Skip to content

Lawyer blogs are a conversation : Not shouting through a bullhorn

Mark Beese, the self described marketing guy at Holland & Hart and publisher of Leadership for Lawyers, understands the power of law blogs. The vast majority of lawyers, including those publishing blogs, do not.

As Mark posts, blogs are a conversation about ideas. Like most people, Mark did not understand blogs as a conversation at first. He says he was surprised, and very pleased, to discover the concept first explained to him by Rick Klau.

Most law firms, and for that matter those folks developing their blogs, see a blogs as a website that’s easy to update, that performs well on search engines, and a cost effective content distribution tool. That’s not a bad start.

But using blogs as such is like walking into a room of people conversing and reading your blog content through a bullhorn. It’s just not a good way to be well received and have your insight spread by others in the conversation.

Blogs are like conversations in the real world. You first have to listen to what is being said on other blogs on topics relevant to your own. You do this by subscribing via RSS to other blogs and key words/phrases from mass aggregators such as Technorati and NewsGator.

When you have some idea of what is being said, then enter the conversation with a post on your own blog or a comment on another’s. When entering the conversation, be responsive to what is being said. Don’t just shout out some content you think the world needs to hear.

Do this and you’ll find others in the conversation sharing what you had to say with others in the room. In this case that room happens to be the Internet. And better yet, the room only includes your target audience and those who influence your target audience.

Those lawyers understanding blogs are a conversation market very effectively through the blogosphere. It’s networking at it’s finest.

As to Holland Hart’s Health Care Law Blog, it’s an incredible resource chockfull of information. But, the blog could go to the next level by having some posts commenting or referring to other’s writing on health care issues. By doing so, Holland and Hart would find more people writing about their blog content, an increase in blog traffic and greater recognition of their leadership on health care issues in the Rocky Mountain Region.