But as Liz Strauss, an expert in corporate online communications and communities, asks 'is the blog the problem?' A blog, though a relative unknown, is just a tool. Look at the real issue that's scaring you.

Look to the people. Isn’t the issue one of trust and control? The employer is concerned about what employees might write on the blog.

We let employees talk to customers daily — answering email, answering phone call, answering questions at exhibits, and answering letters at the office. We trust what they write on behalf of our company. We once worried in the same way about the telephone and email. Still today any of those customer conversations could be shared internationally or in a court of law.

It comes down to hiring and training employees who make good decisions.

If we trust our ability to choose the right employees and to let them know the values that we hold for our company and our customers, the question of whether we should let them blog falls away as an issue.

A blog is a powerful, customer-facing tool. Like a computer, it’s as strong as the people we choose to use it.

Liz' post is part of a series of blog posts she's doing on the 'The ROI of Trust.' Trust is what it's all about. Does your law firm trust your lawyers to talk about what it is the lawyer likes to do?

I was told recently of one senior lawyer who was told by the firm that they would not be permitted to blog. 'The firm does not allow its lawyers to blog.' The lawyer responded with a question. 'Why am I working at a place that does not trust me to talk about what I do - about a niche in the law I am passionate about?'

Law firms allow its lawyers, even new associates, to use the phone, write letters, go to court, speak with clients, write articles for industry publications, speak at conferences, and to network with existing and potential clients. Why? Because the law firm believes it hired talented lawyers and trained them appropriately as to firm protocols.

Why should blogs be any different?

Unlike when reading a newspaper or book, our eyes quickly tire when viewing content on a computer screen. By breaking content up with a relevant image, you're giving your readers' eyes a subconscious break. Ultimately this will make readers far more likely to stay on your blog because they're not overwhelmed by lengthy, text-heavy posts.

Many blogging professionals use logos or insignias when referring to a particular company in a post. This is an excellent tool as it immediately lets readers know what the post is about without reading a word.

Here's a run down of the dos and don'ts of using images in blog posts:

• DO: choose an image that's relevant to your subject.
• DO: adjust the image properties (border, alignment, dimensions) to ensure the picture looks as it should, without appearing arbitrarily placed.
• DO: give your source credit. This can be done tactfully with a brief line of italicized text at the bottom of the post indicating where it came from.
  
• DO: use either your own or images from public domain sites to avoid copyright trouble. Wikimedia Commons is a good place to start.
  
• DO: read Kevin's post on using Flickr and other creative commons sites.
• DO: see our FAQ about How to properly credit a photo source.
• DON'T: heavily adjust the image's appearance by simply pasting in the image's URL. Save the photo and edit it (resize, crop,etc.) in a program on your computer than then upload it into your post.
• DON'T: use a poor quality photo. Make sure images are clear and in aspect ratio (height and width are in proportion).
• DON'T:  be afraid to use more than one image. Pro Blogger uses a photo for each point in a bulleted list.
• DON'T: put the image at the bottom, keep it toward the top to lure in readers.
• DON'T: link the image back to the site where you grabbed the image. This is hotlinking, which is generally frowned upon.

The questioning lawyer wanted to know how his pages per visit, bounce rate, average time on site and percentage of new visitors to total visitors compared with other law blogs. Was he successful?

I responded that the hard, meaningful info is the most telling of success.

• Are you getting more calls about doing the work you want for the people you want to do it for?
• Is the media contacting you more often?
• Are you getting more speaking engagements in front of your target audience?
• Is your network of professional colleagues and referral sources increasing?

If you are going to look at stats - hey, we all do, we're human - focus on these items for a blog.

• Unique visitors. Are they trending up?
• Referrals. Where are you being cited as an authority in your niche that is in turn driving traffic? Is the number of places referring traffic increasing?
• RSS subscribers. Is the number of RSS subscribers trending up?
• Keywords and key phrase searches. Are the terms being searched on in search engines resulting in click throughs to your blog the terms you expect people to search and find you?
• Referrals and Directs as a percentage of total traffic. If you can get referrals and directs to 50 to 60% of the total visitors coming to your blog, you're doing great as that tells you people are looking for you and your stuff, as opposed to arriving at your blog via random searches. Many of those random searches and resulting clicks to your blog have nothing to do with what you do or publish on.

