Here’s nine of Dodaro’s tips, with a little annotating by me.

1. Use real life situations. If you want content that is relevant and relatable for your audience, strive to draw from more from real-life situations. As a lawyer keep track of questions clients and prospective clients ask. Answer them in story fashion referencing how the question arose. Call on real situations faced by clients and how you addressed them – of course sanitizing names and details to maintain confidence.
2. Write short, concise paragraphs. Keep your points short and to the point at all times and leave lots of “white space” through out your blog post. I try not to go longer than two or three sentences in a paragraph. In some cases one sentence will suffice.
3. Watch the pros. Use Twitter lists and your favorite RSS reader to keep track of blogs from the pros. Just as in the practice of law, success leaves clues when it comes to blogging. Develop your own blogging style from following successful bloggers. You may learn the most from non-law bloggers such as Dave Winer, the folks at Copy Blogger, Jeff Bullas, and Mashable writers.
4. Make use of headers and bullets. People want to be able to quickly scan your articles and still get value from them. Sub headers, bullets, and bold text make it easy for readers to scan a post and get the gist of your point. Yes, a far cry from legal writing, but it’s how people read on the net.
5. Spend more time on the title. The title is what’s responsible for getting people to read your content in the first place so it’s arguably the most important part of your entire blog post. Lawyers are notorious for long titles. Resist. Though the techniques may not be spot on for law blogs, Dodaro suggests these resources on titles: ‘10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work;’ and ‘How To Write Magnetic Headlines.’
6. Add multimedia. Dodaro saw a spike in reader engagement after incorporating custom-made graphics, videos and slideshow presentations into her blog posts. This is critically important as blog posts get curated into Flipboard, Zite, and social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Graphics and video attract attention.
7. Keep it current. If you’re blogging on a niche subject for which there are occasional developments, you’ll be conspicuous by your absence if you don’t comment when others are. On more general areas, you need not serve as a ‘junior reporter’ on every bit of news, you already have a job. But in no case can you let weeks or months go buy without posting. Doing so demonstrates a lack of passion in the area of law you have chosen and reflects poorly on your ability to stay abreast of what thought leaders are discussing in your area.
8. Write with a purpose. What audience are looking to reach? How are you engaging them? You should always have a reason and focus for each of your posts.
9. Don’t be a slave to SEO. Create compelling content that engages your target audience. Valuable content, and in the case of certain niches, indispensable content, will always do well in search. This is especially true as traditional SEO techniques give way to sharing on social networks.

Where’s number ten? Dodaro advises that numbered list-style blog posts are a classic that never get old. No doubt such posts work to draw attention and do get shared liberally. I just see it as a gimmick that ought to be used sparingly.

Thanks Melonie. Good tips that you probably weren’t directing at lawyers.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Kristy Hall.

Read ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game‘ by Michael Lewis to learn how effective it is for an organization to do what their competitors are not.

Look for those industries and areas of the law that have more future than past.

This was the message a senior partner delivered to an industry group at a successful law firm last Sunday.

I was there to share my insight on how to effectively blog and use other social media for business development. But the lawyers I was meeting with were business development pro’s. I learned as much as I shared.

The women and men in this group were representing organizations and government agencies from coast to coast. They traveled at the drop of a hat if it meant the opportunity for a meeting that could lead to new business.

They had a niche – and they dominated it. When they knocked on doors people knew of the reputation of the firm and its lawyers. A reputation built by going after areas where there was no competition.

No competition? That’s impossible.

Hardly. Look at some of the younger lawyers in this country who have knocked the ball out the park by chasing a niche. Sorry guys, everyone is a young lawyer next to me at age 57.

Look at Staci Riordan (@staciriordan) of Fox Rothschild in Los Angeles. She’s a fashion lawyer, something probably no one knew existed 5 years ago. But through blogging and using other social media, Riordan has tapped into a network that keeps on giving.

New clients. Speaking engagements in the U.S and internationally, and a presence on the Internet and offline to kill for.

Dave Donoghue (@rdd) in Chicago wanted to get a job in large law in Chicago doing IP litigation. He didn’t start an IP litigation blog, of which there are now many. He started publishing the Chicago IP Litigation Blog covering noteworthy cases from the District Court and Court of Appeals in Northern Illinois.

Donoghue got that job — with DLA Piper, and he’s since moved onto Holland & Knight. He’s developed a national reputation in IP litigation and a reputation that has led to substantial new business.

