Legal Ease Blog

The First Two Rules of Marketing: Know Your Purpose and Your Audience

 

Marketing Basics: Who's Your Audience?

Two of the most basic rules of marketing are: (1) know your purpose and (2) know your audience. But as basic as these rules are, they are violated surprisingly frequently. Take, for example, the frequent emails I receive from individuals seeking to write guest posts on this blog or on my lawyermeltdown.com site. Here's one I received this week (names and other details removed to protect the writer's identity):

Hello,

My name is [name]; I run a blog at [blog url], a network of experienced criminal defense attorneys across [state]. We write a lot of quality content on legal defense, assault charges, domestic violence, misdemeanors, property crimes and other criminal defense topics, something I noticed you also love to publish on your esteemed website :)

I know you’re incredibly busy, so I’ll be quick. I have an article that I’d like to contribute to your site. It’s about Bail and why it is inherently excessive, which I know you and your readers have expressed interest in, and I think they’d like what I have to say. Naturally, if you choose to run the piece, we’ll tell our readers about and promote on social media, so you’d get a traffic boost (and hopefully some new readers, as well). Let me know if you’re interested and we can talk about the next steps.

One way or another, thanks for your time, and keep up the awesome work!

Take care,

[name]

How well did this email work? Let's examine these two basic rules of marketing. 

Any marketing endeavor should begin with an examination of purpose. Why are you undertaking this particular project or marketing initiative? What do you hope to accomplish? Is your chosen method the best method for accomplishing this purpose?

Next, you need to spend some time thinking about your audience. Given your intended purpose, who is the most appropriate audience for your marketing message? Where is the best place to reach that audience? What is the best method for reaching them? Does this audience have likes, dislikes, preferences or biases that might affect your marketing message, your approach, or the method you choose to reach them? If you don't know the answers to these questions, it might be time to do some homework.

Going back to our example above, let's look at each of these basics in turn. 

Know Your Purpose

First, is marketing the purpose of this email? Of course it is! He's using guest posting as a way to gain more visibility for his blog and for the lawyers in his criminal defense network. He is marketing himself to bloggers and websites as a guest writer. The purpose of this email is to have me agree to post his contribution about excessive bail on my blog or site.

Looking at purpose alone, this writer did a decent job of marketing his guest post - he provided me with the url to his blog so that I could go there and see the post topics and the quality of the writing. He gave me a good idea of his market and the kinds of topics his blog covers. And he made a suggestion of a specific topic for his proposed guest post on my blog.

There were some negatives, though. For example, he doesn't tell me whether the piece he is proposing would be unique content provided only to me. Is this content he's shopping to many others? If so, it might result in me posting duplicate content that appears in other places on the internet, which is something I'd want to avoid.

He also doesn't say exactly who will be writing the post he proposes. His email says he runs a blog that is a network of criminal defense attorneys, which makes me wonder who is actually creating the content. If I were to accept a guest post, I'd want to know who was writing it and whether that person had a perspective or something to say that would resonate with my readers. 

And that brings us to the next marketing basic:

Know Your Audience

This is where this email, and the writer's whole pitch, falls apart. It is glaringly obvious that the person who sent me this email knows nothing about my blog or my website, the market I serve, or the topics that would fit into my site. What makes it even worse is that the writer says things like, "something I noticed you also love to publish on your esteemed website :)" and "which I know you and your readers have expressed interest in, and I think they’d like what I have to say."

The email makes it sound as if this writer is actually familiar with my blog or website and what my readers want, even though it is clear from the topics he talks about and the piece he proposes that he hasn't read my blog or site at all. If he had spent some time looking at my blog or website, he would know that criminal law topics are not the right fit for me.

This was a complete failure to identify the appropriate audience for the writer's marketing pitch; in this case, the audience should have been limited to blogs or websites that post on criminal law issues or target audiences with an interest in criminal law topics. 

Not only did this writer waste my time and his (although, in fairness, he did provide me with a blog post topic), but the net effect of contacting me with this pitch was not only not positive (he didn't accomplish his purpose) or even neutral, but it was, in fact, negative.

It is clear to me that the writer didn't do his homework, didn't tailor his email messages, and is only pretending to be familiar with my audience, my site and its contents. What does that say about how he - or the lawyers he represents - does business?

It is likely that this same email pitch was sent, word for word, to many other websites or blogs. Perhaps he wouldl get lucky and some of them would be the right fit. But is that the most effective way to go about marketing yourself, your firm, or your practice? Is that the way you want others to go about marketing you or your firm? Is it professional? Is getting one yes worth the potential negative effect of the impression left on the others for whom this pitch wasn't appropriate?

What do you think?

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How Lawyers Can Get the Most out of Writing Articles

You may have heard the advice that creating content can help you build your practice and the saying, “content is king,” so if you’ve written an article – excellent! But don’t stop there. Now is not the time to take a break.