At the end of the day you'll know if your blog is successful by the work you're getting, the fun you're having, and the positive feedback you're getting. There's nothing like the feeling you get publishing a meaningful and successful blog. Have faith, you'll know when when you get there.

But like I said we're all human. We're going to take a peek at our web stats. I just did before I published this post.

These are the webstats I tend to look at for my blog. I'd be interested in hearing what you other guys look at when you check your webstats.

So I couldn't help but notice what Scott Niesen, Director of Marketing at Attensa, had to say in a presentation at Enterprise 2.0, about drawing a distinction between 'what you need to know' and 'what you need to respond to.'

As paraphrased by Doug Cornelius, who attended Niesen's session:

A blog is a communication tool. It is well suited to what you need to know. Email is better for information that has a need to respond. Take a look at you email flow and think about how much of this you need to react to. Most of it is just information you need to know. But by the information being pushed into email, my inbox is acting as my content management system. A blog or a collection of blogs makes a much better content management system. It is easier to search, easier to find content and easier to add content.

Hear hear. Use a blog. Use a project management tool like Basecamp (basically a blog). Use a wiki. Use Google docs/spreadsheets for colaboration. But email for delivering information I need to know is distracting, oppressive, and impossible to keep track of.

Reporting on his panel presentation with leading business bloggers at last week's Enterprise 2.0:

One common theme among the panel was blogging as a personal knowledge management tool. We all found the blog to be a great way to capture information in a way that is easy to categorize, where it is easy to find the content. As a personal knowledge management tool, I blog for me. These notes are for me to reuse. That you are reading is a by-product.

As a lawyer for 17 years my credenza, desk corners, and bookshelf were full of articles and CLE materials with post-it notes. Never wanted to lose that suggested brief on voir dire, request for production, or sample cross examination of a medical witness. Plus I had great notes in those outlines from the trial lawyer seminars I attended.

Problem was that I could only manage a fraction of the information I collected. We kept a file cabinet with some of the stuff. But that only worked when everything got filed there and if we named the folder by the same name we would label the concept a year later when we went digging for the stuff.

If my secretary and I didn't spend a day or two wading through all the good stuff at the end of the year, a lot of it would just get tossed in the garbage. Equal value to the garbage was stacking the stuff on those shelves in the back regions of the law office only to be cleaned out when we moved offices or retired.

With a blog, you file what you read or hear and want to keep in a blog post. Make a note or two offering why the information is worthwhile. Upload key files to your blog. Blog live from seminars you attend. Why make hard copy notes that end up getting tossed or lost?

A blog gives you complete navigation by category & sub-category, tags, and a complete search. You can find what you want over the years.

Better yet, by cleaning the info up a little - it only takes 5 minutes more - you can share what you keep with your target audience. Showing prospective clients, other bloggers, the media, and referring lawyers what you follow and how you do so is an excellent way to display your expertise and commitment to a practice area.

Doug made this same point of sharing your knowledge in his post:

A blog is an excellent way to display expertise, whether the blog is internal or external. It is one thing to paint yourself as an expert. It is much more effective to prove your expertise through your writings and information you push out.

Obviously if a blog is internal, you're only showing your expertise to others in your firm or organization. I agree with Doug that 'internal blogs (at least in the classic sense) are just limiting their audience.'

I've got thousands of posts in this blog. 95% of the posts reference something of value I saw or heard. I wanted to keep the info as part of my personal knowledge management or share it with you guys with a little commentary. In most cases it was probably a little of both.

No way I could have done that with post-it notes - even the electronic ones called bookmarks.

As Loren explains, if you have a Blogger blog, this could happen to your blog.

How? Look at Google's terms of service.

Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system for some time for back-up purposes.

There are a significant number of lawyers using Google’s Blogger platform and Google’s Blogspot hosting for their blog. As Loren says using the Blogger-Blogspot combination 'takes away the heart of your blog and hands it over to Google. They control your blog, not you.'

What's especially surprising is that it's pretty unlikely these same lawyers would advise their clients to hand over their intellectual capital and marketing materials to a third party and forego all control.

Look at some of the other provisions in the Blogger Terms of Service. Provisions a lawyer would never agree to any contract they would negotiate.