Seeing the potential in niches, Donoghue has started a second blog, Retail Patent Litigation. Not litigation, not retail litigation, not patent law, but patent litigation in the retail industry.

Think Donoghue’s scared that he’s pigeon holed himself. Hardly. He’s playing money ball, doing what his competition in large law is not.

Donoghue’s speaking at retail industry events, meeting with industry leaders, including in-house counsel, and sharing his insight via his blog and other social media is giving him a reputation and relationships other lawyers would kill for.

Yesterday was the Kentucky Derby. A few years ago Dallas’ Alison Rowe (@allisonmrowe) spoke to a breeder’s association in Louisville the day before the Derby. It was only one year after she left securities work and began to chase her dream, equine law, with the launch of her Equine Law Blog.

I sit in a lot of blog strategy sessions at LexBlog with lawyers and law firms launching new blogs. Far too many launch blogs covering areas of the law which all their competitors are covering, or will cover, in a blog. These lawyers would be better served by bucking the trend and being a maverick by going after a niche.

What do you need to develop a niche brand as a lawyer? Per Riordan:

Believe in yourself and what you are doing. With commitment, utilization of social media and the Internet and passion, others will begin to believe. And before you know it, you can go from a company to a legacy brand!

Look for areas where this no competition. Where there is more future than past. There has never been a greater opportunity to do so than in the age of blogs and social media.

Marketing and sales consultant, Marcus Sheridan, writes that when it comes to blogging there are two types of business people:

1. The person that has every excuse as to why there isn’t enough time or resources to blog (slacker); and
2. The person that makes no excuses and simply does what it takes (doer).

Sheridan shared the story of a doer – Kirk Drake, the owner of a company that specializes in backup cloud-computing services for the credit union industry. Drake knew the value of blogging and was committed to do whatever it took.

1. Along with a core staff of less than a dozen employees, Drake took the time to brainstorm all the questions they get from clients, and then turned these questions into titles for blog posts.
2. He then assigned the articles to his fellow employees and told them the company would spend 90 minutes a day, during working hours, over the course of 3 straight days, to write the answers to these questions.
3. Over a 3-day period, the staff spent a total of 4.5 hours each answering these questions in their own words, with the end result being over 100 blog posts.

Was it worth it? Drake went from getting 1-2 leads a month to one a day in just 6 months. And better yet, he saw an increase in revenue from “Somewhere between $500,000 to $1,000,000 in the first year.”

Drake continued on doing 200 blog posts and an ebook, all in the first year. Sure that sounds like a ton of a work, but if you divide the effort and grow revenue like Drake has, it’s not all bad.

The message for law firms:

• Business development takes work, there’s no way around it.
• No excuses from lawyers who say they are too busy to blog, but aren’t generating the revenue they’d like.
• Divide up the blogging load among multiple lawyers.
• Keep track of client and prospective client questions.
• Answer the questions in an easy to read conversational tone. If you can do a 3 to 3 paragraph email answer, that’s a blog post.
• No ghost authors. Lawyers answering real questions from real people are the best at answering questions quickly.

Starting LexBlog, almost 10 years ago, I advised lawyers to blog answers. Keep a legal pad on your desk and write, ‘Blog,’ across the top of it. Each time a client or prospective client calls or emails with a question write it down on your ‘blog pad.’ In a month’s time, I told them, you’ll have more questions than you can shake a stick at.

Pick out a couple questions a week and answer them. Not in memo or legalese format, but in plain talk, I explained. If you had to do an email in 20 minutes briefly answering a client’s question because you were meeting your spouse for dinner, you’d do it. Why not a blog post answering a question?

Well a lot of lawyers took my advise and they’ve generated a boat load of work as a result.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Answers to questions clients and prospective clients ask builds trust and demonstrates your care and expertise. The content also does exceedingly well on Google. You need not look for keywords when you’re using the keywords your audience is already using.

Break out of the slacker’s club – give Drake’s methods a try.

That’s a pretty shocking figure. What’s it tell us? Possibly any number of  things.

• The organizations don’t give a darn whether they have a blog or not – they were told by someone they needed to have one.
• The organizations don’t know what blogging means.
• That the blogging is done poorly and without engagement so there’s not the positive feedback which makes blogging feel worthwhile.
• The blogging was done for SEO and not to build relationships and word of mouth reputation. Blogging solely for SEO gets tiresome, unless you you’re hiring someone to create content for you — and I’m not sure that’s even a blogging.

But what strikes me as most telling is that organizations don’t blog, people do. I’ll confess I stole that from Eaun Semple (@euan) who authored, Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do.

