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How does a marketing professional motivate lawyers to blog?

inspire lawyers to blog
October 5, 2014

A marketing professional recently asked how do you get lawyers to blog. The lawyers, all in one practice group, started off with a bang, but after three months, posts were only coming once a month a or less.

In that this question comes up a lot, I thought it worthwhile to share my answer with you.

Blogs become difficult to maintain if there was not a driving purpose for the blog, other than we want to get more work and make more money. Practice groups often start blogs because they felt compelled to or one or two lawyers got excited to do so.

I would one, reexamine the purpose of the blog and two, look at whether the group is really blogging or just writing articles on blog software. Blogging is easier, generates positive feedback for the lawyers and works better for bringing in business.

On the purpose issue, did the groups, or more importantly the firm’s leadership, look at the marketplace for business opportunities? Did they look at the niche opportunities to grow business by capturing new clients or the opportunity to land new business with existing clients who need legal services in a niche?

Did the practice groups look for niche opportunities in blogging where their insight, information, and commentary would be the only place on the legal blogosphere where people could get that info?

Instead of employment law, how about employment law for pharmaceuticals? Instead of immigration, why not immigration law for emerging growth companies.

There are law blogs that cherry picked cases on a niche (i.e., IP litigation) from a federal district and did quick summaries of them. That gave a lawyer a national presence and generated very significant revenue. The lawyer did not blog on IP litigation, that’s not a niche.

Despite lawyers’ fears, niches lead to riches. Niches do not pigeon hole lawyers, niches open doors via relationships and word of mouth and lead to work far beyond the niche.

Blogging is not about writing content. Blogging is listening and sharing what you’ve heard on your niche. You let people know your take on what you’ve heard.

Blogging is a conversation much like at a networking event where you engage thought leaders and the people you want to meet and with whom you want to build relationships.

Blogging is not broadcasting articles and then trying to push your content in front of as many people as people. It’s not about trying to get traffic to your blog.

Blogging lawyers need to strategically follow sources (blogs, columns, mainstream news, trade publications) and subjects (terms of art in niche, companies, products, services, people). Preferably in an RSS Reader (Feedly, Flipboard). It could be done by skimming mainstream news or trade publications, but that will take longer.

Lawyers, by blogging, then share what they thought interesting in their “feeds,” and what got them excited. Cite the source or sources, share a block quote, and tell me why you shared it and what it means.

Think clipping from the newspaper and sending a copy on to a few clients and business associates with your comments. But here the source will know you shared it – you just engaged them. You also reach far more people via subscribers, social media, and Google searches.

A great blog post could be engaging an executive, association leader, or company by virtue of you referencing what they said in a blog or news article. Those engagements lead to coffees and dinners. Broadcasting content does not.

Do these things and the blogging lawyers are going to start feeling positive reinforcement from blogging. Getting cited in the news and in blogs, being interviewed, getting asked to speak, meeting new people, and getting calls on new work is exciting stuff. When that happens you’ll not be able to stop the lawyers from blogging.

If the lawyers have not defined their driving purpose, do not understand what blogging actually means, and do not how to listen via tools like RSS, the lawyers have been set up to fail.

Finally, find the one or two lawyers who have passion for the niche, who have a knack for networking/relationship building/business development, who want to learn how to network online, and who would be fun for you to work with.

Empower and enable them. Let them be the viral positives that ignite another lawyer or two. It’s too hard trying to float all boats when some lawyers have neither the drive nor interest.

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