• General Practices Regarding Use and Storage. You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any Content and other communications maintained by the Service. Google retains the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice.
• Google also reserves the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as it reasonably believes is necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (b) enforce this Agreement, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (d) respond to user support requests, or (e) protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.
• By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

Really going to advise your law firm to take these kind of risks? I can tell you that I haven't talked to many, if any, lawyers who would agree to those terms if we used them in a LexBlog agreement.

But Hey, it's free. ;)

Doug Shuman, Senior Vice President of Customer Marketing at Register.com, offers a few tips at the Small Business Advice Blog on picking a domain name in times of increasing scarcity. With my added commentary, here you go:

• Get geographic specific. Add specific geography descriptions to your preferred domain name. PeoriaDivorceLawBlog.com, as opposed to IllinoisDivorceLawBlog.com. Most of your divorce work is being done locally any way. Show people in your town you're there for them.
• Get brand name specific. Add your law firm name to your preferred domain name. SmithJonesEnvironmnentalLaw.com. Medium and larger law firms already have a regional or, in some cases, a national brand. Adding your law firm's name only strengthens the name of your blog. The blog gains credibility being driven by your law firm, as opposed to a lesser known law firm publishing a generic 'environmentallawblog.com.' Adding your firm name also spikes enthusiasm for the blog among lawyers and other staff in the firm.
• Buy a domain that’s already been registered. Depending on the domain name you're after, it may be within your reach for a thousand bucks if there's not a blog or website already running on it. Domain name speculators buy a lot of domains for next to nothing so it doesn't take a lot for them to see a big return on their investment. For a nominal fee there are services that will act as your agent in assessing the amount to pay and acting as your broker in making an offer. Folks may try to hold you up knowing you're a law firm (name gives it away), but it may be worth a shot.

At the end of the day, don't lose much sleep on domain names. 66% of people coming to your blog for the first time will do so from a link on another blog.

In addition, Internet users search for everything these days. They're more likely to search travelocity on Google than to key in travelocity.com in the url address bar.

People searching for legal content or the name of local lawyer will search by what they are looking for and in the case of a lawyer, Peoria Divorce Lawyer. Properly optimized for Google and the other search engines, your blog will be at the top of the results no matter your domain name.

Content and common sense rule on law blogs. Don't check your common sense at the door by racking your brain for hours in search of a 'perfect domain name.' It's not in the top 5 things to focus on in launching an effective blog.

Liz Strauss, a blogger with 20 years experience in print, software, and online publishing business, offers some excellence advice for how to connect your blogging business with customers in the offline world.

• Contact local organizations in your niche. Ask local groups and organizations associated with your niche for a blurb in their online or hard copy newsletter. Offer to be a guest speaker for one of their meetings. You'll find such organizations by seeing their scheduled meetings in the newspaper, looking at national websites for such organizations, talking to your local librarians, and calling local buildings and facilities that host such meetings.
• Look to the customers standing right beside you. Family, friends, bowling buddies, classmates, colleagues at work, and members of organizations you belong to, including your local church, could be a rich source of customers or people who can network you to customers. You can be be an ambassador for the blogging world and how it's a value for business people in general.
• Find non-blogging experts to interview. Write or email top non-blogging experts (authors, professors, business leaders) in your niche area and politely ask to interview them. They will tell everyone where to find the interview. They may be able to steer other interviews your way. We regularly do 4 and 5 question email interviews with experts for this blog.
• Utilize press coverage. Write a press release to get coverage in your local paper. Focus your press release on either your blog or blogging. If you write about blogging in general, just make sure to use your site as a highly profiled example. Liz says to tell the paper that blogging is a lifestyle to perk their ears. For a lawyer, tell them how blogging is a win/win for businesses and the public. People get access to legal information and good lawyers further enhance their reputations.
• Create an Internet presence off your blog. Find online Web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, bulletin board, etc., in your niche subject outside the blog world and jump in. Be nice, be real, and give as much as you can when promoting yourself. You can find forums often attached to magazines, to newspapers, to activities, to organizations, and to web sites of companies that complement your niche and product.
• Become a YouTuber. Make a YouTube video about yourself, your blog, or your product. Just one video that ‘goes viral’ can rocket anyone into stardom for a day or month. Be ready to utilize any generated traffic in ways that maintain these new readers to your blog.
• Team up with complementary non-blogging businesses. Let’s say your blog is about environmental law. Environmental engineers, local schools, smart growth, and environmental groups may find environmental law and your take on local issues of interest. As Liz advises, until you ask, you'll never know.

