Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

We'll often have clients requesting a feature that's outside the scope of what I'd call 'blog standard.' The most recent of which was to format blog titles with line breaks and special header treatment.

It's understandable for LexBlog to receive such requests. First, Law firms have long been publishing on the net in what the legal industry labels data base driven content management solutions. The goal being to reproduce online the articles law firms have produced in print for decades. The vast majority of such law firms articles are published on law firm websites.

Second, lawyers, who are not often well versed in the intricacies of blog publishing, often drive requests. Lawyers, usually dependent on their stature in the firm, can be pretty demanding. As a lawyer, I'll confess to it as well.

Articles published on websites can generally be formatted any way the law firm marketing department or lawyers want. The articles aren't being syndicated anywhere else beyond the law firm's website, third party websites which have agreed to republish an article, or a PDF.

Law blogs are different. Blog content is syndicated to other places in a standardized format. RSS, or real simple syndication, is the world wide recognized format for syndicating blog content.

The title of a blog post is one element, among others, that is included in this world wide recognized format. A title with line breaks or other non blog standard format puts at risk proper syndication.

Where is law blog content syndicated to?

• Newsreaders being used by 11% of our population, including the influencers of your clients, prospective clients, and referral sources.
• Third party online publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the LexMonitor.
• Google Blog Search, LexMonitor, Justia Blawg Search, and other blog aggregators from which people (75% of reporters) subscribe to feeds of keyword searches to monitor content of interest without even knowing the source.
• Third party directories/legal communities such as LinkedIn and Legal OnRamp.
• Law firm website news, bio, and industry/practice area pages.

So reformatting the title of blog posts in your law blog to include line breaks or other unique (non 'blog standard') formatting is highly inadvisable. First, you put at risk getting your content syndicated to other places, one of the biggest reasons blogs have become so popular in the legal industry.

Second, you risk appearing to those familiar with blogs like you don't know what you're doing. That group includes reporters, savvy clients, other bloggers who would subscribe to your blog and share its content, conference coordinators, and publishers to name some. When one of the reasons you are publishing a blog is to further enhance your reputation as a trusted and reliable authority, you don't want to blow it by showing the world you don't know what you are doing.

Third, and not mentioned before, is the effect line breaks in titles would have in the title tag of a blog post. A title tag defines a page title for each page on a blog or website on the Internet.

Search engines, Google being the most important, pay particular attention to the words used in the title tag. In the case of a blog, Google stores (indexes) on Google's servers each blog post under the title given a blog post in a title tag. Google also displays in bold and a link the text from a title tag in Google's search results.

The industry standard for law blogs is to use the title of a post in the title tag. So putting line breaks in blog titles is going to put at risk getting your content properly indexed at Google and readily displayed when Google users perform searches.

Keep it simple when it comes to blogs. Follow the industry standard so your blog content is properly distributed whether in search engines or in syndication and so you avoid the embarrassment of appearing that you are not familiar with the proper protocols of blog publishing.

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We had another great turnout at this morning's client webinar, RSS: The Key to Online Engagement.

For those who were unable to attend, or who would like to review the material, you can watch the recording on our support site. Our Support Site houses all of our recorded webinars, as well as other valuable blogging tips and information.

The feedback on these webinars has been incredibly positive, like this comment from today's attendee: "Absolutely outstanding. Please keep helpful webinars like this coming."

And don't forget to mark your calendars for our next webinar on Thursday, Aug. 27, on Social Media.

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The next installment of LexBlog's Client Webinar Series is tomorrow, April 16, on the topic of The Effective Use of RSS for Client Development, at 12 p.m. ET/ 9 a.m. PT.

You can register here. (For registration information, direct message Support on Twitter or contact Stacey.)

In this webinar, LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe will personally discuss the following topics:

• How to use a RSS newsreader
• How to subscribe to particular sources by RSS
• How to subscribe to particular subjects by RSS
• How to reference content discovered in RSS feeds
• How to use RSS to conduct word of mouth marketing
• How to use RSS feeds to further enhance your reputation
• How to use RSS feeds to market your blog

We like to call RSS the "secret sauce" of blogging. Using a news feed reader and RSS can help take your blog to the next level. We hope to see you tomorrow.

