We'll go live at 9 AM PT with Rob La Gatta, Stacey Merrick, and I taking the mic's so to speak with live audio and screencast.

We added live call in questions for attendees for a LinkedIn Blogging Group webinar we did last week. It worked out great making for a more collaborative and interactive program. We'll continue with that format this morning.

If you are unable to attend, like always, we'll have a recording available at LexBlog Client Support.

If you misplaced your invite and password or need one, please email Stacey Merrick, our Client Services Director.

The attendee response has been strong so far: we covered a lot of ground in our hourlong discussion and got some great questions towards the end of the event. If you have any feedback on the presentation - what worked, what didn't, what we could improve - leave a comment or drop us a line. We do webinars on a variety of topics, and the best way to gauge our audience's response is through their direct feedback.

Why does it work per Jon?

Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

By 'friends,' we're not talking the friends you know from your kids soccer games or with whom a enjoy a beer now and again, we're talking trusted and well known authorities in your niche that have widely read blogs. We're not diminishing the value of 'friends' as we've understood the concept for years. 'Friends' on the Internet just means something else.

I follow 'friends' via Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, del.icio.us, and the like because those 'friends' are sharing information and commentary that I value. Sure there's some true friends included in the group, but by and large, the 'friends' I follow are trusted and reliable authorities in their field.

How to make friends with popular bloggers and get them to link to your posts? I've always done it by following poplar blogs and sharing an interesting post of theirs with my readers, offering my take on the subject.

Jon says that's not enough any longer. Here's a few of his ideas with my take.

• Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments. It works. LexBlog has any number of lawyer clients who have guest posted on popular blogs. The result has brought greater notoriety and more blog followers.
• Attend conferences that all of the ‘Who’s Who’ of your niche go to and network your tail off. While I am not a social butterfly, I do make a point of introducing myself to thought leaders who I have been following and whom I respect. Make sure it's genuine, but go up and shake their hand and let them know you really appreciate their work and have been a follower for some time. The opportunity may arise to tell them what you do. Follow up with an email and offer to connect via LinkedIn.
• Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion. This works wether you're asking the question through a LinkedIn connection or just a standard email. Blog the answer providing your commentary.
• Leave lots of truly memorable comments. Absolutely works, so long as the comments are of value. Do not comment for the sake of dropping your name, you'll look like a fool.
• Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions. I've found email interviews are best for the most popular people, whose time is limited. Keep it to 4 or 5 questions. But if you've got a good podcast going, give it a shot. I'm happy to be a guest when the interviewer has their act together and we're only talking 20 minutes.
• Give the above a few months, and then start pointing them to your best and most relevant content. It works. I often one line an email to a popular blogger letting them know of a post of interest.

To be a success on the Internet, remember one rule. You can have everything you want if you'll just help enough other people to get what they want. As Jon puts it, 'we're just talking reciprocity.'

Contrary to what many people think, A-list bloggers aren’t islands, separate and self-sufficient. They deal with problems and annoyances, just as much as anyone else. If you can help alleviate them, they’ll thank and remember you for it.

The key is finding ways that you can be genuinely useful to them. Make yourself relevant and then use that opportunity to start building a relationship.

Great post Jon - and another reason to call Brian Clark, publisher of Copyblogger, a 'friend.'

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.

Stoel Rives did not ask and did not have a hard time announcing their new Food Liability Blog published by Attorney Ken Ozda.

Well it's started in the legal journalism business with ALM's law.com. Noticed this week that Law.com was sending traffic to my blog from their Legal Technology Section.

I'm not part of Law.com's blog network nor affiliated with Law.com in anyway. But in the right hand navigation bar you'll see a listing of blog posts which Law.com thought would be of interest. One of them being a post of mine.

Such syndication of law blog content has plusses all the way around.

• Improved content for law.com. ALM and its family of legal publications have some excellent reporters and produce some great stories. But there's always going to be niche bloggers with domain expertise going into greater detail.
• Law.com builds relationships with bloggers. The outcome will be more bloggers referencing more law.com content in their blog posts. More traffic and resulting ad revenue to law.com.
• Greater exposure for lawyers publishing good blogs on niche areas the law.

Stay tuned. More syndication of law blogs to come in law journals, WSJ, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and other leading publications.

• Ask a question. Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you've published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you covered in a blog post. Asking a question engages your Twitter followers and solicits their experience.
• When comments ensue on one your blog posts send a note to Twitter alerting people to the quality of the conversation in the comments. It's not pitchy in nature. You're simply sharing that the best stuff came after the initial post.
• Even dare to ask for a Stumble. You can get a lot of referrers to your blog from StumbleUpon. If you think your post is 'somewhat momentous,' ask your followers if they think it's worth a Stumble. If you do a lot of sharing and promoting and helping others, you may get people to Stumble something for you.

For the unknowing, Twitter is Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page at Twitter and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

But the fact is the more you link out, the more valuable your blog, the more subscribers you'll have, the more traffic you'll receive, and the more influential you'll be.

Publishing 2.0's post, 'Influentials On The Web Are People With The Power To Link,' explains.

