There has been a conversation going on lately on a Listserv I am on. It centers around ghost writing for a blog. The conversation started out with someone asking if they should have a ghost writer for their blog. I chimed in as I often do and said no. If you are going to blog, you should blog. Blogging is more than posting. It is more than putting up a Web site structured as a blog and hoping someone will visit. Blogging is for all intense purposes, one of the best marketing tools you can use to market your law practice.

And blogging is more. Blogging is a conversation between you and your readers. A conversation between you and other bloggers. A conversations between you and your possible clients and/or customers. A conversation between you and the media. And, in my humble opinion, the first step in becoming involved in that conversation is putting up good relevant content.

However, you can’t just put up great content. You can put up award winning content and if no one sees it, big deal. Aaron Brazell of Technolsailor talked about the content/conversation concept today in a post called How Much Do People Talk About You?

As Kevin O’Keefe stated in a post today, “Aaron nails a common misconception in blogging - if you produce good content, people will come” And he is right. I have never said content is the only key thing to a successful blog. You have to get them there to read it. And Aaron goes on to give us just a few ways to do that.

When you write that great content, try to get that content in front of other SMEs (similarly minded experts). Find ways to market yourself. Give away your knowledge. Speak at industry events. Host meetups related to your industry. Be social and network. Go drink a beer with others in your industry. When an opinion is asked for, be aggressive and share your opinion in a succinct, well-spoken manner.

O’Keefe expands on Aaron’s idea a bit further when he suggest we should be social in our blogging.

• Comment on other blogs leaving your name, blog url, and email address.
• Reference other people’s blog content on your posts. You may get a trackback link and you’ll certainly be seen by the blogger whose content you referenced who may subscribe to your blog and blog about your content.
• Let reporters know you’ve blogged about their stories. It won’t be too long before you’ll be quoted in a publication which your clients and prospective clients read.
• Blog about conferences you want to present at. Let the conference coordinator know you blogged about them and your availability to speak on a niche topic.

“99% of bloggers don’t understand blogging is an art. Effective blogging to get people talking about you will put you light years ahead of your competition.“

They are both right. Don’t just throw up a post. Go further in your blogging. FIND the conversations that are out there in the area you are interested in. LISTEN to the conversations. ENGAGE in those conversations by commenting, leaving trackbacks, linking to and thanking those that comment on your blog. And EMPOWER your readers to do the same. Allow both comments and trackbacks on your blog. Use your blog as a communication tool that gets you involved in the conversation and gets you noticed.

Stay tuned for more!!

Jay Fleischman is one of those guys that just gets it. Jay publishes a great blog called Bankruptcy Practice Pro where he provides some wonderful information about managing and marketing a law practice. He is also one of the individuals behind the very successful Bankruptcy Law Network.

Recently, Jay had a post called “The Awful Truth About Paid Online Marketing“ where he has the nerve to tell us the nasty secret about pay-per-click advertising - it simply doesn’t work as well as you may think. To back up his position, he mentions a study called Banner Blindness.

What is banner blindness? According to our friends at Wikipedia, it is “a usability phenomenon in which a website visitor completely overlooks a banner. Such a banner may either be an advertising banner from an external site, or a banner that the serving site intends to use to promote content or a navigation link.”

Jay goes on to point out what I have been saying for some time, content is what will keep your readers Provide good content and you will get readers. You will get noticed and you will get what makes blogging great, incoming links. If there is one thing you must remember, content is king. You must provide good, up to date, relevant content.

Jamie Spencer is at it again. Jamie publishes a great blog called, Austin DWI Lawyer & Attorney. And best of all, Jamie just gets it. He understands that publishing a niche blog will get you noticed and in return, get you clients. He also understands what makes a blogger an even better blogger. In his recent post, Reading Blogs is Fundamental (or How to Write a Blog), Jamie hits on a very key point of blogging, read other blogs in your practice area. Not only will it help you to be better informed, it will actually show you how other experienced bloggers write their post. Writing for a blog is different than anything else. As Jamie points out:

Blogs are written differently than novels, short stories, biographies, historical fiction, technical writing, etc. Blogs are written differently than anything else. So the best way to learn to blog is to read blogs.

