My little blog Home Office Lawyer is the featured blog this week on the ABA’s Blawg Directory. I am honored and humbled. When I started the Home Office Lawyer in March of 2005, I really never expected it to get the attention it has. I have enjoyed publishing it more than words can describe. It is one of those items that has truly helped me to keep my sanity doing what we do.

Throughout the last couple of years or more, I have visited with many lawyers and some non-lawyers about blogging. Either by phone or email. I even have a long list of instant messaging buddies who I discuss blogging with. I have always found this to be very enjoyable and just one more benefit of blogging.

What I have experienced both in the marketing benefits of my practice and my own personal growth are just two of the reasons I decided to start Blawg for Profit with Michael Sherman. Michael is someone I would not have met without the benefit of blogging. And, I would have never work on a project like Blawg for Profit if not for my own blogging experience. What I feel brings a lot to Blawg for Profit is both of Michael’s and my own experiences in blogging. We both have used blogs to market our firms and we both have been successful doing so.

Blawg for Profit is a product, which includes a great course of material about blogging, from how to start a blog to how to make it work for you. We are also offering a turnkey blog product built on the Wordpress blogging platform.

I appreciate the honor of being this week’s featured blog by the A.B.A. But, most important, I appreciate you the readers of the Home Office Lawyer. You are the reason I do the blog and the reason I have been noticed by others. Thank you!!!!

The Blog Squad had a great post today on their blog, Build a Better Blog called Great Blogs: What goes into them?

Their post points out 5 things that make a blog great, and they are:

1. Gets you found by the people who need you.
2. Establishes you as an expert in your niche
3. Builds credibility and trust with readers so they see you really know what you’re talking about
4. Develops and strenghens relationships with readers through interaction and conversation
5. Showcases your personality so readers feel they know you, your values, your passions

Michael and I talk about all of these points in the Blawg for Profit program. And they really are key. If you just throw up a blog and don’t keep it updated, or maintain it and make sure it is designed to show up correctly in all browsers, you will not be pleased. And if you don’t strive to achieve the 5 goals as set out above, you will not see results.

Drop us an email and we would be glad to answer any questions you might have.

Kevin O’Keefe at Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs had a post today concerning converting a newsletter into a blog.

I have had conversations often with lawyers who do a newsletter and just don’t get the benefits of a blog over a newsletter. Or who just don’t think they can give up the newsletter. What they forget is that a blog can become your firms newsletter that someone can subscribe to and receive updates as you do them. And what the lawyer also forgets is that the blog can be a newsletter that they update as often as they want without having to reprint it and have that added cost.

In his post, Kevin points out some of the benefits and results of a blog. First is client face-time, sharing legal information, and showcasing legal expertise. But it is more:

• Cost savings in reduced time and non recurring graphic & formating expense.
• Brief content made it easy and enjoyable for lawyers creating content.
• Content was distributed when done, rather than at monthly or quarterly intervals.
• Reduced marketing department time with lawyers posting content directly to blog.
• Content is indexed on search engines so content is now seen by broader audience than with newsletter.
• Content distributed by RSS and email, with users selecting their preference.
• RSS distribution gets content into Google Blog Search and Technorati so that Internet users monitoring content by keywords and key phrases will receive your relevant blog posts; especially key for media who regularly do this.
• Index by topic of archived content that’s fully searchable.

Newsletters do have a role. But don’t overlook what all you can accomplish with a well designed, well maintained and updated blog for you overall marketing efforts.

Small Business Computing has a post called Five Reasons to Start a Small Business Blog.

In the article, they point out 5 sound reasons to start a blog. They are:

All wonderful reasons to do a blog to market and promote your law firm. However, as the article points out, there is a downside to Blogging. “The biggest hurdle to blogging is the commitment to keep it going.” Writing a post is really as easy as sending an email. However, especially in the early days of your blog, you have to make a commitment to post at least two to three times every week. That is a minimum so that it maintains search engine growth and keeps bringing readers back to read more.

In the Blawg for Profit program, Michael and I will be showing you how you can make this all work as a great marketing tool. We will provide you with the tools to make sure your blog is successful.