The reason Google's search results often contain more blogs than traditional media content is that blogs were the first to harness the power of the link. Blogs linked to other blogs, while traditional media brands remained disconnected silos......Journalists and PR professionals, the influence brokers of traditional media, have lost a huge degree of influence on the web in large part because they don't link to anything. While traditional media brands are still powerful channels on the web, they are losing influence everyday to the link-driven web network — journalists and PR professionals can no longer depend on controlling these former monopoly channels to exert influence online.

Whenever I give talks to traditional publishers who have been afraid to link to other sites because it will 'send people away' instead of keeping them trapped in the publisher's own content, my now standard response is to say that there's a site that does nothing but link to other sites — all it does is send people away. And yet remarkably, people keep coming back. So much so, that this strategy has translated into $10 billion+ in advertising revenue. (Yes, Google of course.)

Big plusses to linking out for you bloggers.

• You'll be an intelligence agent for your readers on a niche topic in the law. Monitoring finely set RSS feeds for relevant blogs, news sites, news stories (Goggle News), and key words (Google Blog Search), you're seeing information your target audience is not. Share what you see with your take and commentary and you'll have folks coming back for more.
• You'll be entering into an ongoing discussion in your niche. People who you link to see that you blogged about them. They'll subscribe to your blog and share what you have to say when they see a post of yours relevant to their audience.
• You'll be marketing your blog. Getting others to subscribe and blog about your content grows readership.
• You'll enhance you reputation. People Googling your name will see citations of what you said by bloggers and reporters. Great tacit endorsement of you as a leading authority in your niche.
• You'll never have to worry about what to blog about. I haven't had an original thought in 20 years, but I've published thousands of posts. Most all of them referenced something I've read via RSS feeds on which I provided my take.

Happy linking.

Source on post: Kristine Lowe

1. Rob La Gatta: From 1997-2003, you taught online publishing to journalism students at USC. Did you see students graduating from journalism school there with an understanding of new media's importance?

Susie Gardner: Yes and no. Within the faculty of the school at that time, there was still a lot of resistance to including new media in every class, or even in most of them. And not just resistance – there were plenty of people who had had long and distinguished careers in journalism when new media had not been part of it, and so I think there was mixed message teaching at that point, where the students in some classes were hearing “new media is it, this is what its all about,” and in other classes hearing “newspapers are never going to go away.”

The students who were able to deal with that conflict left in pretty good hands, but I’m sure we also graduated people who ended up taking positions on either side of the fence and who weren’t particularly prepared for new media.

2. Rob La Gatta: Is it even necessary, then, to continue attending journalism school, when so many of these skills are self-taught and can just be done from home with an Internet connection?

Susie Gardner: That question has been around for a long time, even before citizen journalism came about. There have always been people who believe that journalism school isn’t necessary, that you can become a journalist and a good reporter by doing...many top journalists took that route, and in a lot of ways I agree: people can become excellent journalists without having to attend journalism school. I don’t think that’s changed at all.

But I do think it teaches some really good solid skills that, if journalism is your career choice, it’s not a waste of time at all: it’s going to give you skills that you will find useful and key, no matter if you end up in a new media newsroom or if you end up in a more traditional organization.

3. Rob La Gatta: When did you first have the idea to write "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies," and what sparked it?

Susie Gardner: I started kicking around the idea of doing a book about blogging in early 2004, and pitched a "Blogging for Dummies" book to Wiley (the publisher of the "Dummies" series). They felt, at the time, that the market wasn’t ready for a "Blogging for Dummies" book, but that we could maybe position something aimed at business and organizational marketing folks. I actually agreed with that, the idea that business was going to be one of the big focuses and uses for blogging. So we worked together at that point to develop a book that was going to end up on the business shelf as opposed to the consumer technology shelf, and was designed to be used by marketing folks and by communications people or CEOs, or whoever needed to do marketing using a blog or marketing on a blog.

And actually, the timing of that worked out great…early 2005 was when the idea of business blogging really took off.

4. Rob La Gatta: When you look back at the first edition of the book, do you see a lot of information that’s no longer relevant? Or is most of it still applicable?

Susie Gardner: I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of information that is still valid. Partly, I think that’s because when I was writing the book, there was a constant struggle in my head about, “I’m going to write this down, but it’s going to be outdated, even before the book hits the shelf.” And I had conversations with people who were going to be featured in the screenshots or used as an example, who would say things like, “Well, I might change this facet of my blog that you’re showing.”

You just sort of realize after a while that if you’re writing about the Internet in a book, it’s going to be outdated, and people will (hopefully) understand that that’s the case. But in general, I think the basics and the principles are still solid…the chapters on ethics, and law, and the basic marketing approaches are still valid.

5. Rob La Gatta: What do you know now about the art of blogging that you wish you knew when you first started?

Susie Gardner: I wish I’d realized that it’s okay when you start a blog to not intend to keep it around forever. I think a lot of people get into the situation where they start a blog, they’re really excited about it, they write it for a while, and it sort of dies a slow death...they lose interest or their priorities change, but they feel like they can’t just stop writing the blog. I wish I’d realized that it’s okay to start a blog for a short-term project and have an end date on which you’re going to stop publishing it.

I also don’t think I realized at the time just how pervasive [blogging] was going to be, and that it was going to change the way that all kinds of people build websites. Hop Studios is a web design company, and 3 or 4 years ago we got a lot of inquiries about brochure-type websites: people wanted to put up 5 or 6 pages and never touch it again.

