Are blogs just another marketing channel for law firms?

By Kevin O'Keefe on November 28, 2014 in Blogging, Social Media Principles

  

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.

http://goo.gl/7rBnOg

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Managing Your Online Content and Website

How does a marketing professional motivate lawyers to blog?

A marketing professional recently asked how do you get lawyers to blog. The lawyers, all in one practice group, started off with a bang, but after three months, posts were only coming once a month a or less.

In that this question comes up a lot, I thought it worthwhile to share my answer with you.

Blogs become difficult to maintain if there was not a driving purpose for the blog from the onset. Practice groups often start blogs because they felt compelled to or one or two lawyers got excited to do so.

I’d one, reexamine the purpose and two, look at whether the group is really blogging or just writing articles on blog software. Blogging is easier, generates positive feedback for the lawyers and works better for bringing in business.

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2014/10/05/how-does-a-marketing-professional-motivate-lawyers-to-blog/

Free Top-50 Articles E-Book! Help Us Celebrate 5000 Subscribers!

Posted by Ken Lopez on Fri, Sep 05, 2014 @ 07:34 AM

by Ken LopezFounder/CEOA2L Consulting

It may not feel as if it’s been that long, but we’ve been putting out this blog, The Litigation Consulting Report, for just about 3 ½ years. And in that time, we have written nearly 400 posts on dozens of trial and presentation-related subjects, on everything from TED talks to the George Zimmerman trial to voir diretechniques.

Our success, though, is entirely traceable to you, our readers. In these 3 ½ years, we’ve steadily accumulated regular readers, and we’re delighted to say that we just signed up our 5,000^th blog subscriber! No one ever pays a dime to read A2L Consulting's blog, of course; we put it out there to educate the public and members of the legal community about trial techniques and the science of persuasion.

To celebrate reaching 5,000 blog subscribers, today we’re publishing this collection of our very best articles to date. By "very best," I mean that our readers have, by choosing which articles they read most, told us which articles they think are the best. On the Web, your clicks are your votes. We’re delighted to receive this feedback from you.

http://goo.gl/92b3Ra

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5 Essential Elements of Storytelling and Persuasion

Posted by Ryan Flax on Thu, Sep 04, 2014 @ 05:30 AM

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by Ryan H. Flax, Esq.
Managing Director, Litigation Consulting
A2L Consulting

As I pointed out in my previous blog post, when a lawyer uses storytelling effectively at trial, he or she is literally eliciting a reaction from the brain areas and the neurochemicals that are the basis of any human being’s foundation for biological survival.

Storytelling, in fact, serves the biological function of encouraging pro-social behavior. Effective stories reinforce the concepts that if we are honest and play by the right rules, we reap the rewards of the protagonist, and that if we break the rules, we earn the punishment accorded the bad guy. Stories are evolutionary innovations: They help humans remember socially important things and use that information in their lives.

To impact an audience such as a jury, a story must do three things: (1) emotionally transport the audience by moving them and having them get “lost” in it; (2) include characters facing problems and trying to overcome them, but not engaging in mere meaningless problem solving; and (3) communicate some message or moral, meaning some set of values or ideas. Otherwise, the story will seem “empty” and not important enough to pay attention to.

http://goo.gl/4x1FXg

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Top 10 in Law Blogs

Top 10 in Law Blogs: Angry Birds, Class Actions in Latin America, Johnnie Walker

As I mentioned on a recent client webinar, I really get a kick out of what Ronald Urbach does with interviews on his blog. Today, his series interviewing ad agency creatives continues, so be sure to check that out. Total posts on the LexBlog Network today: 111.

• State of the Creative Series: Interview with the Chief Creative Officer at GREY – New York lawyer Ronald Urbach of Davis & Gilbert on his blog, Madison Ave Insights
• SEC Rains on “Golf Buddies” Insider Trading Ring – Washington, DC attorney Evan Turgeonof Brown Rudnick on the firm’s blog, White Collar Crime Watch

http://goo.gl/CbmVRP

Top 10 in Law Blogs

Top 10 in Law Blogs: Mobile App Privacy Policies, Clean Tech IPOs, Cannabis and Neighbors

It should come as no surprise that the FTC is taking more issue with mobile app privacy policies. On the one hand, they always do this. On the other, it’s because the privacy policies are terrible. Total posts on the LexBlog Network today: 155.

