Are blogs just another marketing channel for law firms?

Per Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel), President of Twist Image and a widely respected digital marketing professional, one could argue that the simplest thing for a traditional agency to tell to a client is “don’t worry about the Internet. It’s just a channel to communicate a message to an audience, like every other channel.”

What a refusal to change as technology and your audience changes. What a mistake. What a lost opportunity to use digital marketing to meet the needs of your law firm’s revenue.

Referring to blogs and social media as another marketing channel leads to measuring success in subscribers, likes, page views and unique visitors, things that Joel reports Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, calls vanity metrics.

What to make of these measurements then?

This smells like success. Wrong. This smells like advertising success, so let’s just call it what it is. When technology allows you to do more (connect, share, engage, sell, interact, create, collaborate, etc…) and all a brand does is benchmark itself against traditional advertising metrics, what is left to be said?

I am with Joel that chalking up the Internet as another place where people congregate and consume media feels like a disservice to the marketing industry. It also feel like a disservice to you, who should be seeking to advance, and your law firm, which is struggling against fierce competition.

Effectively blogging to engage with precision the audience you are looking to engage is not a marketing channel. The audience with whom you are looking to connect with in a real and authentic way. The audience with whom you are looking to build relationships and word of mouth.

Success will be measured in relationships, recognition as a ‘go to’ lawyer in a niche, a growing network, and high quality quality clients. Not vanity metrics.

For most lawyers and law firms, their blogs are being developed and used as just another marketing channel. That’s unfortunate, they deserve better.

Image courtesy of Flickr by joiseyshowaa