These days, that’s a very rare request. People want something dynamic, something that’s going to be updated…it may not be a blog, but the idea that you need a website that is active and refreshed and current has really trickled down to everybody.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Doug Berman, professor at Ohio State University and author of Sentencing Law & Policy Blog [2.8.08]
• Toby Bloomberg, Internet marketing specialist and author of the Diva Marketing Blog [2.6.08]
• Nick Holmes, legal publishing consultant with infolaw and author of Binary Law [2.5.08]
• David Maister, law firm practice consultant [2.4.08]
• Steve Matthews, search engine optimization specialist and founder of Stem Legal [2.1.08]

3. Rob La Gatta:In an interview last year with Stephan Spencer, you said bloggers “want to be part of an on-going collaboration or partnership.” This seems like it could be a great opportunity for public relations firms, yet their presence in the blogosphere still seems quite limited. Do you think the PR industry is poised to become a larger presence in the blogoshere any time soon?

Toby Bloomberg: Absolutely. Many large and small agencies are blogging today. Some are tapping into “blogger relations” to create online word of mouth buzz for their clients. Unfortunately, some of those blogger out reach efforts are resulting in negative rather than positive posts.

The challenge for many agencies entering this space is to accept social media as a credible marketing/PR strategy and not leave it totally in the hands of junior account managers. The world of blogs and social media is perceived as a Gen X/Y world. While the Millenniums may have grown up in this world, there is more to developing a blog, Web 2.0, social media strategy than knowing how to set up a Facebook page.

Where the PR and advertising agencies tend to get it wrong is not understanding that this virtual world is comprised of hundreds of communities...[and] that each, as I call them, “village”, has its own culture and norms. Cultivating a blogger relations strategy involves more than an email blast of a press release. It involves understand and respecting the cultures.

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.”

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Nick Holmes, legal publishing consultant with infolaw and author of Binary Law [2.5.08]
• David Maister, law firm practice consultant [2.4.08]
• Steve Matthews, search engine optimization specialist and founder of Stem Legal [2.1.08]
• Tom Goldstein, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and founder of SCOTUSblog [1.30.08]
• Rick Klau, former VP of publisher services at FeedBurner and current member of Google's content acquisition team [1.29.08]

1.Rob La Gatta: You’ve established a brand surrounding the Diva Marketing image, but where did the “diva” first come from? Do you think establishing a unique reputation this way has given you an advantage over other marketers?

Toby Bloomberg: Diva Marketing began life as a marketing column for an online publication targeted to women in business. I wanted the articles to be fun for the readers and for me too. I began to play around with a funky voice, that in retrospect was more conversational than traditional magazine style writing. I included references to “girlfriend” and “martinis” that sometimes reflected the style of Sex In The City but with a definite focus on providing practical information. What surprised me was the positive feedback I received from both women and men.

When the publication closed its virtual doors I wanted to continue the genre. I tried to find a new “home” for Diva Marketing but it didn’t quite fit into any of the online or offline publications around at the time (2002-03).

Diva Marketing (blog) was launched in the spring of 2004 as an experiment to simply understand the logistics of blogging. I had a website, so why did I need a blog? It was meant to be a fast learning. Little did I know that I would quickly get hook, find a new passion and Diva Marketing would morph into a “blog brand.” It was a surprise to me.

In the continuing cluttered world of business blogs and social media the Diva Marketing “brand” has given me an identity that I would never have obtained from my company name – Bloomberg Marketing. Unless of course Michael Bloomberg wanted to acquire my business (smile). The name does stand out in a list of blogs and sounds fun. I think people are curious to give an initial click.

However, at the end of the day a cute name or even a memorable name is just the beginning of a brand. It’s about proving value for your community. People read blogs for three reasons: information, entertainment and community. I work hard to weave all three elements together to offer those that who stop by a fun experience where they can also take away a tip or two to help them market smarter.

2. Rob La Gatta:How frequently do you encourage your clients to start a blog? When you do are they generally receptive to the idea or does it take some time convincing?

Toby Bloomberg: To give a bit of a perspective, what sets me apart from many consultants who are working in social media is my background in marketing strategy and research. I’ve always viewed blogs, and now social media, as tools that marketers can use to reach and understand customers. When I work with organizations strategies are considered from the perspective of: does it make sense for the brand? If it does, how can the tactics be integrated into the master marketing plan to support business outcomes? With blogs and social media there is an additional element that other marketing strategies usually don’t consider - does it provide value to the customers and stakeholders?

Another critical component we look at is the culture of the organization. Social media is not a play toy and it’s not a silver bullet. The organization must be ready to adapt to answering questions that they didn’t ask. By that I mean not only to listen to their customers in new channels (blogs, communities, videos, etc.), but to put systems into place to take action and respond to the unsolicited feedback of its stakeholders.

In addition, to understanding how to participate in wide open discussions that can be heard by people all over the world, the trust and respect an organization must give to its employees who are involved with social media initiatives is critical. Even with guidelines and training (and blessings from the legal department) for many companies internal employee marketing is as innovative as a micro blogs or RSS or widgets.

What I do tell clients is that even if they are not ready to jump in with both feet, it’s important to pay attention to the talk about their brand, their industry and trends. What I do tell clients is that social media is not a fad. It’s not going away. With the ease of photo sharing, video sharing, blogs, communities, etc., the opportunities that our customers have to share what is important to them (and we hope some of that chat includes brands) will continue to grow.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Nick Holmes, legal publishing consultant with infolaw and author of Binary Law [2.5.08]
• David Maister, law firm practice consultant [2.4.08]
• Steve Matthews, search engine optimization specialist and founder of Stem Legal [2.1.08]
• Tom Goldstein, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and founder of SCOTUSblog [1.30.08]
• Rick Klau, former VP of publisher services at FeedBurner and current member of Google's content acquisition team [1.29.08]

1. Rob La Gatta: Regarding your practice areas: what was it that first drew you to where the law and traumatic brain injury intersect?

Tim Titolo: Two things. One was that I just happened to get a case in the early ‘90s, and it was a brain injury case – a mild-to-moderate brain injury case. I worked it, and I worked it, and I worked it, and got a substantial verdict after a 6 week trial. That kind of said to me, “This is what you’re supposed to do, and if you keep doing it and you do it well, you’ll be successful at it.” So basically, brain injury found me.

The second reason was that [brain injury law] is something that is very specialized. And in the world as we know it, if you’re not going to specialize in something, you’re going to have more difficulties succeeding...that’s just a function of how the law profession – and life in general – has progressed in America.

2. Rob La Gatta: I notice you’ve authored posts mentioning the various conferences you’ve attended. Are people at these conferences, by and large, aware of your blog?

Tim Titolo: Well, I’ve only had my blog now for four or five months. But I will tell you that whenever I go to these conferences, I usually start it off with my blog page and then I switch it over to my web page, just to show [the audience] that I’m online and that they can contact me that way.

Are they coming to these conferences because of my blog? I wouldn’t say that they are…I think they’re coming because of who the sponsors are: the Brain Injury Association of America, the North American Brain Injury Society, those kind of groups.

3. Rob La Gatta: When you showcase your blog in these situations, do people show any interest that you're bringing a new medium in to your practice?

Tim Titolo: I’ve been doing this now fairly regularly, and what I’m finding is, when people find out you have a blog, they’re more like, “Well that’s interesting, you must really spend a lot of time on the area that you’re covering in your blog.” So I think people are impressed that I have the blog.

I think its kind of like if you were a football player, and you had a Heisman Trophy: people would just assume things about how well you do at football because you have that trophy. That’s what I do with my blog.

4. Rob La Gatta: What is the most personally rewarding element of blogging? What keeps you going at it each day?

Tim Titolo: There a couple of things that I like about the blog.

Number 1, it lets my clients know and reinforces for them that this is what I do, and that my interests are very specific to the injuries they’re suffering from (99% of my clients have a brain injury).

The other thing is, I like to write and I like to express myself. If I’m in the right mood – in the morning, over a cup of coffee – I enjoy reviewing information that I get over various feeds, and being able to forward those on with my own comments. I also do a little thing called Brainy Reviews, because I read a lot of books: if I read a book, and it has to do with brain injury, I’ll throw it on the blog. I just like to be able to do that.

Third, when I go to a conference – and I don’t know how appropriate this is or isn’t – you always get a list of the attendees and the faculty, with their email information. What I’ll typically do is add them to my subscriptions...after I send out a new post, there will be 5 or 6 that come back saying that they don’t want to be on the list anymore, and I’ll remove them. But in the meantime, I feel like I’m growing the knowledge of my blog by including more people in my subscriptions list.

5. Rob La Gatta: You’ve been doing this for a while now. What have you learned about the art of blogging that you wish you’d known getting started?

Tim Titolo: Well, in my particular situation, I was very intimidated to the point of almost wanting to give up. I would do a couple of posts and Stacey Merrick [LexBlog's director of client services] would write and give me constructive criticism. And I just felt like giving up, because it was so strenuous – I felt like was never going to be able to do this right.

The point is, I don’t think there is a "right" and "wrong" way to do a blog…you just do it. And then lo and behold, over the course of several weeks and months, if I’m talking to somebody, all of a sudden I’ll hear, “Thanks for sending me that stuff on your blog, that’s very interesting.” And I’m thinking, “Oh...I didn’t even realize that you were reading my blog.” But people come back and tell me that, and I appreciate it.

I would recommend for myself and for anyone else to get involved in some kind of a blog – whether its Kevin’s blog or something else – where new ideas are coming out as technology changes, and to not be afraid to do that (frankly I should do it more myself, I just haven’t). But I don’t want to just keep doing the same old postings all the time – I want to dress them up and make them better.

For instance, I got into the habit of posting a lot of pictures on my blog, and that looks a whole lot better than just text. But I’d like to do even more: okay, now there’s pictures, that’s good. But there’s probably more that I could do that I just haven’t done because I don’t have time to sit and figure it out. It’s got to be interesting for people that are looking at it.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Eugene Volokh [1.23.08]
• Dan Clement [1.22.08]
• Eric Goldman [1.17.08]
• Tom Kane [1.16.08]
• Shel Israel [1.15.08]

1. Rob La Gatta: When exactly did you launch your Legal Marketing Blog, and what compelled you to take a gamble on what was previously considered a somewhat risky medium for legal professionals to get involved with?

Tom Kane: I began my blog on January 5, 2005.

As to why? You know, I don’t know. I heard about blogs as the up-and-coming thing, and then had several conversations with Kevin and decided to try it. I enjoy writing, but I didn’t know how much until I started writing my blog. It has energized me about other serious writing, which I have been thinking about for years.

2. Rob La Gatta: What do you think is the most important impact blogs have had on the legal marketing industry?

Tom Kane: There are so many legal marketing related blogs out there - some good, some not as good; some newsy and gossipy, others with helpful information like providing marketing tips, strategies, etc; ones that really try to be helpful vs. others that seem to be primarily sales pitches.

The point is that the plethora of legal marketing sites out there have been helpful in getting many law firms into marketing. Many small to medium size firms have traditionally been reluctant to get serious about law firm marketing, or if they were doing anything, it was minimal. Blogging has helped them identify consultants who can help them. That’s a good thing.

3. Rob La Gatta: In the middle of the holiday season, you wrote a blog entry titled "Work your network during the holidays." Do you believe that your professional network has grown through the use of your blog?

Tom Kane: Without a question. I have gotten to know better a number of other professional marketers, who I really didn’t know all that well or at all until I began blogging. There is one consultant up in the Mid-Atlantic who I have never met and who I think is very good. She has asked me for permission to use some of my stuff, and I have used hers. Links between marketing professionals has been fruitful in helping each other, I believe.

4. Rob La Gatta: For you, what has been the most rewarding result of blogging, and what was the biggest challenge you faced along the way?

Tom Kane: The publicity and comments I have received as a result my blog, and of course the calls that have resulted in new clients. The biggest challenge was finding the time to blog, and forcing myself to stay with it. It wasn’t easy at times, but definitely worth it.

I originally thought you needed to do a blog every other day. Then, I realized that over the weekend was a waste. Lawyers on a Monday are likely to have more important things on their plate than taking the time to read a blog either by RSS feed or by email, so I cut back, taking their time constraints into consideration. I went to 3 per week, and then two per week, which I think is enough after three years of blogging. I guess I have nearly 600 entries - mostly marketing tips - at this point, and I feel really good about that.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you were approached by a lawyer just about to start his or her first blog, what is the one most important bit of advice you'd offer them? Why?

Tom Kane: As Nike says, “Just Do It”...if you enjoy writing, it is fun and you can make a difference.

Oh yeah, and it really does lead to new work.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Shel Israel [1.15.08]
• Cliff Mintz [1.14.08]
  
• Ed Poll [1.11.08]
• Carolyn Elefant [1.10.08]
• Dennis Kennedy [1.8.08]

He's hooking up with the New York Times DealBook as the Deal Professor. Steven says not to worry.

...[I]t will be the same blog covering the same topics with the same length of posts and legal analysis, just with the expanded resources of those great N.Y. Times deal reporters, including Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael de la Merced.

Expect more lawyers to become bloggers for major publications and news websites. Lawyers are killer reporters and commentators on niche legal subjects. And who's got more domain expertise?

Plus, with declining circulation of hard copy newspapers and increasing online readership, newspaper revenues are in decline. Though online revenues are on the rise, they can't match the loss of hard copy advertising and subscription revenues. As a result, newspapers and media centers are on the look out for syndicated content from good bloggers.

Golden opportunity for you law bloggers. Whether it be with national mass media, national trade media, or local/regional newspapers.

And you don't have to wait for the publications to contact you. Get to know the reporters and editors at publications for which you would like to blog. How? Comment on their stories and blog posts. Right on their news sites and and in your own blog. Send them an email from time to time. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

If you don't get asked to blog for the publication, ask them. Propose that they add a blog and that you write it.

Others following this news

• Merger blogger merges with the NYT from Larry Ribstein
• Law Professors, Blogging and The New York Times -- and Delaware Corporate Law from Franicis Pileggi
• Kudos to the NY Times' "Deal Professor" from Paul Caron
• CNET-Jana: The Legal Road Ahead from Joseph Weisenthal of paidContent.org
• Weblogs and Networking: M & A Law Prof Moves to NYTimes from Bill Gratsch
• The Deal Professor from Matt Bodie
• Law Prof Blogger Moves to the New York Times from Carolyn Elefant
• Law Professor Blogger Gets A Gig As A New York Times Blogger from Mitchell Rubinstein
• Steven Davidoff: From Law Professor Blogs Network to New York Times from Joe Hodnicki

1. Rob La Gatta: Kevin has described you as a champion for solo practitioners. What do you see as some of the most important impacts blogging has had for solo practitioners in the past few years?

Carolyn Elefant: There are so many, it’s hard to know where to start. I think that blogging help solos and small firm practitioners both on a macro level - in terms of improving the way that they’re regarded within the legal profession - and also on a micro level, in that it has specifically helped solo and small firm lawyers build practices.

I think that on the micro level, what you see are many solo and small firm lawyers who are recognizing the power of the blog, and who are developing practice-specific “niche blogs,” as Kevin calls them (I think Enrico Schaffer at Greatest American Lawyer calls them “vertical blogs”). [Solo and small firm lawyers] are developing very practice-focused blogs on their sites that are giving them visibility on the Internet and giving them credibility with clients.

