And can you accomplish that purpose by using ghost writers? My position is that you can’t. And Allison Shields of Legal Ease Blog has ask a question to keep the conversation going in her post titled, As a Lawyer - Blogger, What’s the Purpose of Your Blog?

I have talked about ghost writers in a previous post called, Should I use a Ghost Writer for my Blog? Allison ask what do you think. Visit her blog at the link above and post your comment. Or do so here.

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!!

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.

In the Blawg for Profit program, to which this blog is a companion, we discuss directory submissions and which directories you should consider submitting your blog to in order to help your search engine rankings.

As we discuss in detail in the program, some directory sites our free and some are not. Some are worth submitting to (and paying for) and some are not. You can get our recommendations in the program. But, here is a post I recently found in which another blogger suggests directory sites he thinks are worth paying for. He includes the Yahoo paid directory, which I also recommend.

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

I often get asked whether a lawyer should put ads, such as Google Ads on their practice blog. Short answer NO!! I and others agree, a blog a lawyer is using to promote his or her practice is no place for ads. The amount of clutter and image your blog will have from such ads is not worth the small amount of money you will make.

If you have a desire or need to promote something on your blog, promote yourself. Promote a service you are providing. Promote a free report you have to offer. But, don’t put Google Ads on your blog.

Recently I have noticed a clear and surprising change in the traffic on my family law blog, the Kansas Family & DIvorce Lawyer. Historically, the heaviest day for traffic was usually the middle of the week and sometimes on Fridays. Mondays were not all that great. However, in the past couple of months that has changed. Mondays are now my heaviest days for traffic. I am curious as to why.

Since it is a “divorce law” blog, I wonder if it might be a seasonal trend. However, I don’t remember this change last year.. If anyone else has noticed a shift in traffic, please post your comments here and let me know what your think of it.

An AP report today states that Nielsen/NetRatings, one of the leading Internet stats services, will ’scrap rankings’ based on page views and replace it with how long visitors spend at websites. The reason is that online video and technologies such as Ajax ‘increasingly make page views less meaningful.’ We’ve known for some time, but it’s big news if a major stats service like Nielsen/NetRatings officially degrades the importance of page views. Note that later in the AP article, it states that Nielsen won’t be fully scrapping page views - they ‘will still provide page view figures but won’t formally rank them’. How does this affect blogs?Blogs are a good case where ‘time spent’ is more meaningful than page views. Especially since the blogosphere is particularly prone to the ‘quantity over quality’ problem. It’s easy to pump out 20+ posts a day - and that tactic garners a lot of page views. But are those blogs actually writing for their readers, or writing to get page views? In other words, check the ‘time spent on site’ figures for those blogs and I think you’d find it is very low - because users click through, find nothing of value, and quickly leave. Is that good for advertisers on those sites? No it isn’t. So in the case of blogs, I’d argue that ‘time spent on site’ is a better measure than the easily gamed (or at least cynically exploited) page view model.

What Nielsen’s Competitors Are DoingThe AP report states that Nielsen’s rival, comScore Media Metrix, ‘addressed the rise of Ajax with the development of site ‘visits’ — defined as the number of times a person returns to a site with a break of at least a half-hour.’ But that doesn’t take into account the effectiveness of a site, because again people could be visiting a site due to it being highly ranked in Google - yet when they click through they find rubbish content and so very quickly leave.

Source for Post: Clippings.