When you blog on a niche subject, you're publishing the local or, in the case of certain niches, national law magazine on the subject. Being recognized as such a publisher and the expert status that comes with it opens a heck of a lot of doors in the offline world.

One caveat is that I screwed up in failing to properly record the audio and screencast. So the recording and screencast below is from April's program on the same subject. I won't be as lame in the future.

• Click here for the PowerPoint.
• Click here for the recording with screencast.

In Friedman, Kennedy picked "one of the thought leaders" in the field of neuro-oncology, said Dr. Otis Brawley, the top doctor at the American Cancer Society. Dr. Matthew Ewend, chief of neurosurgery at the University of North Carolina, said: "He's an excellent surgeon. His patients are in very good hands."

Thought leader. When people are looking for the best, they look for thought leaders in their field.

Among the leading the reasons for blogging as a lawyer is to become recognized as a thought leader.

When you blog as a lawyer don't settle for slick a publishing platform that may allow you to achieve high search engine rankings. Reach for something higher. Learn how to engage in online conversations with those authorities already recognized as thought leaders in your area of the law.

Whether representing consumers and small business in rural America or representing multinational corporations from Wall Street, strive to be recognized as a thought leader. It's thought leaders which people turn to in a time of need.

I suspect that there's a wave of burnout happening amongst the trench people.  Without any big news, something to grab their attention and make them want to write, they're getting tired of sitting at the computer.  It's not like the spirit of Kevin O'Keefe resides in each of us.  Some need extra motivation to get their mojo working.

With that in mind, I pose a challenge to my brethren in the practical blawgosphere.  Unless you want to see the lawprofs and nutjobs (note that they are two separate groups in my mind) seize control, fight.  No, you don't have to post as much as I do.  I just like to write.  It's my therapy, but it doesn't have to be yours.  Just don't let inertia take hold.  Once you walk away from the computer, it's hard to get back into the flow.

The practical blawgosphere is one of the best things that's happened to the discussion of criminal law.  We've sparred with one another, agreed with one another, but expanded the understanding and debate far beyond anything that existed in the old days.  New lawyers can come online and learn from the mistakes that old lawyers made.  My personal depth of understanding has increased enormously thanks to the insights of others.

Don't let this fade away.

We have so much to gain as a profession and a society by encouraging those lawyers who blog to keep blogging and by encouraging lawyers who don't blog to take up the cause.

Look what we receive personally, as a profession, and as a society from lawyers blogging.

• We make the law more accessible. Who is better equipped to the share practical legal information than lawyers practicing in a niche area of the law? Answering common questions. Sharing what we've seen on blogs and in the news sharing our insight and commentary. It's great stuff never before available.
• Blogs make us better lawyers by allowing us to reach out to experts in our field and collaborate with them. If I'm a recent law grad in New York whose heart is in doing criminal defense work, I can follow leading criminal defense law blogs. I can reach out to guys like Scott Greenfield as a mentor. I tried to do that as a young lawyer but it took trips across my state to legal conferences (when I could afford them). I tried to find mentors, but it was tough and intimidating to collaborate with leading lawyers. Blogs break down those barriers.
• We showcase ourselves and other lawyers to those in need of legal services. Whether a corporate executive or a single mom who's deadbeat ex is refusing to pay support, those in need of legal services can see the lawyers who care about what they do and see their thinking in action.
• Many lawyers love what we do. Why not a way a to share what you love and get positive feedback from like minded lawyers and the public. It's good for the psyche.
• Blogging lawyers are improving the image of our profession. Sending $3,000 to Martindale-Hubbell for an online listing of your two person firm does nothing to improve the image of our profession. Same for buying sponsored links at Google, or putting up a website that's little more than a shrine to the firm's laurels. Good blogs are educational based, they're focused on information, not on us as lawyers. They're everything good about the legal profession.

