Four keys for effective blogging

Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President, at Edelman PR and publisher of Micro Persuasion gets credit for what I believe to be the four pillars of blog marketing success.

Remember the acronym FLEE. Find the Internet discussion, Listen to the discussion, Engage in the discussion, and Empower your readers.

1. Find: Identify the most influential bloggers and reporters on the niche for which you will be blogging as well as other Internet discussion on the topic. Find bloggers on news sites by searching Google and adding the term ‘blog’ or using a blog directory such as Justia’s BlawgSearch. Subscribe to keywords and phrases by doing a search at Google Blog Search and adding a feed for the searches to your RSS newsreader.
2. Listen: Once you know who the influencers are, listen to them actively by subscribing to RSS feeds of their blogs and news sites through the use of a RSS reader . You need to view each blog post as legitimate feedback. More importantly, you need to identify what are the most powerful currents of conversation in the blogosphere – e.g. the ones that are the most relevant to your company and its products/services. Rubel calls this a company’s ‘higher holy calling.‘ Only once you have completed find and listen, will you be ready to engage and empower.
3. Engage: Companies have lots of opportunities to launch blogs that will help them engage in a dialogue with their constituents. In the case of a law firm (and running with some of Steve’s ideas in the case of Target), each lawyer and practice group by its very nature is a goldmine of intellectual capital on a niche topic waiting to be leveraged. Content already being disseminated by email newsletters and alerts are better tailored for blogs. 2 to 3 sentences responding to often asked questions are perfect. Legal updates shared by email among a practice group can be cleaned up and published to a blog.

   Law firms are big on giving back to the community. Sections of blogs should chronicle how you help the community and, more importantly, starting conversations with the community on how they want to be helped.

4. Empower: At the highest level, you should use the blogosphere to empower people to tell stories. And what better people to empower than those you have helped through providing free legal information on your blog. Blogs on legal and tangental topics are springing to life every day. Write something of value, network with these blog publishers and people will write about you and your firm.

This is the essence of blogging and why it’s a different and perhaps more powerful means of marketing than traditional PR & communications work. Thanks Steve for being a true leader in every sense of the word.