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The next installment in our monthly Client Webinar Series is just a week away. This month's topic: The Effective Use of RSS for Client Development.

The webinar - held exclusively for clients - will take place next Thursday, April 16, at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST. Mark your calendars and register now. (For registration information, direct message Support on Twitter or contact Stacey.)

Though RSS is the secret sauce of blogging, it's often misunderstood and certainly underutilized. In this webinar, LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe will cover:

• How to use a RSS newsreader
• How to subscribe to particular sources by RSS
• How to subscribe to particular subjects by RSS
• How to reference content discovered in RSS feeds
• How to use RSS to conduct word of mouth marketing
• How to use RSS feeds to further enhance your reputation
• How to use RSS feeds to market your blog

Recent webinars have drawn close to 100 attendees. Don't get left behind; learn how RSS can take your blog and your client development to the next level.

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Zachary Rodgers on the The ClickZ Network had an interesting piece this week on RSS advertising showing signs of life.

This bodes well for the legal industry, not necessarily with each lawyer picking up a enough in ad revenue for an extra pint a week, but in other respects.

First the key points from Rodgers' article.

• 34% of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they use RSS feeds, a huge increase from just 15% a year ago.
• 19% of Americans use RSS feeds. Admittedly less than the RSS-addicted nations, Russia (57%), Brazil (55%) and China (54%).
• Gawker Media, one of the more successful blog networks, grew its revenue from feed-driven traffic by 300 percent in Q1 2008.
• Gawker now pulls an average CPM of $4 or $5 for its RSS inventory, only little less than they they get on the blog sites themselves.
• Some publishers are seeing their page views from RSS nearing the page views of blog and Web sites themselves.
• Google's FeedBurner will soon deliver AdSense ads contextual to the subject of the feed in addition to premium CPM ads directly sold onto RSS fee content.

I don't see lawyers needing to run ads on RSS feeds to keep a roof over their head. Some bloggers need to make money in advertising from their blogs. Such bloggers are akin to magazine publishers - ads keep the lights on.

Lawyers do not have to sell ads on their blogs and RSS feeds. Lawyers make money by blogging in an effective manner. Doing so lawyers enhance their reputation as thought leaders, landing business the lawyers want as a result.

But I see three areas where ads on lawyers RSS feeds hold value.

• Tasteful, brief ad mentioning that the blog and resulting feed are sponsored by a particular lawyer, law firm, or practice group. Much like an ad you would hear on local NPR radio. Low key for branding purposes.
• As revenue for a third party syndicating law blog content to to a lawyer's target audience (clients - current & prospective, bloggers, traditional media - trade & mass). Blogging lawyers will come to understand the tremendous value of such third party publishers aggregating (with editorial review) relevant and timely blog content for delivery of such content to this target audience. Syndicators with significant overhead in people and publishing platforms will need a revenue model. The alternative to ads is charging lawyers.
• The cost of maintaining a professional turnkey blog solution required by leading lawyers, law professors, and law students could be supplemented by ad revenue.

As traditional publishers are being pressed by declining distribution and ad revenue, we need to look for new opportunities to generate revenue. With increased use of RSS feeds and more cost effective ways to deliver ads on RSS feeds, maybe there's some opportunities.

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I speak to groups and new customers about RSS and why it's the essence of blogging. They glaze over and say RSS is too techie for them and their target audience. Bunk!

The Scobelizer posted this morning that if you do a marketing site and you don't have an RSS feed today you should be fired and that saying that RSS is only for geeks today is like saying in 1998 that the Web was only for geeks. I agree.

Here's excerpts from Scoble's story about a naive marketer at Microsoft trying to market their site without using RSS. You should find it amusing unless you're like a few of the Internet marketing folks I worked with at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell who never were able to grasp what was taking place on the Internet and felt secure in your job nonetheless.

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