We ain't blogging about movies, knitting, or sports. As lawyers, we're blogging about about something that's a lynchpin in a free and democratic society. The law is at at the heart of what allows our America society to function. And the law does not function unless lawyers rally to the cause of making the law accessible, explaining how it works, and taking pride in our profession.

Carry on with the cause guys. Keep the fire of blogging alive. And encourage your fellow lawyers to take up the cause. You're making our society a better place.

Particular findings include:

• Almost half of blogging financial planners say the goal of their blog is to establish themselves as an expert in their field.
• 78% of blogging financial planners say that their blog is either somewhat effective or very effective in reaching the goal they set out for the blog.
• 57% of blogging financial planners said that they were either somewhat committed or very committed to their blogging program.
• 89% of respondents said that they were considering increasing the amount of time they devoted to their blogging program.

Whether by referral from existing lawyer client or because they were attracted by our turnkey professional solution, LexBlog has talked with a number of financial planners about launching blogs.

In most cases the financial planner or consultant was reluctant to blog because of the perceived need to have their copy vetted by a their parent financial company. The concerns apparently arose from securities laws and strict policies of their employer or broker.

I'd be interested in hearing from financial bloggers who are blogging and from those who have an understanding of securities laws or corporate policies that would stifle blogging in the field.

Comes from Deb Ng whose tips were for getting your blog picked up by a blog network, but I thought them equally applicable for lawyers wanting to get firm approval for a blog.

Here's Deb's tips with some additional commentary from me.

• Possible name and available domain names.
• A detailed description.
• Statistics regarding the niche, ie, potential for growth in this legal niche, number of lawyers focused on niche in your locale.
• Links to other similar blogs.
• How you plan on making it different from others in the niche.
• Who do you feel will read this blog?
• How do you plan on promoting your blog?

It's been my experience over the last 5 years that law blog proposals that are well researched and presented in a reasoned way anticipating the issues firm management will raise have a much higher chance of law firm buy in.

Over 50 folks are already registered with a lot of positive feedback. Guess it goes without saying that law firms' interest in blogging and figuring out how to go about it is an all time high.

We'll cover, among other things:

• What are professional marketing blogs?
• Advantages of blogs for law firms
• Challenges of blogs
• Alternatives for setting up and running a blog
• How much time it takes
• Legal liability and ethics issues
• Getting firm management buy in for blogs
• Which law firms are using marketing blogs
• Your questions

If you can't make it, we'll record the webinar and make it freely available with accompanying screenshots and online demos.

I realize some of you may already be publishing your own blog, in which case the webinar may be too basic. You decide. Those still new to blogs should find the program helpful.

If you want to join the Legal Blogging Group at LinkedIn, click here. I'll receive and approve your request.

You've seen these blogs - or maybe you haven't as word of such tasteless marketing doesn't spread across the net or generate links as is the case with well done law blogs.

They're the blogs with post titles with keyword spam repeating the lawyer's area of practice and location. They'll have categories repeating the same keywords over and over. And the posts, rather than serving up something worthwhile look like the lawyer is trying to one up the next worse lawyer.

No one's told those lawyers what Lorelle VanFossen at Blog Herald is preaching, that being that viewers come to your blog for 3 reasons.

• Search Engines
• Links
• Word of Mouth

Lorelle explains:

Google ain’t the only game in town. We know that, though many are still staking their business and reputations on the old Google Game thinking. You have to mix things up in order to cover the more important part of building traffic and encouraging readers to return - and bring their friends with them.

You have to write for your audience. You have to write to, for, and with your readers. It is the power they hold over you to link to you and spread the word about your site that makes or breaks your blog.
Visitors come from three sources:

If you wrote for search engines only, then you would only be paying attention to one out of three.

And I agree with Lorelle as to which of the three is most important.

Word of Mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, even more powerful now than ever in history. We have the capacity to reach thousands of people within seconds. If our message is clear and viral, worth spreading around, those thousands tell their friends and their friends tell their friends, and they all descend upon your blog.

Blogs written for search engines stick out like a sore thumb. Power users of content, thought leaders in the field who are blogging and reporters, are totally turned off by such blogs.

Law blogs engaging in an ongoing conversation among such thought leaders and reporters get plenty of subscribers. Word of mouth and links are generated thereby.