You need to have a passion and a soul to blog. Blogging is not for everyone. You don’t just decide as part of a marketing strategy that you’re going to have a blog.

What’s the niche that drives the blog and it’s readers to the blog? Where’s the heart and passion that fuels the blog?

A blog doesn’t write itself. Someone with a passion to expresse themselves about what they are reading, or at least someone with a passion to build relationships and their reputation through blogging needs to get jazzed enough to sit at a keyboard.

For law firms, it’s even more important that it be the lawyers blogging. Sure, have a practice group blog — or even a law firm blog, if you do only one area of the law, but let the lawyers drive the conversation. It’s the trust the lawyers are establishing that grows relationships and establishes expertise.

Everyone talks about taking the online engagement offline. How can we generate business from our blog? Coffees, lunches, and a ballgame are had with people you get to know as people through blogging, not an organization.

No question, a law firm benefits by blogs driven by lawyers. Look at eMedia Law Insider, Duets Blog, and Employment and Labor Insider as examples of lawyer driven blogs benefiting the law firm.

I am sure I’ll be made out to be a liar when someone directs me to a great company blog authored by nameless individuals. I just think that’s a much tougher row to hoe than a blog driven by individuals if you’re looking to maintain and grow your blog.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Jay Cross.

Pacchia was interviewing Corey about the 2013 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey conducted by Greentarget, InsideCounsel and the Zeughauser Group. This year’s report offers ample evidence that social media tools have gone mainstream for in-house counsel, especially blogs and LinkedIn.

Takeaways from the interview on blogs:

• In-house counsel have become veracious consumers of content, particularly blogs.
• In-house counsel continue to view law blogs as reliable and credible sources.
• Blogs continue to be very valuable in growing your influence as a lawyer.
• If blogs are done well and properly executed, in-house counsel believe blogs influence their hiring decisions.

As for LinkedIn, it has the greatest concentration of lawyers of any social network. How do in-house counsel use LinkedIn?

• To connect with outside counsel they work with.
• To connect with outside counsel they do not work with.
• To get news and information.
• To connect with business leaders.
• 60% have used LinkedIn in the last week and 40% in the last 24 hours.

Watch the full interview (8 minutes) to see how general counsel are using blogs, LinkedIn, and other social media to hire law firms.

[Replaced iframe with content: http://www.youtube.com/embed/MnPJTTF8FBc?feature=oembed]

Serving as intelligence agent is an excellent way of establishing yourself as a reliable and trusted authority in a niche area of the law. Let me share some context on what I mean.

Before social media in the form of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more, we had blogs.

Blogs to share information and insight, and blogs to converse with others by ‘listening’ to what they were saying. We listened through something called trackbacks (pinged our blog when our blog was cited) and rudimentary RSS readers. Google Reader, which is going away soon, had not yet arrived.

My blog was my way of sharing information everyone else had not seen — or wasn’t looking for (blogs were viewed as unseemly by lawyers then). Lawyers and others serving them began to follow my blog to pick up tips, ideas, and insight on how to network through the Internet (via blogging) to grow their practices.

My friend, Buzz Bruggeman (@buzzmodo), a fellow lawyer and founder of ActiveWords, told me I was acting as an intelligent agent. I was seeing information and intelligently sharing it with my target audience — I was serving as my audience’s agent.

With everyone ‘listening’ to what everyone else was blogging, the key was to listen to things others were not listening to. Otherwise I’d just be repeating what everyone else was saying. I wouldn’t be adding much in my role as an intelligence agent.

My key was Google News. I could ‘listen’ for subjects and phrases to pick up news and insight from not only the U.S., but from around the world, and have stories fed to my RSS Reader. I was picking up and sharing items no one else was seeing.

My friend, Steve Rubel, (@steverubel), Chief Content Strategist for Edelman, described what he and I were doing by using Google News as getting outside the conversation silo. Rather than just re-hash what others were talking about, bring outside information to the conversation.

Almost 10 years later, I continue to do the same old thing. I monitor words and phrases from Google News/Alerts. I listen to words such as ‘Facebook,’ ‘LinkedIn,’ ‘networking,’ and ‘blogging.’ Google sends me only stories from the most influential sources so I am not overwhelmed.

There are shortcuts today to Google News/Alterts. Zite, a personalized news aggregator brings you news stories and blog posts you may be interested in. Twitter, if you nail the right people to follow and use lists effectively, can also be a good source.

