Thank you Shel and Neville
Thank you Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for discussing LexBlog’s lawyer blogs in your well listened to podcast this week, The Hobson and Holtz Report. For those who have not listened to the podcast, it’s an excellent weekly summary of information and insight on blogs, much relating to marketing. Upcoming guests include Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion and Robert Scoble of the Scobleizer.
They discussed in their February 24 podcast the lack of a profit model in blogging. I commented that lawyers may have the greatest financial incentive to blog of anyone. Shel and Neville took the time to read my following note to their audience this week.
You discuss not being able to identify a profit model for blogs and how quitting one’s jobs to blog may be like one of your brother’s quitting his job as a construction defect’s lawyer to play with a train set at home (one of their brother’s was a lawyer & they mused blogging may be like playing toy trains for him).
It’s ironic that lawyers may have the best profit model for blogs of all professions and business people. Lawyers have for hundreds of years marketed themselves by speaking, writing and getting interviewed as a means to demonstrate their expertise for their target audience.
So blogs focused on a niche area of law read by regular readers in the target audience of the lawyer have huge value. Blogs establish one as a reliable and trusted authority – an expert. It is a small step from seeing someone as a expert to hiring them when you need such a expert.
Lawyers charge hundreds of dollars per hour. Blogs bring them work. Blog publishing is working for customers of my company, LexBlog, which offers a turnkey professional marketing blog solution for lawyers.
The brother who is a lawyer representing insurance companies on construction defects could do a construction defect law blog (heck, I would do it for him to demonstrate the point for you). Content would be news and legal cases on the subject plus his insight and commentary. He will not only be all over the search engines on the subject, he will be read most in house counsel at insurance companies dealing with the subject. He will be contacted by trade magazines, he will be invited to speak on the subject and he will be contacted by people from throughout the country he could have never reached but for the blog.
Identify an area or a locale, learn how to blog and grow your business as a lawyer. Now that’s a profit model for blogging.
Shel said he would pass my note on to his lawyer brother but laughed when he realized his brother probably doesn’t know what the heck a blog is. He will soon.