Posted by Dan Slater
That was the question posed Friday by Dechert’s James Beck and Jones Day’s Mark Herrmann, co-authors of the well-read Drug and Device Law blog. Given that, for instance, Drug and Device scores 25,000 page views per month, “wouldn’t you expect at least a few of your colleagues to wander down the hall and ask two questions: (1) How did you do it? and (2) How can we replicate it?” ask Beck and Hermann. “Our firms surely benefit indirectly from the attention that this site receives. Wouldn’t our firms also benefit if they were affiliated with (or even sponsored) the most widely read securities law blog on the internet? Intellectual property blog? Tax law blog?” So why, ask Beck and Herrmann, are so many firms indifferent or unsupportive of their lawyers’ blogging efforts?

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?

Popularity: 88% [?]

BALTIMORE, Feb. 4 Online directory & news service — Local-Attorneys.com has announced its recommendations for online marketing activities for law firms in 2008.

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.

Popularity: 100% [?]

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.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I apologize for posting so infrequently this month, but I’ve been working on some “behind the scenes” projects that are very exciting (to me at least!).

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

Popularity: 14% [?]

You know, Seth Godin is unique in that his writing makes me feel excited, inspired, hopeful, as well as depressed, amateurish, and boring at the same time. It’s because he’s THAT good. In fact, you know that moment when you read something and say “That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking! Why didn’t I write that…” or better, “I never thought of it that way, but it makes total sense now!” And in that moment, when you’re nodding your head while reading…….That’s what should be called the “Godin Nod.” Which would be defined as:

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.

Popularity: 18% [?]

While looking through some feeds this morning, I saw that Larry Bodine had written an article slamming Apple computers. Being a part time Mac user myself, I was curious what he had to say. While I disagreed with what he was saying, I just chalked it up to a P.C. user not being used to the differences between PC and Mac.

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.

Popularity: 13% [?]