’t seen a forum dedicated to blogging issues. So if you’ve got a blog and can’t get something working, want advice on anything blogging related, or just want to meet fellow bloggers, the BlogString board is the place for you. Again, this is VERY new. If you’re interested, sign up for an account here.

So, I think I’ve got the answer.

This morning, I created an award. I’ll give it out each year, and the selection process is absolutely a no-brainer. There are just two qualifications:

1) You need to be an attorney.
2) You have to post a comment on the Adequate Attorney page.

All adequate attorney honorees are encouraged to display the following graphic on their blog: