But Erik Sebellin-Ross, a senior account executive with Peppercom Strategic Communication, offers some advice on what PR people can do for bloggers.

A big part of our job is to provide information, so, if you have questions about a company, product, or service, PR people can help you get the answers. If you want to speak with an executive, engineer, designer, or other employee, we can help you there, too – we even book meetings. If you want to review a product, or try out a service, you guessed it: we can help with this, too.

The best and fastest way to find a PR contact is to go to the website of a company you’re interested in and find their press or media page. This is regularly found under the ‘About Us’ or ‘Contact Us’ pages. Another alternative is to look for a press release – we almost always list our contact information on these.

One caveat of Erik's is to be reasonable in what we expect.

...[A]s much as we’d like to work with every single publication and blog, regardless of size, we realistically cannot. When you contact us, we’ll sometimes ask you to tell us about who reads your blog, what kind of traffic you get, and what you want to write about so we can decide if we can devote time to you. If you’re turned down because you’re too small, consider banding together with a group of similar bloggers and approach the PR person as a unified group to increase your value.

I have emailed communications people with multi-national corporations and major law firms and received helpful responses. Responses that I then blogged as any reporter would.

Last year, I emailed the PR folks at Chubb Insurance asking them to respond to Chubb's denial of malpractice coverage for law firms publishing blogs. Two days later, I received a press release directly on point from Chubb's Public Relations Specialist. This when a reporter at the National Law Journal couldn't get Chubb to respond to their request on the same issue.

Erik does acknowledge the spam like scenario I opened with.

...[S]ometimes PR professionals (fresh-faced interns and grizzled veterans alike) make honest mistakes. Or, worse, don’t do their homework. They build lists of targets without ensuring that every single target is perfect, and they blast out an email using the blind carbon copy feature…and suffer the consequences. Of which there are rarely any – unless we’ve pitched ValleyWag. In the process, of course, we basically spam you and ensure you hate seeing our names appear in your inbox. If it is the former, we truly are sorry. If it is the latter, I’m even more sorry.

But maybe from now on, I'll do what Erik says - to take a moment to look beyond the PR person's email. Maybe the PR person can help me get more information about something I could blog about.

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.

Not a study solely about lawyers, but one that finds nearly one-in-five adult internet users (19%) say they have searched for information about co-workers, professional colleagues or business competitors with an online search engine. Searches are also being done on people users are meeting for the first time as well as those who we're considering hiring.

You've got to believe the number of people doing such background checks increases when you have two additional factors in play, as is the case with lawyers. The need to place great trust in the person being searched. The higher the amount being charged by the person being searched.

Ask yourself what people are finding when they search you. If it's only your website and directory listing or two, you're in trouble.

This per the 'Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki' put together by Easton Ellsworth and John Cass working with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext.

The wiki provides a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products, a sampling of their blogs, and links to Fortune 500 business blog reviews.

Law firms competing for legal work from the Fortune 500 companies who are blogging may want to ask themselves why their law firm isn't blogging.

I would love to see some of you there or perhaps we could meet up on Monday afternoon, Tuesday evening, or early Wednesday. I always enjoy meeting some of my readers who may have in interest in legal blogging or social networking.

The conference, presented by the Ark Group, is on 'Optimizing Your Firm’s Business Development Initiatives through the Dissemination of Information into Actionable Intelligence.'

This master class facilitated by, Mark Young, Chief Marketing Officer, Foley Hoag LLP and Meghan Gross, Public Relations Manager, Foley Hoag LLP, will help you:

• Move away from traditional, inward-facing law firm messaging
• Determine if, when and how to structure a stand-alone PR position
• Maximize agency resources
• Build internal communications systems ensuring that your external systems hum
• Explore how social media applications can enhance the PR program
• Make your MPs your “brand”
• Align PR with your clients for maximum success

Other presenters include:

• Allan Ripp, Founder, Ripp Media Relations
• Ameet Sachdev, The Chicago Tribune
• Joe Weber, Business Week
• Marco Greenberg, Co-Founder, Thunder 11
• Mark Young, Chief Marketing, Foley Hoag LLP
• Martha Neil, ABA Journal
• Meghan Gross, Public Relations Manager, Foley Hoag LLP

I'll be addressing social media issues so as to get beyond the press release.