• Mobile Apps: FTC Says Vague Privacy Policies and Lack of Terms a Problem – Chicago lawyer Jamie Rubin on the InformationLawGroupblog
• Hotel warns against negative reviews, receives flood of 1-star rhttp://goo.gl/mX2yTJatings – Whitney C. Gibson andJordan S. Cohen of Vorys on the firm’s blog,Internet Defamation Removal Attorneys
• 
  

http://goo.gl/mX2yTJ

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Lawyers : Be known for what you love

Be known for what you love. How cool is that.

It’s the tag line you see upon opening Klout, a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank users according to online social influence.

The concept of Klout is that by using social media you get known for what you love. After all, who would use social media for things they’re not passionate about?

Unfortunately, many lawyers.

http://goo.gl/EdW6ZH

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5 reasons lawyers seeking career development ought to blog

Hibah Ahmed (@AhmedHibah), community manager at IT World Canada (@itworldca), shares 5 reasons IT professionals ought to start bloggingwhich I think apply equally to lawyers.

As with IT professionals, blogging isn’t the first thing lawyers think of when looking to further their careers. But there’s a growing network of professionals to network with via blogging along with countless benefits.

Here’s Ahmed’s five, tailored to legal, with my comments

1. Build your name. Blogging is an excellent way to enhance your personal recognition in the legal community as a knowledgeable and insightful authority in your area of law and/or locale. There’s no better way to openly display your expertise than to share what you are reading and to talk about it, especially with interaction intra-blog and via ancillary social media.

http://goo.gl/Umqyqy

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Law firms may copy edit, but ought not edit blogs

Law firms regularly ask me who should edit their lawyer’s blogs. My answer is no one. A blog represents the unedited voice of a person.

Lawyers ought to be keying in their own posts and self editing. Most of the lawyers on the LexBlog Network do so.

One exception, if you choose to do any editing, is proofing for spelling, grammar and the like. This is copyediting versus editing.

As explained by HubSpot’s Corey Eridon (@Corey_bos) the two are very different.

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2014/07/19/82686/

Top 10 in Law Blogs: Design and the Legal Industry, MH 17, CFPB at Year Three

It’s a rule: I haven’t read enough on a big employment law subject until I get Robin Shea’s Friday column on it, and this week she provides a full breakdown of the EEOC’s pregnancy discrimination guidance. Also Mark Dombroff writes on the lessons learns from Malaysia Airlines between the airline’s two recent tragedies. Total posts on the LexBlog Network: 164. Have a great weekend, all.

• Is There Attorney-Client Privilege in a Facebook Post? – Baltimore lawyer Fiona Wong of Shaw Rosenthal on the firm’s blog, The Labor & Employment Report
• Beverage Trademark Disputes Keep on Brewing – New York lawyerJames Hastings of Collen Intellectual Property Law on his blog,Trademark Opposition & Cancellation Guide
• http://kevin.lexblog.com/2014/07/18/top-10-in-law-blogs-design-and-the-legal-industry-mh-17-cfpb-at-year-three/

Self editing makes for good writing — and blogging

New York venture capitalist and very widely followed blogger, Fred Wilson (@fredwilson), shares that an educator he greatly respects told him recently that getting kids to rewrite their work, solo, is the single most effective technique for improving their writing.

Obsessive self editing, it turns out, is what makes Wilson such a great blogger.

When I write a blog post, I tend to write it as the idea forms in my brain. I write the whole thing out. And then I rewrite it. I go over every line and make sure the spelling and grammar are correct, I look at the phrasing. I consider the flow. I read it start to finish at least three or four times. I think about the whole and then each part. And I’ll cut out paragraphs, move things, rewrite parts, and mess with it for almost as long as it took me to write it in the first place. And I’ll do that even after I’ve posted it. I actually get some extra benefit from editing while the post is live. I am not sure why that is, but often times the best edits come to me after the post is live.

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2014/07/11/self-editing-makes-for-good-writing-and-blogging/