Whether your article was published on your own website or blog, in another online location, or in a print publication, that article is valuable content that can be leveraged to reach even more readers, potential clients, influencers, referral sources, or even the media.

 If you create great content and nobody knows about it or sees it, it won’t do much for your marketing or business development efforts. The more people who see your article, the more it will help build your reputation, establish you as an expert, boost your credibility and grow your network – all of which can help you build your practice and bring in business.

Get more mileage out of every article you write

Use social media to your advantage

If the article is already online, you’ll want to post the link to all of your social media accounts. These may include: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and even Pinterest or Instagram (good reasons to include images in your article).

LinkedIn

There are several ways that you can get more visibility for your content using LinkedIn. Post an update on your personal Profile and on your firm’s LinkedIn Company Page. Look at the LinkedIn Groups you belong to and use the article as a jumping-off point for a Group discussion (your Groups will likely contain many more – and different- contacts than you will reach by posting an update alone), and don’t forget to include a link to the article in each of these.

You can also add the article to your Profile under the Publications section (now part of Accomplishments on LinkedIn), or as a link or attachment under your Summary, Experience or Education sections on your Profile.

If the article is not already online, you may want to pull one or two points from the article and create a blog post or mini-article from your original article to post online, either on your own site or, if you don’t have one, on LinkedIn, using LinkedIn Publisher. You can also take articles that are already online (for example, an article that is on your firm’s website) and re-purpose that into a LinkedIn article using the Publisher platform, and then link back to the full article on your site.

For example, let’s say you’ve written an article on the five most important things to know before you prepare your estate plan. Pull out the five points – perhaps a sentence or two about each one, write an introductory sentence, a conclusory sentence with a link to the full article on your site, and publish it on LinkedIn Publisher. Or choose just one or two points to include in your LinkedIn article and link to the full article for the remaining points with a read more link (don’t forget to include images here too).

Other social media platforms

In addition to LinkedIn, think about the other social media platforms you participate in or have accounts with. Some of these may be “strictly” personal, and others you may use for mixed business and personal reasons. You may even have separate personal and business accounts on many of these platforms.

As you can see, using social media for this purpose provides a substantial amount of options to help get your article seen by a wide variety of people. Every article may not be appropriate for every platform or for both business and personal accounts, but don’t rule out the possibility of sharing your posts on personal accounts, particularly if the article contains information that is written specifically for the kinds of people who follow your accounts on these platforms and contains information that could be valuable or helpful to them.

Keep in mind that even if you are using a platform mostly for personal reasons and not for business reasons, it makes sense every once in a while to remind friends, family and followers what you do for a living, and posting a link to an article that contains helpful information is a great way to do that – it promotes you without being “promotional.”

Schedule posts wisely

Remember that your social media followers don’t see everything you post all of the time. Post the same link more than once on same social channel; try posting at different times of the day and emphasize different points from the article in your posts to reach different audiences.

If your article content will be relevant for a period of time, while you are creating those initial social media posts immediately after the article’s publication, use a scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule social media posts into the future. Consider scheduling several posts about your article in the first week or two after publication, and then schedule additional posts for at least several months thereafter.

Use email

If your article is especially relevant to specific clients, referral sources, or to a certain segment of your contact list, send the article link or a PDF of the article in an email. Or include the article in a firm newsletter that goes to your clients or prospects. You may also wish to include links to articles or other related content on your site.

Other ways to re-purpose articles

You can get even more mileage out of articles by taking the content and converting it into other formats. Some ideas for doing this include:

• Create an infographic using the main points in your article – post the infographic on social media sites with a link back to the original article
• Design a slide presentation from your article content
• Animate the slide presentation to create a video (add audio for even more impact)
• Develop a live presentation based on the article to use for speaking engagements or to present to clients
• Turn the article into a script for a podcast

Even if you don't do all of the things suggested here, taking just a few of these suggestions should help to improve the visibility of articles you write in the future - and if you've got some articles that you have already written that didn't get the exposure you wanted, try some of these to breathe new life into old (but still relevant) content.

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Choosing Ghostwriters, Blogging and Social Media Service Providers

In my last post,I talked about delegating or outsourcing some blogging and social media tasks to others to reduce the burden of managing these activities, while still gaining many of the benefits.

But using outside services to write or post for you does raise some potential issues, including loss of engagement, style that is inconsistent with the individual lawyer or firm, and potential ethical issues. (For more on blogs and ghostwriting, see my posts Should You Use a Ghostwriter for Your Blog and Ghostwriting and Legal Blogs or my post on the Lawyerist blog, Outsourcing Blogs and Social Media). 

My last post talked a bit about choosing a writer or service (or an employee or associate in your firm) that understands and can convey the correct style, but there's more to consider than that.

The safest (and most effective) course of action, rather than outsourcing the entire endeavor, is to delegate or outsource only part of the process, while maintaining control over your content, voice and interactions. