Kevin O’Keefe had a great blog today called, 6 reasons large law firm blogs beat law firm websites with RSS feeds.

While I agree with Kevin’s premise. I think it applies to small firm and solos just as well. And from my own experience, I know a blog will beat a Web site when it comes to results. Shortly after my first practice area blog went live, I received a phone call from another Kansas family law attorney. The first words out of his mouth were these. “How the hell are you ranked higher than me in a Google search?” My response, “ I have a blog and I will beat you every time.”

But, as Kevin states, blogs harness the power of RSS in a way a static Web site simple can’t do. Here are the six reasons.

• Content on a website is much less likely than blog content to appear high in search engine results when relevant searches are performed by in-house counsel, exec’s, the media, and other interested parties.
• Website content must be promoted. Word of a blog with valuable content spreads across the Internet by virtue of news sites and other blogs citing the content.
• Website content is generally seen only by existing clients. Blogs, akin to an online magazine on a niche subject, are read by clients of other firms, lawyers at other firms, the media, and other bloggers.
• Over 20% of senior exec’s in this country read one business blog a week and the number is growing. How many exec’s read law firm articles?
• Measure of influence is quickly becoming of critical importance for web content by places like Google Blog Search. Influence is determined in large part by being cited by other blogs and news sites with RSS feeds. Law firm articles will not be cited.
• Innovative companies, large law’s targeted clients see blogs as innovative. Law firm articles/alerts, whether including an RSS or not, are looked at as more of the same. ‘All law firms do that.’

To truly take advantage of the power of Internet marketing, use a blog as one of your marketing tools. And with the blog, take full advantage of the power of what RSS can also do for you and your readers. If you don’t know what RSS is, be watching for an upcoming screencast on the subject. And if your readers don’t know what RSS is, you owe it to them to educate them on it.

Kevin O’Keefe has just recently posted about Full or Partial Feeds and provided a great graphic from one of my favorite blogs, ProBlogger. This is what Darren Rowse found from a reader poll he conducted on his blog.

As many of you know I have posted about it here on Blawg for Profit and Home Office Lawyer.

It would appear there are more and more agreeing that a blog should provide full feeds for RSS.

I for one have always favored full-text RSS feeds. And quite frankly when others don’t use them, I rarely visit the rest of the post by clicking through from my newsreader. I am a newsreader blog surfer. And if you aren’t using full-text feeds, you are not getting the readership you deserve.

Kevin O’Keefe has finally seen the light and is a convert himself.

I’m a convert to full-text RSS feeds. Being the small minded lawyer I am, I began blogging with excerpt feeds wanting users to come to blog. My logic was that readers would read more about me and what I did - like they cared.

When I switched to full text RSS feeds more people read my blog posts and more people, other bloggers and the media, cited my blog posts in their writings. My reputation as an authority on lawyer blogs grew and LexBlog’s business increased.

LexBlog’s law firm clients, thinking traffic and stats is the goal, want people coming to their blog to read their posts. However, I’m going to advise full text feeds going forward. Stats is not the goal - enhancing one’s reputation as an authority in a niche practice area and a growth in business are the real goals.

In addition, the Feedburner weblog mentions full-text feeds too.

Dennis Kennedy touches on this subject also. Dennis states:

There’s long been a debate over whether to distribute your RSS feed as an excerpt feed or a full-text feed.

I started out with an excerpt feed because I enjoyed writing a customized “excerpt” as a teaser. I didn’t use the standard automatic “first 20 or 50 words” excerpt that people commonly use today. I switched to a full-text feed because I preferred full-text feeds from other blogs and sites. And because I sometimes spent more time on writing the excerpt than the full post.

There are good reasons that you might choose to distribute a full-text or an excerpt feed. Excerpt feeds require that a reader click-through and visit your blog. Full-text feeds let your readers read the full post without going to your blog.

Over the years, people who use newsreaders to consume RSS feeds often reach a point where they feel that they have subscribed to WAY TOO MANY feeds. They then decide to prune their list of feeds. Historically, one of the easiest ways to cut the feeds you subscribe to is to delete those that offer only excerpts of posts.

The reason should be apparent. You save yourself the time and effort of clicking through to see the rest of the post. If you read feeds offline with a stand-alone reader, as I often do, then you will prefer full-text feeds because you can read everything in the post.

So, if you are blogging and not doing full-text feeds, stop it. Do full-text feeds. I have been doing them since almost the beginning of my blogging. It has not harmed my traffic one little bit.