But, don’t just read other blogs. Get involved in the conversation. “Blogs provide the perfect medium for an exchange of ideas.” Which is the huge advantage blogs have over other marketing media, i.e. yellow pages, static websites. Get involved in the conversation and you will get noticed. Post about another blogs post, do a trackback, and you will get noticed. Comment on those other blogs too. All of this is part of the interaction and conversation that takes place with blogging. And that is really the key to turning a new blog into a successful blog. Take this post for example, not only did I do this post, I commented on Jamie’s post and provided a trackback to his post from my own post. Get involved in the conversation.

I love it when I get my posting ideas from my readers. Had an email sometime back from Lisa Solomon at Question of Law and The Billable Hour. We were exchanging thoughts on Permalinks and linking between blogs. Lisa pointed out to me that some blogs don’t provide a Permalink. I was actually shocked. I never really noticed this and began to ponder the issue. As Lisa and I further discussed this, I remembered that some blogging platforms provide the permalink within the title of the post. Problogger and others do that. My blogs all have a permalink “link” at the end of every post. What I came up with is why. Why would you not provide a permalink in your blog. As I have mentioned a number of times in my tips, linking to other blogs is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your own blog. The more links you have to your blog, the more the search engines love you. Linking is one of the items that make blogs move up so fast in the search engines. It makes it very hard to link to a particular post on a blog if there is no permalink. In fact, Problogger has a great post on linking at the link I just provided. He states in part:

Blogs and links are the perfect couple. Of course, everyone knows that. You don’t have to be a hopeless romantic or some SEO techie type to figure that one out.

In addition:

Blog links have search engine power for several reasons. One of which is the different types of linking featured on blogs. All blog links are not the same, and that is part of their secret search engine rankings power. Different types of links provide different rankings boosts, in several different ways. In the end, the links add up to your blog being placed highly, for your most important keywords, in Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search.

Take my advice. Provide a permalink to your post. If you do, you will see your search engine ranking increase.

I have read a lot about what is being called “linkbaiting.” The Search Engine Journal defined Linkbaiting this way:

Linkbaiting is one of the most universally effective tactics for promoting a site, both for search engine rankings and short-term traffic boosts.

Blog SEO defined it this way:

Linkbaiting is a habit of writing good content with the sole purpose of getting linked to it.

Good content will get you incoming links. Writing good content will get you incoming links. I considered my own habit of linking to other blogger’s post. And it is the content of that post that catches my eye. Not who else has linked to it. Not the tags they use. It is the content. For example, take the two links above. I used those links for the content of those post. Nothing more, nothing less. The Search Engine Journal gave some guidelines on what content to write about to get those link backs.

Understanding what content, features, and subjects are “in” with the technorati (the web-literate individuals, not the blog aggregation site) is a subjective, but important piece of the linkbait creation puzzle.

There’s that word again, CONTENT. The Blog SEO provided 2 ways to be good linkbaiters. The first hint is:

Know what’s up You need to know what’s going on on the Web and know what’s hot. A good way of finding out is checking out the popular searches on Technorati.

Taking the first hint, let me expand. One of the blogs I do is the Kansas Family Law Blog. I am providing a professional service on that blog. It is not my goal on that blog to generate traffic for ads, as you won’t see Chitika ads on that blog. One of the ways I decide what content to provide is to know what is going on. But not by checking out the popular searches on Technorati. What I do check out, are the searches I find my readers are doing by checking the stats of my blog. While checking those stats I can determine what actual searches are being typed into Google or Yahoo. I take those search requests and make them into post. In checking my stats nightly over a short period of time, I can usually see a pattern of what questions are being asked. Taking those questions and doing a post gets me traffic to my blog. It is not linkbaiting, but it does get me traffic, which is our goal. I am also following the first hint mentioned above, I am keeping up on what is hot and writing content to match what is hot. The second hint is:

Promote your article If you feel that you’ve created something link-worthy, the next obvious step is promotion. Things become easy when you are a well established blogger with thousands of readers, but what if you’re not. SearchEngine Journal recommends that you contact a few well known bloggers in your niche and ask them to critique your article. Please don’t ask for a link because your request will most likely be ignored. When you get an e-mail back with some criticism, be ready to make changes and e-mail them back thanking them and announcing that you’ve made some adjustments. Most likely they will talk about it to their readers.

