October 30, 2009 by Kevin

Why law firms need to consider email as a communication strategy on their blogs

Widely respecting blogging and social media expert, Darren Rowse, has a good post today on why bloggers need to have an email communications strategy for their blog.

Not of all Darren's points may apply to blogging lawyers (some of his blog followers are bloggers doing affiliate selling and ad campaigns ), but a number of his points ought to be considered by you.

  • The number of email subscribers to your blog may be higher than those subscribing by RSS. In Darren's case it was two times as many subscribing by email.
  • Email drives traffic. Sending out email highlighting your blog and its content will increase traffic. Be careful to note though that many (possibly most) of your RSS subscribers will not be reflected in your blog traffic as they read your posts in their feed reader and not on your blog,
  • Email may be viewed as more personal to some people and help build community. Darren believes a good email newsletter highlighting blog content is more personal than a blog post in a feed reader and establishes a connection with people. For me, I get enough email, and don't want more. I like the connections I make via RSS and the communities I feel part of as a result. But knowing some of my readers may not feel the way I do, Darren's point is well taken.
  • Email is more accessible. If you only offer RSS as a way to subscribe your blog, you're excluding a lot of people who do not use RSS. LexBlog includes an email subscription feature in all of its client's blogs.

Neither Darren nor I would advise you to forget about RSS. RSS is critically important to your blog. 11% of people use RSS and a newsreader. And those people tend to be influencers (reporters, bloggers, association leaders, publishers) innovators, and go-getters. You want those people reading your blog, spreading its content, becoming clients, and referring people to you.

I'm all with Darren, give people "[A] a variety of ways to get updates whether it be RSS, daily emails, weekly emails, Twitter updates.... whatever is relevant for your audience."

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June 15, 2008 by Kevin

Blog versus email as a communication tool

I get deluged with emails sent to me for my information, but that require no response.

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

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

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

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

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