Go slow on the shortcuts though. Many people use the same shortcuts so the information you share on your blog and via other social media may be a rehash of what’s already out there.

Serving as intelligence agent is an excellent way of establishing yourself as a reliable and trusted authority in a niche area of the law. Just make sure you get outside the conversation silo to make it happen.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Tom Kelly.

One, blogs are now widely accepted as an effective business development tool for law firms and two, law firms and companies selling marketing solutions to law firms believe the primary purpose of a blog is to generate traffic to the law blog and to the law firm’s website.

It’s great to see blogs widely accepted, but it’s sad to see that many folks don’t understand what law blogs are all about. Blogging is a conversation where you engage others so as to build trust, a word of mouth reputation, and relationships. Blogging is a form of networking. The goal is not to draw traffic and attention.

Could you imagine someone going to a networking event and running around shaking everyone’s hand? Maybe even slapping in everyone’s hand a copy of something they wrote. “Something’s got to stick. Somebody’s bound to love me. Someone’s bound to call, I had my phone number, email, twitter handle, and LinkedIn link on every page.” That’s called networking spam.

Stephen Fairley (@stephenfairley), CEO and founder of the Rainmaker Institute, addressed the question of how someone could expand the reach of their law firm blog with 5 tips to spread the influence of a blog. Social media, newsletter, SEO, press releases, and posting to websites, such as JD Supra, Avvo, and the National Law Review.

Fairley, a nice guy, is not alone in his view that traffic to a blog grows the blog’s influence. Any number of speakers at the Legal Marketing Association spoke about how to generate traffic to blogs. And the companies offering solutions to generate wider dissemination content are run by great people offering good solutions. Traffic just ought not to be your guiding force in blogging.

Let traffic be your guiding force and you’ll start posting each of your blog posts across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and in multiple groups in LinkedIn without sharing others content in social media before your own. You run a high risk of looking like a spammer.

I use social media. My blog and the other thousand on our network are optimized to be indexed so as to be readily found on search. But I’d answer the question of how someone could expand the reach of their law firm blog differently.

Knowing that blogging is about engaging others, the key to growing influence is not traffic, it’s about engaging the right people. Traffic, and even fame, may come from engagement. But they are by-products of engagement, not the primary goal.

Want to increase the influence of your blog and your influence as a lawyer through blogging? Listen to what thought leaders and influencers are saying online. Engage reporters, leading bloggers, and association leaders through your blog by referencing what they are saying and providing your insight and commentary as a follow on. You’ll be seen by these folks and many will begin to follow you — so long as you’re sincere in bringing value to the conversation and not looking to garner attention.

Robert Scoble (@scobleizer), one of the most influential bloggers in the country, made clear years ago that the size of one’s audience is not what matters for blog success. Success in blogging is about establishing yourself as a trusted and reliable authority through entering online conversations with the key influencers in your field.

This style of blogging allows you to build trust, a word of mouth reputation, and relationships. This style of blogging will bring you the type of work you are looking for from the type of clients you’ll enjoy working for.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Watchsmart.

Most of what we inherit is so clearly correct it goes unseen. It fits the world seamlessly. It is the world. But despite its richness and variability, the well-defined world we inherit doesn’t quite fit each one of us, individually. Most of us spend most of our time in other people’s worlds — working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment — and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true.

And so you make your place in the world by making part of it — by contributing some new part to the set. And surely one of the more astonishing rewards of artmaking comes when people make time to visit the world you have created. Some, indeed, may even purchase a piece of your world to carry back and adopt as their own. Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not yet done.

It’s from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

The excerpt applies well to lawyers and why many lawyers blog.

Many lawyers do indeed spend their time in other people’s worlds. Perhaps being in a large firm and feeling things are out of control or in meeting the needs of a less than desirable client.

All too many lawyers after chasing a law degree and slugging it out in the workplace for 6 or 7 years feel something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true. After all, lawyers have the highest incidence of depression of any profession.

Blogging in area in which you have a passion, no matter how dialed in the niche, gives you the feeling you are making your place in the world. There was no equine law blog before yours. Or one on food safety, Canadian mining law, Texas state and local tax law, or cruise law.

We’re astonished as lawyers when people come to visit and take some part of our blog with them. People even call to hire us in areas we’re passionate about.

Wow. What a reward. Contribute passionately to the world — even in a small way — and get hired at the same.

That’s why we grew up to be lawyers and why blogging by lawyers still matters.

Image courtesy of Flickr by fotologic.

Carolyn’s reasoning was based in large part on the message we should take from Google closing down Google Reader.