But I think that another trend that you’ve seen with blogging is the explosion of blogs devoted to starting a solo practice, and that was a trend that I started with MyShingle. Since then, there have been maybe 10 or 12 blogs that talk about the benefits of solo practice, that highlight the accomplishments of solo practitioners...and I think that the profession is finally seeing the positive side of solo practice. They’re seeing the important things that solo and small firm lawyers are doing, rather than just hearing about ethics violations, or how pathetic some solo is for not calling clients back, or for coming to court with a busted briefcase…all the types of stories that you used to read about in the mainstream media. I think that that is improving the reputation of solo and small firm practitioners on a macro level.

2. Rob La Gatta: During your time writing Legal Blog Watch, have you noticed ALM making any noticeable changes to accommodate or highlight blogs?

Carolyn Elefant: I can’t speak for ALM, because I’m not employed by them and I’m not very much involved in the editorial decisions that they make. But I do know that ALM was one of the first legal publications to come up with the concept of an accompanying blog. Legal Blog Watch started in November of 2004, and that was a whole 2 years before the Wall Street Journal or some of the other mainstream newspapers were supporting blogging.

3. Rob La Gatta: Let's talk about Solo By Choice. What compelled you to write a book advising lawyers on the process of going solo?

Carolyn Elefant: I started the blog in 2002, and when I started to gain traction in 2003 or 2004, I thought, “Well, I’ve got all this material here; it won’t take much to compile these posts into a permanent format and come up with a book.” [...] I was tracking trends of people coming to solo practice from more unusual backgrounds (like from a large firm, and starting a practice maybe in securities litigation or corporate law; that is not something that solos would typically handle). So I also felt a book would allow me to write about that.

As I discovered, writing a book is a lot more than just pasting together a series of blog posts. I found the process a little bit more difficult. With writing a book, there’s more of a permanence, and in some ways that’s bad: even though my book went to press over the summer, there are already things that have changed. If it were a blog, I would simply write an update.

But at the same time, even though people do enjoy reading blogs, I think there’s also a value for people who are considered starting a practice to being able to sit in bed at night and page through a book, and actually hold something in their hands and look at it and think about it.

The other thing I wanted to add about my book is that it’s only partly a "how-to" book; it’s also a "why-to" book. The first part of the book makes the case for why lawyers who are unhappy or dissatisfied with the profession should consider starting a solo practice. It breaks my heart to see - for example, from my class in law school - really talented women, head and shoulders above me in our class ranking and intelligence, who basically left the law because it wasn’t something that was compatible with a family. I don’t think that many of them really knew that solo practice could be a viable option.

It also kills me to see these associates just chafing at large firms, earning all this money and feeling miserable, and then trying to assuage the misery by - like it said in that New York Times article ["The Falling-Down Professions," 1/6/08] - going to Neiman Marcus and buying fancy things. They could really be doing something with their careers, and they would never consider solo practice because up until now they’ve thought, “Well, a solo practitioner is a country lawyer sitting in a little office in the middle of nowhere, handling accident cases or writing wills.” They don’t realize that they can take their large firm practice, basically move their office from inside big law into their house or onto the street, and make a good living and have much more flexibility.

The second part [of the book] discusses a lot of marketing issues. There’s a huge amount of material on marketing in the digital age, which, as my colleague Susan Cartier Liebel has said, has really got to be the focal point of any person’s marketing portfolio when they start a practice today.

4. Rob La Gatta: Do you personally feel more comfortable writing blog posts, which are short and concise, or do you like being able to draw out and explain your ideas more? Which is more of a challenge for you?

Carolyn Elefant: It differs.

There’s something about when you write a blog post; you can really let your fingers fly a little bit more. You know that you can always take it down, you can always change it…in some ways, it’s easier to go into it when you don’t have that kind of commitment. Writing a book has a little bit more permanence, [and] you have to be more thorough. You have to anticipate changes that might happen, or who might read it, because you can’t change it as much. It’s a little bit more strategic.

They’re really just two types of writing styles. I enjoy both of them, and I also burn out on both of them. I find that when you do any of them long enough, it becomes a challenge to keep it fresh, whether it’s putting up different blog posts or writing chapters in the book.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you were to offer one bit of advice to a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what would it be and why?

Carolyn Elefant: First of all, they should pick a blog in a niche that hasn’t been covered. For a lawyer who has a regional practice, [try] to pick something to focus on the region, and bring in other events. For a lawyer who has a national practice, just pick a niche or some angle that hasn’t been covered. You can always find a way to make something into more of a niche.

For example, there are a couple of blogs that are devoted to Ninth Circuit Appeals. But you could focus on just Ninth Circuit Criminal Appeals, or even Ninth Circuit Decisions by a particular judge…just come up with some kind of a spin, so you have a reason for people to seek you out.