The conference is right downtown at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. Click here for more info.

Per business coach Deborah Micek in an article in this morning's Honolulu Star Bulletin:

The answer is simple when you consider the history of marketing and communication: A blog exponentially multiplies the world's oldest, favorite and most-trusted form of information sharing -- word of mouth.

People love sharing what they know with like-minded friends.

Think about it. Whom do you trust the most to give you advice, recommendations and information about opportunities, purchases or choices?

If you're like most people, the person you trust the most is someone you know -- someone whom you feel is just like you.

That type of trust comes from personal communication, conversations and relationships built with people who share common interests. When your blog is integrated into a complete new-media marketing strategy, it delivers all that and more.

And why do blogs work so well per Micek?

• Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you to easily update your content, create relationships and build trust with your target audience.
• The power of blogs is not in the technology, but in the two-way conversations that create personal connections.
• A blog becomes a personal extension of the author, who builds relationships by responding to the feedback from clients and readers.
• Blogs are not just for press releases, product updates, or company news. Blogs are an open door to communication where customers and prospects can voice their opinions, contribute to product development and become part of your company family.
• Blogs provide the public with a more reliable way of getting news and information, free from mass-media manipulation and interruption marketing.

Slow down and think about the history of lawyer marketing for a minute.

Until the 1977 Supreme Court decision in the case of Bates v. Arizona State Bar we didn't have any lawyer marketing or advertising. Notta. No yellow pages. No law firm newsletters. No ads on busses. No TV ads with 1-800-lawyers. No websites touting the wonderful exploits of lawyers.

How the heck did we lawyers survive? By reputation spread by word of mouth. And we earned this reputation by establishing ourselves as reliable and trusted authorities. It didn't necessarily come easy. We worked at. And that was okay.

Now we expect instant client development by throwing dollars at advertising, search engine optimization, and what ever the next snake oil salesperson will serve up for thousands of dollars.

Doesn't word of mouth make more sense in the long run? For a lot of lawyers and other business people who are blogging it does.

That ought to send shock waves through large law firms with expensive PR and communication programs designed to get their lawyers quoted in print. Unfortunately it's not.

I continue to run across law firm heads who know little about online publishing - unless you count archiving old articles and newsletters on websites. Chief Marketing Officers and PR heads in large law act like blogs, by far and away the largest producer of online niche news & information, are for kids. Mention RSS and newsreaders, the way innovative business people and reporters syndicate and receive news, and I'm told that's too techie, we're not into that stuff around here.

Even worse is that there's little being done in large law to adapt. Marketing and communication heads hire outside agencies they're comfortable with, often whom have no experience or taste for online publishing through blogs and RSS. Heck, some PR agencies representing law firms have a conflict of interest in seeing such new ways of PR work, they'd be out of a job.

Although there's some education in the legal marketing profession on new methods of PR, there's not enough. I'm amazed when I get out and speak that legal marketing professionals know little about the subject and ask me why thete's not more people presenting on the topic.

As The New Yorker's Eric Alterman wrote about the web, '[Content] distribution is frictionless, swift, and cheap.' That's why individual lawyers in large law firms who are publishing blogs are garnering significant press. Being quoted in two to three stories a month is not unusual.

Law firms need to wake up. Those who do will hold a significant competitive edge.

Answers ranged into the hundreds for some with the vast majority of professionals subscribed to feeds from at least 20 or 25 blogs.

Tells me that PR people are using blogs for a few purposes. One, as a means of following what's going on in areas they're working on for clients. Two, learning new skills and methods from thought leaders in the PR and communications field. And three, for networking with fellow professionals and mentors.

I question whether PR and communications employed in large law firms are monitoring that many blog RSS feeds in newsreaders. I talk to a lot of law firm marketing professionals who are not using RSS feeds from blogs and keyword searches at all. Some PR and communication professionals have even told me it sounds like a waste of time getting information from unreliable sources.

What are you guys seeing? If you're a law firm marketing professional, how many blogs do you subscribe to via RSS feeds?

