October 18, 2010 by Kevin O'Keefe

Will blogging become essential for lawyers to establish trust?

In order to establish trust these days, producing helpful content for your target audience is essential. This per John Jantsch, publisher of Duct Tape Marketing, a leading resource on small business marketing.

...[P]eople today have come to expect to find information about any product, service, company, individual, cause or challenge they face by simply turning to the search engine of their choice. So, if they’re not finding content that you’ve produced that provides them that information, even if someone referred them directly to you, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t be worthy of their trust.

I guess I am going to tell you that you’ve got to commit to content production, but you’ve got to make it a part of your overall strategy and you’ve got to produce content with an eye on doing two things – educating and building trust.

What's the leading way to produce content to build trust? Blogging says Jantsch.

I think a blog is the absolute starting point for your content strategy because it makes content production, syndication and sharing so easy. The search engines love blog content as well and this is the place where you can organize a great deal of your editorial thinking. Content produced on a blog can easily be expanded and adapted to become content for articles, workshops and ebooks.

Other content that can establish trust, per Jantsch, includes social media, reviews, testimonials, white papers, and FAQ's. But with so many people reading blogs these days, including in-house counsel, and with blog content being regularly shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it's difficult to see other content having the impact of a blog.

People looking for a lawyer are as apt to be doing research on the underlying legal issue they face as they are to be looking for a lawyer. For example, someone looking for an estate planning lawyer is also going to be looking for information on the estate planning issue they face, whether it a type of trust, a tax issue or something else. They'll still hire a lawyer. They're just doing research so they are informed.

Lawyers producing relevant content on the estate planning issue being researched are going to be looked at as trusted advisors. Lawyers not producing such content are less likely to be viewed as a reliable and trusted authority.

No question that people expect to find good information on any subject they research online. With the advent of law blogs published by good lawyers, people are finding more and more sound, practical legal information. The quality of information is only going to improve with the huge growth in legal blogging we're seeing.

This presents a golden opportunity to establish trust for lawyers willing to give of themselves through blogging. For those unwilling to blog, they are less likely to be trusted when their competition is blogging.

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September 13, 2010 by Kevin O'Keefe

Law blogs may be single best way to get links for SEO

Though I don't believe high search rankings should be the leading reason for publishing a law blog, your publishing a blog may be your single best way of achieving high search engine rankings as a lawyer or law firm.

Incoming links from other relevant sites to your blog or website is probably the single most important factor in achieving high search engine rankings on Google. Getting those incoming links from more important websites or blogs is even better. What's a more important site per Google? A site with lots of incoming links.

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, had a good post last week on seven of the best ways to acquire those all important links. Blogging ranked number one.

Write a blog. Without question creating a blog and consistently writing keyword rich content is the number one SEO activity for the small business. (For any size business) This is no longer something to debate, blog content will improve your chances to compete in the search engines many times over and draw links from other blogs and sites that syndicate content.

Next in line was guest posting on other blogs, something active law bloggers have a much better opportunity to do.

A variation to writing on your blog is to seek out other blogs and offer to write content that is useful and relevant to their audience. Make certain that you get to place a link back to your site in the body of the post and look for blogs that are well read.

Other ways Jantsch includes in the best way to get links fit nicely with your publishing a blog.

  • Submit posts and articles to online directories of articles. With a blog, you've got a steady stream of possible articles.
  • Leave relevant comments on other blogs. When blogging, commenting on other blogs comes naturally. While the linking benefit may be negligible, commenting prompts the blog author to visit your blog.
  • Create profiles on social media websites. Such sites routinely ask you to link to your blog.

Lawyers and law firms spend a ton of money on search engine optimization (SEO). Some of it may be well spent. But in many cases it's throwing money down a rat hole. Often to companies who have a track record of over charging and under delivering.

Often companies selling SEO services to lawyers are selling the easy way out. There's no substitute for creating valuable content and acquiring the right types of incoming links. Companies in effect selling you links can lead, as Jantsch says, "...[T]o getting your hand slapped or worse by the search engines."

I blog and most of the lawyers on the LexBlog Network blog for reputation enhancement and engaging our target audience. But at the same time the search results we obtain are pretty amazing.

If you're looking for SEO, blogging can be an effective and tasteful means of achieving high rankings on Google.

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January 3, 2010 by Kevin O'Keefe

Can social media kill your law practice?

Lawyers can spend a ton of time using social media and not bring in new legal work. Lots of activity doesn't necessarily equate to progress.

John Jantsch goes so far to ask 'Is Social Media Killing Your Business?'

Some small business folks equate busy with business. The problem with social media usage is it can keep you really, really busy, without producing a dime of business.
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It's all too easy to get sucked into building a big blog readership or twitter following and then wonder why your phone isn't ringing.

Social media for the small business is a catalyst, a tool, a way to create awareness and deeper engagement - it's not a way to take orders.

At some point you've got to take orders. If you can't convince someone face to face of the value of your proposition, don't expect to do it in 140 characters or less.

This post is not for the social media legal luddittes who think social media has no place in the law. They're in more trouble than the lawyers spending too much time on Twitter.

For those of you using social media just keep some things in mind.

  • You need to be focused in your use of social media. Large blog readership and Twitter followers are not the goal.
  • You need to focus on building relationships with your clients, prospective clients, referral sources, and their influencers.
  • You need to keep track of the people you meet through social media via LinkedIn and/or your law firm's client relationship management (CRM) system.
  • You need to get out and meet the people you've met through social media for coffee, lunch, or a beer.
  • You need to ask industry groups whose members you'd like to represent to speak at their luncheon meetings or conferences.
  • You need to follow up with the people you meet, relationships aren't built in one meeting.

You can be a social media rockstar, but you still need to deploy real world client development skills. And God forbid, you may even need to ask someone for their legal work.

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