Lawyers who think blogs are all about the search engines and blog for the search engines are misguided. Anyone coaching lawyers to write blog posts for the search engines is giving bum advice.

Good bloggers write for their audience.

• What are professional marketing blogs?
• Advantages of blogs for law firms
• Challenges of blogs
• Alternatives for setting up and running a blog
• How much time it takes
• Legal liability and ethics issues
• Getting firm management buy in for blogs
• Which law firms are using marketing blogs
• Your questions

Not to worry if you can't make it. We'll record the webinar and make it freely available with accompanying screenshots and online demos. You may also contact me and I can arrange another webinar at a time convenient for you.

I realize some of you may already be publishing your own blog, in which case the webinar may be too basic. But those still new to blogs should find the program helpful.

If you want to join the Legal Blogging Group at LinkedIn, click here. I'll receive and approve your request.

Shel was addressing the time objection to executives blogging. I thought his explanation applied well to lawyers as well.

Blogs don’t replace phone calls, road shows, speeches, letters, email and the rest of the tools in the communications toolbox. When making the choice of tools to use, though, blogging should be assessed based on its strengths. Identifying the return on time invested an executive would accrue, that time commitment could seem like a far less daunting obstacle. Blogging, in fact, could ultimately take less time than using all the other channels that are less effective in some circumstances.

Finally, a lot of the worry about the time involved comes from a misconception: Blog posts from executives, many company leaders assume, need to be lengthy, carefully crafted essays, not unlike a shareholder’s letter or one of those ‘From the CEO’ columns that used to appear on the inside front cover of so many magazines. Truthfully, most readers of blogs aren’t interested in 2,000-word columns. A one- or two-paragraph observation, question, or commentary would be far more effective. ‘A radio report I heard in the car on the way to the office this morning got me thinking...’ is a fine introduction, and ‘I’d like to know what you think’ is a great conclusion to a brief, pithy post.

Rather than accept the ‘no time’ argument, let’s help our executives understand the value of blogging, the activities it can replace, and the nature of the effort involved.

I hear the time objection to lawyer blogging three or four times a week. Legal marketing professionals pushing law blogs for their law firms are running into the same objection. 'We're busy lawyers, we don't have time to blog.'

Shel's suggestion in responding is a good one. Help lawyers understand the value of blogging, the activities it can replace, and the how little effort may be involved.

Asked another way, should you just do what makes by far the most sense to me, should you you key in your name in the comment field labeled 'name?'

People leaving keywords such as the name of their blog, which is full of keywords itself, such as Russia Law Blog or Missouri Injury Lawyer, is a real turn off to me as a blog publisher. Shows me the commenter is more concerned about getting SEO for their blog than leaving a comment of value to the discussion.

Looks like I am not alone in my feelings. Here's a sample of comments to Darren's post.

• If you leave keywords instead of your name, it looks like all you’re interested in is improving your search rankings instead of contributing to a discussion.
• It immediately turns off the reader from reading your wonderful prose and insightful analysis. Although it might increase viewership, it’s unnecessary and in my opinion unwanted.
• I can’t see any difference from SPAM comments and leaving a keyword in the name field.
• To leave keywords is the closest way to say: 'Hello! don’t read my comment, I’m just another spammer!'
• As a webmaster that immediately comes off as spam to me, even if the comment is good or even insightful. I usually end up editing or deleting those types of comments.
• Comments are supposed to be for user contribution and opinion. There are plenty of places to build links, but spamming comments with keywords is not one of them. I hand edit the majority of my keyword-spammed comments, and believe everyone else should too.

Don't be lame. Leave your name.

And from now on, no more comment spam by keywords in the name field around here. I'll edit to insert your name, if I know it, or delete the comment if I don't.

I find it pretty interesting, like Darren, that social media sites are the number 1 source of traffic for 15% of bloggers. I also agree with Darren that if he asked the same question 18 months ago social media sites would have barely registered on the results.

We're always a little lagging in the legal industry. I am finding some blog traffic coming from social media sites such as Twitter and Stumbleupon, but I'd guess it's only 5 or 10% of my traffic. Most of my traffic comes from people coming directly and by others mentioning a post of mine in their blog or online publication.

Where does most of your blog traffic come from?