I probably get 30 press releases or announcements a day from organizations looking for me to blog about them. Can't remember the last time such an an email from someone I didn't know caused me to blog about what they sent me.

Uber blogger Robert Scoble, recently of Fast Company, offers some sound advice on how to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere.

Read Robert's whole post but here's the highlights.

• Go where the bloggers are. Create a list of few dozen bloggers and get to know them. If possible, go to events such bloggers are attending. Looking at Upcoming.org's event calendars frequently, you can figure out which events a preponderance of bloggers say they're attending and keep track of them.
• Read the blogs of the people you want to cover you. Send them a note within minutes of their posting, blog about their posts, link to their blogs from your own blog, and add public comments to posts. Not only does each blogger get to know you, but their readers do too.
• Send bloggers interesting stories -- especially about other people -- that you think they would be interested in. When you have something about your own business to announce, those bloggers will be more receptive to you than to some PR firm that only flacks for its clients.
• Start blogging. When a blogger hears an interesting story, they go to Google and start searching other blogs so they can read more about it. Tell your story on your own blog.
• Don't send press releases. The blog world is built on relationships.

Bloggers matter when it comes to PR. LexBlog's grown from the garage to a company with 14 people serving law firms across the country and internationally largely by my networking with other bloggers. Not once did I send out a press release.

Sure, there's a place for law firms use of PR agencies, but lawyers who are blogging effectively are regularly being interviewed and quoted by reporters. And they're getting these interviews without any PR support.

I agree with Rich Brooks at Business Blog Consulting who business blogs can bring you killer PR.

Let's face it, journalists are having to do more with less, so they're more and more likely to turn to Google and other search engines to track down 'experts' in a given field.

As you continue to build your blog over time, creating great content in a specific niche, Google's more likely to return your blog as a result when a journalist starts researching a column or article. I've never hired a PR firm, and I work out of the top right corner of the US us locals call 'Maine', but I've gotten quotes in Inc., BusinessWeek Small Biz, and other periodicals and the local evening news because of our Web marketing blog.

Rich is not alone. LexBlog's lawyer clients are regularly quoted in mass and trade media publications. Some are getting interviewed a few times a month. And LexBlog clients aren't alone. At the ABA TechShow last week I spoke with any number of lawyers publishing blogs who are amazed at the media attention they are getting via their niche focused blogs.

Only makes sense. 75& of reporters are using blogs and RSS as a means to locate experts and get insight on stories they are working on. One Wall Street Journal reporter has called the ability to subscribe to keywords via RSS feeds from Google Blog Search and Technorati the lazy man's way of investigative reporting.

If you're a lawyer who would like to be quoted by reporters or you're a law firm business development/communications looking to get your lawyers quoted as experts, you could do a lot worse than a blog.

• Over 75% of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue.
• 70% of reporters check a blog list on a regular basis.
• 21% of reporters spend over an hour per day reading blogs.
• 57% of reporters read blogs at least two to three times a week.

Journalists are also increasingly active participants in the blogosphere.

• 28% of reporters have their own blogs.
• 16% have their own social networking page.
• 48% say they are "lurkers" - reading blogs but rarely commenting.

The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors. You may obtain a copy of the survey here.

Blogging lawyers are regularly contacted by reporters for stories relating to the lawyer's niche area of the law. Results in an interview from which the lawyer is quoted in a main stream or trade publication reaching prospective clients or their influencers. I get called about once a week.

Talking with lawyers, I've been referencing a 2 year old study finding 40% of journalists using blogs as a source once a week. So it was nice to pick up this recent research.

For the unknowing, NC is a one of the seminal books on blogging. From wikipedia:

[Robert Scoble and Shel Israel] argue that almost every business can benefit from smart "naked" blogging, whether the company's a small-town plumbing operation or a multinational fashion house. "If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers.

If you're in a PR or business development position (aren't we all) trying to follow blogs and learn what blogs are all about, read it. If the concepts don't make sense, read it again. If you're already blogging effectively, read it. It gets the juices really going.

Shel's comments on the the two year anniversary are enlightening.

It's hard to believe it has only been two years since the book was introduced.� Sometimes it seems the writing of Naked Conversations happened a very long time ago.� Sometimes I think the stories we told are ancient. Yet the book is still selling moderately well, which please me almost as much as it surprises me.

