Facebook to court law blog networks?

For many publishers Facebook and other social media have become a more important driver of traffic than Google.

In the case of Facebook, as reported by Digiday’s John McDermott (@mcdermott), it’s not soley because of changes to Facebook’s Newsfeed more prominently featuring publishers’ stories.

…[T]here’s a human component to Facebook’s recent embrace of the publishing world, as well. Facebook has over the past year and a half built up a formidable media partnerships division, recruiting former journalists and publishing execs from the world’s most prestigious media companies to help the company’s relationships with publishers.

Facebook, reports McDermott, lets publishers know what performs well on the platform, and publishers then use the information to formulate their editorial strategies.

Hearst is one publisher working with Facebook. As a result, Hearst has seen its Facebook referral traffic grow five fold in the last year, from just 10 percent of all referral traffic to about half.

Facebook needs publishers.

Having media organizations understand and consistently post to Facebook is good for Facebook, which has no media of its own but needs something to keep users coming back each day.

As Facebook becomes the front page of our news and publications, it’s possible we’ll see law blogs garner significant referral traffic from Facebook. Probably more than from search.

One law blog at a time may not be able to gather data, optimize from that data, and work with Facebook so as to garner significant referral traffic from Facebook. But a law blog network (think LXBN) recruiting some of the best and brightest law bloggers and curating the posts may be in a position to do so.

Think SB Nation (Sports Blog Nation) for example. One network with over 300 sites for professional and college teams. By SB Nation providing an underlying tech, publishing, data analysis, and social platform, the affiliates are doing far more than the sum of the parts.

As as a result of SB Nation’s size, technology, publishing aptitude, and ability to communicate with Facebook, individual publishers will receive far greater Facebook referral traffic than they would on their own. Because the quality of the content and interest of its users, Facebook will want to work with SB Nation to increase that referral traffic.

I understand ‘California Water Law’ does not draw as well as the New York Jets. But you take posts from 5,000 law blogs curated and enhanced for quality (titles and images) on a myriad of subjects, many broken down by locale, and you have a lot of media for Facebook.

In addition, the demographic for law blog content is pretty good. Lawyers, corporate employees, and many people who can afford a lawyer.

Facebook is becoming more and more important in delivering us the news and information we are looking for. Rather than just mainstream and pop culture media, Facebook will increasingly deliver professional content and insight ala law blogs.

You can expect to see the day when Facebook works with a law blog network for increased media on Facebook and referral traffic to network blogs. For the benefit of Facebook, the network, law blog publishers, and the public.