The other thing that I would recommend is to really provide some good analysis. One trend that is driving me crazy with blogging now is [when] you get people posting big chunks of news articles. First of all, it's not even always clear how much material they’ve listed from the article versus how much is their own writing, and so it’s a little bit deceptive. Second, there’s no analysis; like that New York Times article on unhappy lawyers: there are a couple of people who do give some information on it or some analysis. But there are some people who just quote a big block from the article and leave it hanging there. You can go to a thousand different blogs for that. You want to have something in your blog that makes it stand out.

And use any opportunity to latch on to a popular event, no matter how tangential it is. I mean, I think that every family law attorney these days should be blogging about the Britney Spears case, just because that’s going to improve rankings in search engines. It might even get you picked up by the media if they happen to be covering that story...they could call you for some type of analysis.

I know one colleague of mine runs a FOIA blog, and he blogged about the Wesley Snipes tax evasion case because there was a FOIA component to it. That generated so much traffic to his site...his blog really took off, and I think his business increased as a result. So see if you can come up with any way to tap into a national story - especially with the elections. Every politician these days is going to have a spin on something that matters to you, and if you can just link [your posts] into that, it’ll really help to jump-start your blog and get more exposure for it.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Dennis Kennedy [1.8.08]
• Tom Mighell [1.7.08]
• Bob Ambrogi [1.4.08]
• Colette Vogele [1.3.08]
• Denise Howell [12.21.07]

Robert was referencing what advertisers care about, but the same applies equally to you lawyers trying to achieve blog success.

So, what should you care about per Robert? (with my added commentary)

• Are you getting content that no one else is? Some lawyers are all over niche subjects that no one is covering. Cover a niche and you will not be able to keep your target audience away with a stick.
• Does that content cause conversations to happen? If you use Google Blog Search, do you find anyone linking to it? Conversations take place by others referencing points you raise, not necessarily via comments on your blog.
• Does that content get noticed in the niche you're covering? Do you get noticed by conference coordinators and trade magazines?
• Even more importantly, does it get the most credible and authoritative to link to you? Who are the bloggers most respected in your area of law or in industries who want to represent? Who are the reporters covering your niche? Get referenced by them and it's ten times as valuable as any ad or any PR person plugging for you.
• Don't ask how big your blog audience can be. That's not the end game. Ask how far can I take myself as a lawyer. Ask can I take myself to the top in my niche area of the law.

Again, blogging isn't about search engine dominance (though you'll do very well) and getting a huge audience, it's about establishing yourself as an authority in a niche through entering online conversations with the key influencers in your field.

Despite learning in writing the article that blogging works to reinforce your brand, communicate with clients or customers, identify yourself with a certain community, show your expertise, and get clients, Alboher felt she needed to warn professionals who may blog to achieve success that they may not want to.

...[A]s I know from first-hand experience, blogging is hard, and not every entrepreneur or small business is suited to it. For blogs to attract a regular readership and to be picked up by search engines, they need to be updated often and promoted. That means that the person doing the blogging for the company has to have a certain amount of time as well as commitment to the project and, of course, writing ability......I also discovered a few small businesses that successfully used blogging as part of a focused marketing strategy, in some cases dedicating an employee (or team of employees) or outside contractors to create blogs that would generate significant traffic.

I let Marci know I liked her article, but that she is making too much out of the work required to maintain a good blog. An effective blog published by a professional services person so as to further enhance their reputation and grow their business can be done in much less than the time required for other marketing/networking efforts.

A Harvard Business School newsletter talked of one post a week for a business blog. I preach that with LexBlog's hundreds of lawyer clients who are blogging. I also tell them to try get their blog posts down to half hour or so. Many spend more time, but that's because they are enjoying the process and growing their network and business as a result of their blogging.

In addition, blogging is not supposed to be a 'Woe is me, what am I supposed to write to my blog.' The best professional services bloggers listen to targeted RSS feeds from particular blogs and news websites as well as keyword/key phrase searches from Google Blog Search. A good blog post comes from, 'Boy this is great stuff I just found in my feeds, I need to share it with my readers' - adding one's commentary of course.

Blogs are a conversation, not a publishing expedition. It's easier to talk socially than it is to publish.

And blogging knowing it's all about a conversation solves the problem of growing your blog's readership. By referencing what others are writing in their blogs and reporters are writing in online news stories, such bloggers and reporters take notice of your blog. They'll often subscribe to your niche focused blog and share with their readers something you blog about.

Not everyone is trying to be an A-list blogger like Guy Kawasaki, who Alboher quotes as saying ""If you're blogging and no one is reading you, are you really even blogging?" Guy may see 500 unique visitors a month as total failure. Not the case for a 30 year old lawyer whose 500 unique visitors after a month of blogging are members of the California biotech community she is looking to reach.

I've got skin in this blog game, but working with hundreds of wonderful law bloggers around the world I have rarely heard that this blogging is too hard or takes too much time.

Jeralyns Talk Left Blog, covering the politics of crime, is far beyond the typical law blog. Nonetheless live blog as a lawyer capable of a providing unique perspective beyond that of a typical blog is a nice way to draw attention to you and your blog. Especially if it's a profile case.

Take some of Jeraylyn's thoughts yesterday as an example.

...[T]wo of the judges seemed more favorable to the defense than the government on the materiality issue and all three had problems with the exclusion of the defense expert witness without a Daubert hearing. If I were Nacchio, I'd be cautiously optimistic. If I were the Government, I'd be concerned. But no one has a crystal ball and everyone will have to wait until the opinion is rendered.