Then I realize that the stories are old only if you have already heard them.� Blogging has, of course, become only a single tool in an enormous social media tool shed. It has also become fruitful and multiplied.� We wrote when there were about 14 million bloggers.� Now there are more than 100 million. There may be as many as a half-billion people involved in social media worldwide.

What has remained intact, I think, is our key point.� There is a revolution going on that is transforming the way businesses talk with customers. That revolution has a key attribute. It's about the conversation, not any one tool.

Thanks Robert and Shel.

Small problem. Micromedia, whether it be news websites or blogs are more likely to publish your stories. Plus those websites and blogs reach just as many people as do the traditional media.

Search Engine Watch's Greg Jarboe researched media coverage of two very large high profile search technology conferences. He conducted several searches on Google News and Yahoo News and found more than 150 stories from the past month.

Only 1 percent of the more than 150 stories were written by the traditional trade press. 88% of the coverage came from online publications and group blogs. The other 11% came from press releases themselves which were put out by PR professionals.

Jarboe also found out that the number of visitors to those online publications and blogs was the equivalent of the circulation of print publications that could be expected to cover the story.

His advice? At least one of your PR and communications people should be focused on blogs and online media.

Bet you my house, there aren't five law firms with a PR person dedicated to blogs and online media. The part that's really a shame is that they could get a talented person to do the job for less than $50,000 per year.

That's right - $50,000 for a young person who gets social media and online publishing to monitor blogs and online media for stories relevant to the law firm, its lawyers, and its clients; to id blogs and online media to network with; and with the guidance of senior folks, to create and execute an effective blog marketing program for a few of the firm's practice groups.

Among their findings:

• Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable to their activities as more customers and influencers use them.
• Twenty-seven percent reported that social media is a core element of their communications strategy.
• Only three percent stated that social media has little or no value to their communications initiatives.

And the most effective tools for their social media initiatives:

• Blogs
• Online video
• Social networks

The top three criteria for determining the relevance and potential influence of a blogger or podcaster:

• Quality of content on the blog or podcast
• Relevance of content to the company or brand
• Search engine rankings

Online engagement was not viewed as important. However, it's possible that we're dealing with PR/Communications folks, who in the absence of blogging themselves, cannot appreciate the value of networking via blogging.

For online communities and social networks, the top three criteria for evaluating influence do reflect the importance of online engagement:

• Participation level
• Frequency of posting by the community member
• Name recognition of the individual

Detailed results of the study will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of New Communications Research and a full report will be made available via the Society and the Institute for Public Relations in early 2008.

B.L. shared a few comments made by corporate PR professionals at a marketing session she recently attended.

• 'People who read blogs aren't very educated.'
• '98% of what's on blogs is BS. It's all BS.'

B.L. says she wouldn't even share the comments about whether or not bloggers are journalists, or idiots. And about whether corporations should blah blah blog.

I'll need to remember this the next time the Chief Marketing Officer or PR/Communications head for a large law firm is on a conference call trying to reign in the firm's lawyers and front line marketing mangers who are ready to blog. Gosh knows you wouldn't want to use a medium you don't understand to cost effectively keep clients and the firm's lawyers informed of the latest legal developments and further enhance the reputation of the firm's lawyers among your target audience.

I'm afraid that marketers and PR folks feel that bloggers are amateurish reporters starved for attention - 'they'll blog anything.' Look at Bill Hartzer's advice to companies at Search Engine Watch:

If a blogger receives a press release directly from a company in their industry, most likely they will pay attention to it. After all, bloggers are always looking for something to write about. And it's the bloggers who have the power to link directly to the corporate Web site, which will ultimately help your site's search engine rankings.

I suppose a release from a PR professional that had read my blog, knew the value adds I like to share with readers, and knew what made me tick, may send a press release along with a personal email about something I may wish to post. But I don't get that.

I get crap from PR people and advertisers that have never read my blog and know nothing about what I do or write. They are throwing spaghetti up on the wall and seeing if anything will stick. And these folks went to college to learn how to do this?

Shot gun press releases sent to bloggers are the equivalent of spam. 99.9% of the time they draw no blog coverage. In fact, you're just turning bloggers off, something that's not in your interests.

