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Marketing your blog : introduce yourself on blogosphere

January 7, 2005

Blogs are not like Web sites when it comes to marketing a law firm’s expertise. They are a heck of a lot better when the blog is marketed properly. A key part of marketing your law firm’s blog comes from introducing yourself on the blogosphere. One proper introduction may result in being introduced to a heck of a lot of other people in your target audience

One of LexBlog’s new clients, Preston Gates and Ellis, may have struck gold in introducing its Electronic Discovery Law Blog, a blog that is likely to become a leading national resource on electronic discovery law issues.

David Bowerman, Business Development Manager for Preston Gates and head of marketing for Preston Gate’s Document Assembly Technology Group, is the driving force for this new blog. Dave recently emailed Dennis Kennedy and Jeff Beard, Internet heavyweights & key influencers introducing himself and the blog. The result was more than Dave could have dreamed of.

Here’s what Dennis had to say in a post to his blog yesterday:

The highly-regarded law firm, Preston Gates, has moved into the world of blogging with the nicely-implemented and useful Electronic Discovery Law blog. I’ve been following the blog for a while and noticed that it seemed to be achieving momentum, with more consistent and useful postings. Most important, unlike some of the large law firm blog efforts I’ve seen, the Electronic Discovery Law blog has an RSS feed.

I became even more impressed with the blog yesterday when I got an email from Dave Bowerman of Preston Gates about the blog. It turns out that I picked it up before its official launch, which will be on Monday.

They’ve actually been working on the blog in a “live” mode before they launch it. Aside from the amazing story of Sabrina Pacifici doing three months of posts before she launched BeSpacific.com, you don’t hear of many bloggers taking that kind of a rigorous approach to a launch.

This bodes well for the prospects of the Electronic Discovery Law blog becoming a solid resource on electronic discovery. As you may have noticed, there is a long trail of now-defunct blogs that law firms have launched with great fanfare but quickly faded away as they learned the difficulty of sustaining a regular posting regimen.

……

I wish Dave and Preston Gates the best on the Electronic Discovery Law blog. It’s an important area that could use more blogging coverage. I’m planning much more electronic discovery coverage in my blog and I’ve been talking with several people lately about launching an e-discovery blog. At the moment, Michael Arkfeld is the key electronic discovery resource in the blogosphere, but electronic discovery is a big topic that would benefit from much greater blog coverage. I’m pleased that Preston Gates, with the debut of its Electronic Discovery Law blog, is jumping into this area with an effort that holds great promise. I’m even more pleased that they have someone like Dave Bowerman who seems to know how to handle its launch in the right way.

Jeff was equally flattering in his post today about the Preston Gates effort:

…They’re off to a good start, with good EDD categories and content already in place in advance of their official launch on Monday.

I agree with Dennis that I’m glad they’ve included an RSS feed. So few large law firms have gotten “it” that blog and web sites by themselves are only half of the equation. The other half, and perhaps the only one that really matters to many diehard blog readers, is to be able to receive the content via RSS (or Atom) so they don’t have to visit hundreds of different web sites to keep themselves informed. Other firms, webmasters, and bloggers take note: If I don’t have a blog in my RSS reader, then I rarely visit it — and that’s usually only when another blogger or online article has posted a link to it within a useful context.

Electronic Discovery is growing in importance so rapidly there is still a big need to find good online resources and track developments. Dennis’ post also provides links to several other good EDD blogs and sites, a number of which I’ve also mentioned previously.

I also agree with Dennis with the professional manner in which I was contacted to check out their blog. I wasn’t asked to provide a link or a post. There was none of the “I already posted a link to your blog, so please post a link to ours” ploys. Instead, I received a simple, elegant, e-mail stating they had come across my blog with a nice compliment, informing me of their blog and some highlights, and asking me to check it out when I had a chance. Even if it was a form e-mail, Bravo for thought put into it, and welcome to the Blogosphere.

Dennis’ and Jeff’s blogs are read by a lot of folks who respect their opinions. Many of these readers are within the target audience Preston Gates is trying to reach with their blog. Preston Gate’s Electronic Discovery Law Blog has now been introduced to all of Dennis’ and Jeff’s readers. That’s great PR.

Internet marketing is not rocket science. Publish a blog of value to the legal community. Once you have something up and running very politely introduce (see what Dennis had to say on this in his post) to publishers of blogs on similar topics. If your blog is truly a worthwhile effort, you stand to be introduced to a lot of people who read other blogs.

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