It's even better if you can do your live blogging for a local newspaper, TV/Radio station, or magazine (Jeralyn's case).

No one's expecting you to cover a trial, but an oral appeal, motion hearing, or sentencing could be done and offer good value to your community.

Expect live blogging from lawyers to be a growing trend. As the quality of lawyer blogging improves and main stream media revenues decline, the main stream media will be looking to display syndicated blog content like this on their online news sites.

 1. Rob La Gatta: You’ve said that people outside of the legal profession want to see the human side of lawyers, which is easily displayed through blogs. Can you see any potential harm that could come from lawyers displaying their “human side” to the general public?

Ernie the Attorney: No, I really don’t. I think that is one of the things that I was most intrigued by, and I still am. [...] You go to law school, and your way of thinking gets molded and changed, and you start to question things more and look for the underpinnings and analyze things. And then you come out and you’ve kind of been imbued with this appreciation and inclination towards a lot of formalism that most people in everyday life don’t have. And it’s very difficult, I think, for many lawyers – maybe most – to keep that part going, while at the same time switching gears quickly into informality (or just combining informality with formality)

I picked the name “Ernie the Attorney” because there was a magistrate in federal court, and she used to call me that. [And] she was one of those people who could be extremely formal and yet be completely down to earth at the same time: she’d see me and say, “Hey, Ernie the Attorney, how ya doing?” If she was picking a jury and the juror told her, “Oh, I’m not married…” she’d say, “A good looking man like you, not married? I can’t believe that.”

That’s not the kind of thinking that most lawyers do or feel comfortable doing. We, for whatever reason, have this sense that we have to be very distant. Kind of like doctors probably feel like they need to be distant from their patients because they’re going to do these invasive procedures and so forth, and so they have to create this distance. And I think that’s a completely wrong perception. I don’t think you have to create distance or be overly formal just because part of your professional role involves that to some extent.

Can’t you just do that part and then be a human being? I think the answer for me is, "Yeah, you can." I watch people do it. It’s totally possible, and in fact, I think it’s actually better, because it puts people at ease. If a lawyer’s job is to get their client to share confidences so that they can figure out how to help them, which one is going to be more likely to make that person want to share confidences with you? Being extremely formal, which people might interpret in the sense of being judgmental? Or is it more likely that they will tell you things that you need to know if you’re casual with them and make them feel at ease?

2. Rob La Gatta: So then why do you think so many big firms oppose the idea of being personal, and seem kind of resistant to that (if it's done through blogging)?

Ernie the Attorney: I don’t think they oppose the sense of being personal. [...] All corporations, all big firms, all large gatherings of people – and large can be more than 2 or 3, in some cases – have expectations about how the group members are supposed to behave. And then they have concerns about certain kinds of behavior getting out of line. I think with firms that still adhere to dress codes, or who say, “Well, lets go with casual Friday, and we don’t do any other days,” their concern is that people will take advantage. And that’s a legitimate concern: I think people can take advantage of being given freedom. But at the same time, that freedom is necessary and it’s important.

I don’t think firms don’t want people to have [freedom]; I think they just don’t want to see mistakes. I think the reason why [organizations] are overly controlling of individuals is because, in their mind, they’d rather not have any mistakes and shut everybody down than allow everybody to kind of try and experiment with it (and then have a few mistakes). It’s just not natural for organizations to allow small bands of people to experiment, because experiment means “try/fail/try/fail.” They don’t like that idea, because it’s just not part of the way organizations think. And yet, there’s a value to it.

[...]

Lawyers are very conservative. Nobody who is a lawyer fails to see that; it’s a conservative profession. It’s a profession dictated by tradition, by precedent, by analysis of what’s happened in the past to determine how to act in the future. It’s not the kind of profession that takes its hand off the handlebars and just says, “Well, lets see what happens.” So I think it was pretty natural that they were going to be circumspect about blogging, especially within the realm of large law firms and organizations.

But Guy Kawasaki discovered an article in the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (online summary) finding 'common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than 'key influencers.'

The study was co-authored by James Coyle, assistant professor of marketing at Miami University's Farmer School of Business, Elizabeth Lightfoot of CNET Networks, and Ted Smith and Amy Scott of MedTrackAler. They surveyed website visitors, conducted in-depth reviews, and analyzed website usage patterns. Coyle's conclusion:

'We find that trying to track down key influencers, people who have extremely large social networks, is typically unnecessary and, more importantly, can actually limit a campaign or advertisement's viral potential. Instead, marketers need to realize that the majority of their audience, not just the well-connected few, is eager and willing to pass along well-designed and relevant messages.'

Guy was a little more blunt:

I think that most key influencers are pompous, insecure jerks who take themselves way too seriously. And I say this knowing that you can rightfully accuse me of being one of them. The marketing lesson is this: Create something great, sow fields (not window boxes), 'let a hundred flowers blossom,' and pray that 'regular folks' will spread the word.

I agree. Sowing my message that effective law blogging enhances your image and grows your business has blossomed more as a result of average folks like me spreading the word than via reaching the key influencers. We've all grown up with the desire to make the cover of the 'Rolling Stone,' but it may not be necessary.