The circulation declines of American newspapers continued over the spring and summer, as sales across the industry fell almost 3 percent compared with the year before, according to figures released yesterday.

The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.

On of the ways lawyers enhance their reputation as an authority is being quoted in newspapers on relevant stories. Getting quoted has not been easy though. Usually took a little luck and in many cases, some PR folks with a nice rolodex of reporter contacts.

But online newspapers open more doors for lawyers to showcase their expertise.

• Local newspapers often allow comments to stories, offering an opportunity for you as a lawyer to add your take just as if the reporter had called you for a quote.
• Virtually all newspapers have blogs. Leave a comment, with your name, email and blog's url. Readers click on links to commentors blogs.
• Newspapers are looking for citizen bloggers, other than their reporters. I've seen more than once a blog run by a lawyer on a consumer or small business law topic. Approach your newspaper with the idea. Show them your blog as evidence of your abilities.
• Quote online newspapers in your own blog adding your own take. Email the reporter a link to the post letting them know you shared the story with your readers and you'd be happy to be a resource for similar stories as you regularly publish on the topic at your blog.
• In time, newspapers are going to become information centers incorporating blog feeds from local citizens. Getting known by the paper now gives you a leg up that your blog feeds will be included.

No question there is a disintermediation of PR professionals and reporters going on. Not taking advantage of it is your loss.

Reader blog traffic was up 70 percent for October in the case of the Seattle Post Intelligencer blogs.

• 16 blogs attracted more than 10,000 page views
• 8 had more than 20,000 page views
• 4 had more than 50,000 page views
• 101 of their 116 blogs posted increases

The day is going to come when newspapers take on the role of 'information centers, where user generated content (blogs) play as important a role in drawing readers as traditional news stories reported by a newspaper's reporters.

Lawyer blogs reporting on niche subjects will be assimilated into such news right along side reporter's stories.

Every product team at Google has a blog but their focus is strictly PR, not to give rise to a conversation on the blogs, none of which allow comments.

And as Karen Wickre, 'mother of Google's blogs', on her work as editor & 'gatekeeper' of the official Google blogs told Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land in an interview, all blog posts are reviewed before published live to the net.

While it's important to have a review, I never want to overwrite what a Googler is saying about their topic or product. All posts are reviewed by a few relevant people on the immediate team, plus a PR person for approval. As a rule, this isn't labor-intensive or overbearing. We try to encourage original perspectives and stories insofar as company blogs can feature those. We share drafts in Google Docs and do edits there. Again, I try hard not to overwrite or have the team wordsmith to death. That's not going to get us interesting reads.

Google's blogging does work. Even though comments may not be allowed on the blogs themselves, blog posts from Google often generate vibrant discussion on the blogosphere. Who wouldn't want to know what to know what Google is up to? And for many of us, who wouldn't to spread the fact on their own blog that they follow what Google is doing?

Law firms may also want to follow Google's lead on the use of blogs in place of press releases. As Karen told Danny, 'Much more often than a press release ... we'll issue a blog post.' Because of the tens of thousands of bloggers and reporters who subscribe to Google's blogs, a blog post is more widely disseminated than a press release.

Source on post: Google Blogoscoped

Was going to mention to Bay Area commercial lawyers as a way to further enhance their reputations. You know, comment on relevant posts, get to know the reporter, get to know other commenters. Great way to get known for what you do by influencers in the Bay Area.

But the whole set up for this blog is lame. One, I didn't see any RSS feeds. How could one follow posts. Second was pop up ads. Third, and most offensive was that before you could comment you needed to register. Registration required the typical newspaper demographic junk like date of birth, where you live, and your gender.

Newspapers, who are experiencing declining revenues, have a golden opportunity to become more relevant with readership. It's through interacting with bloggers. Bloggers referencing your online newspaper content on their posts and commenting at your blog are going to drive traffic to you.

To take advantage of this opportunity, newspapers cannot set up all walls that say 'we do not want you bloggers, go away.' But that's exactly what newspapers are saying when they set up special 'blog rules of their own,' by having no RSS feeds, pop up ads, and requiring demographic info to comment.