Measuring law blog success : Web stats are not the answer

Lawyers and law firms obsess over blog and website stats. How many page views? How many visitors to my blog? How many subscribers do we have? How does this compare to other law blogs?

But page views, visitors, and subscribers aren’t measures of success for law blogs. An enhanced reputation in your niche area of the law, growth in business, and a greater sense of professional & personnel worth are the goals – they’re the measures of success.

Darren Rowse, a leading blog consultant and publisher, asked yesterday, ‘Who Cares How Many Subscribers You’ve Got?’ Darren used this diagram of web of relationships between the different determiners which lead to the outcomes that you’re really looking for. As lawyers, substitute enhanced reputation and business growth for ad revenue.

I’m in agreement with Darren on what to focus on.

• Quality of content. Share your insight and commentary with a view on what’s valuable to your target audience.
• Community interaction. Interact with leading bloggers and reporters in your niche by citing their content in your blog posts and adding your commentary. Interact with your readers by asking them questions and responding to their emails and comments. Add those you interact with to social networks ala LinkedIn.
• SE0. No brainer, but often overlooked or wrongly assumed things will take care of themselves. Your blog’s software architecture, blog titles, blog formats, and tagging are all things you control. All heavily impact getting your content seen by those searching on Google. Too many lawyers publish content never found on search.
• Content quantity or effort. Post once a week minimum. Two or three times a week to begin for SEO and to attract readers.

As in all things, worry about what you can control. Forget about those things you do not control.

I’ve never had a lawyer or law firm hire LexBlog because they wanted stats. They wanted things more real and substantial – an enhanced reputation, growth in business, and a greater sense of professional & personnel worth. To achieve those things through blogging focus on quality content, interaction, SEO, and effort.