The second hint is a good one, but it all goes back to content. If you provide good content, you will get noticed. And those that notice you will link to your blog. Let me take my professional service blog again for an example. When you do a blog that is really a niche marketing blog, you end up developing a so called network of other professional service blogs. We take advantage of RSS and have our news-readers set to catch ever new post our professional service blogging friends do. If there is something there that catches our eye, we post about it and of course give them credit. For me, I know those that I follow provide good content. You can tell by their blog design and of course the posting they do. Take a look at some of them: Alabama Family Law Blog South Carolina Family Law Blog In my humble opinion (again), if you are doing a blog that is a niche blog, you will develop a following of others in that niche. And, by default, you will get incoming links from those fellow niche bloggers. Of course, remember them and do some outgoing linking to them. There has also been a lot of talk lately about asking for links. Let me just state, I get emails each week asking me to link with someone. I read everyone of those emails. And if the blog provides GOOD CONTENT, I link to them. Remember this, the results you get will be directly reflective of the work you want to put in. This will not be easy and it will take some work. If you are just starting a new blog, the work in the beginning is more than you will do down the road. You will need to post and post and post early in your blogs life. But you will get noticed and it will pay off. CONTENT is the key, not baiting others with slick tricks or spamming. Related Linking Articles: • Law Blogs work when you get links to your law blog.

If you don’t have Trackbacks and Comments enabled on your blog, do it. I allow Trackbacks and Comments on all my blogs. I do however moderate them to keep out spam.

Not only should you allow them on your own blog. You should do Trackbacks as often as possible and you should Comment on other other post as often as you can.

A Trackback is the method of informing a blogger that you are linking to and using information from his post. Both Trackbacks and Comments are just one tool to also help you with your SEO.

The following are additional reasons from Problogger why you should be doing Trackbacks and Comments.

• Leaving a comment or two makes your name familiar and lets the blogger know that you read his or blog. You become a person, a person who is interested and interesting. Leaving a trackback before you ever comment can look like you are standoffish or too busy to comment.
• Leaving a trackback on the same post where you’ve left a comment can work really well, if you are truly interested in the dialogue and the topic. Think of it as a real conversation, that you might have had with a fairly new friend. If you were truly engaged and thought of a new point on your way home, you might shoot him an email or IM to pass it along.
• The track post that you write shows that you took the conversation at the original blog one step further. Almost everyone would think that’s a compliment, sending a trackback is a lot like saying ‘You’ve got me thinking, and I’m telling others good things about you.’ Who wouldn’t like to hear that?

Good advice to follow. So, go forth and Comment and do Trackbacks and increase your own traffic.

Jamie Spencer at the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer had a great post sometime back called Getting other lawyers to link to your blog. My fellow blogger Jamie, gives two main ways to accomplish this. And I could not agree more.

1. Content, Content, Content.
2. Link out to other people who are writing on similar topics. Basically, to get them to notice that you exist in the first place, the easiest thing to do is to cut and paste from something they wrote (while, of course, acknowledging them and linking back to them), and then comment on what they wrote.

And as he says, “nothing, and I mean nothing will beat good content.” Something I have been preaching for over two years now. And as Kevin O’Keefe stated, “no reason to expand, its as simple as that.” I too would be glad to discuss blogging with anyone that wants to visit. Drop me a call at 785-632-6612 or an email at gdgrifflaw@mac.com