So what can we learn from the demise of Google Reader? First, that blogging (at least conversational blogging rather than blogging for SEO) is on the decline (I know that my buddy Kevin O’Keefe will disagree – but hear me out. GoogleReader grew out of Google’s launch of Blogger and provided a tool to make it easier for blogs to gain traffic. Here, my experience is typical; as a long time blogger, I relied heavily on GoogleReader for new stories (particularly when I was pumping out ten to twelve posts a week during my three year stint at Legal Blogwatch.

Yet lately, I’ve noticed that many of the younger people who’ve passed through my office as interns or clerks over the past few years don’t use GoogleReader, relying instead on other services like email alerts or GoogleNews tools to track new events.

Elefant goes on to lament that a younger generation of lawyers really doesn’t know what blogging means. They’re hooked on the big name blogs ala Above The Law or Huffington Post. They look to curation sites, many just pulled together for SEO, rather than listening to what is being shared and discussed on blogs via an RSS reader so as to engage in a conversation via blogging.

But blogging is not on the decline. The evidence is to the contrary.

Blogging continues to grow and the opportunity for you as lawyer to carve out, via blogging, a strong reputation in an area you are passionate about has never been greater.

• Tumblr is now home to over 100 million blogs and 44.6 billion individual posts, doubling the 20 billion marker Tumblr hit just last March. Tumblr’s users are cranking out 82.7 million posts each day.
• In a Wall Street Journal article last month, Brad Feld (@bfeld), a widely respected investor and entrepreneur, pointed out that blog readership is at an all time high and continues to grow providing a tremendous opportunity to market yourself or organization.
• The number of AmLaw 200 law firms blogging has grown almost 30% in just the last thirteen months. (State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere)
• The number of blogs published by AmLaw 200 law firms has almost doubled in that same time frame. (same report)

Sure, blogging has changed. Only six or seven years ago blogging was the only game in town to listen to and engage in online discussion. We blogged about what each other wrote on their blogs and listened to what each other wrote via an RSS reader.

We didn’t have Twitter to respond, let alone LinkedIn or Facebook to engage others. Now many lawyers use Twitter, not an RSS reader, to listen to what is being written on blogs and news sites. We didn’t have apps such as Flipboard or Zite so as to read relevant curated content.

Arguably, these additional social media and apps have raised the quality of engagement and insight emanating from law blogs. They’re sure making blogging more fun and less time intensive.

No question that not all law bloggers are up to speed on engagement through blogging. Many don’t care, they’re just chasing SEO. For other lawyers it’ll take time and a little coaching and encouragement. Not every lawyer could stomach the Wild Wild West ‘learn as we go’ days of law blogging that many of us loved.

But just as in 2003 when many of us saw blogging as a perfect fit for lawyers, there are many lawyers (many more than in 2003) who are just finding blogs a good fit to enhance their reputation and build relationships.

May sound crazy, but I think the evidence is that we’re just scratching the surface when it comes to law blogging.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Robert Nyman.

…[B]log readership is at an all time high and continues to grow, yet the volume of unique blogs has declined. If you’re a smart marketer, you realize this means tremendous opportunity because people are still consuming blogs, yet the competition is not growing in ferocity or volume.

Law firms launch blogs by practice groups, industry groups, or existing practiced of individual lawyers. This has worked for some firms, but for many firms this has left firms measuring success by how much content they are producing and traffic – not increased revenue.

In addition many lawyer and firms are missing out on tremendous opportunities they’ve never had before.

What if a firm saw a growing opportunity for doing eminent domain work for the fast food industry or vineyards. Such blogs would be one in a million and would only need to land 1 or 2 sizable matters a year (very possible) for the effort to pay off. And how could you have ever chased such niches as fast before the net and blogs?

Veteran lawyer now lawyer coach, Cordell Parvin (@cordellparvin asked last week “Who will become the “hot sauce” industry go-to lawyer?”

Parvin’s point was though “hot sauce” is one of the top 10 fastest growing industries, he did not see a lawyer going after it. One of the tactics Parvin recommended was a blog.

Parvin ought to know, when he was developing a national construction litigation practice, he went after the highway and transportation defect niche. Others thought he was nuts, but he grew a bigger practice than those doing construction litigation in general.

Rather than measuring ROI with hollow website traffic statistics, well done nice blogs measure success in seven figures.

Blogging on what brung you may serve many law firms well. Others ought heed Wayne Gretzky’s insight, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

Image courtesy of Flickr by Pascal Maramis.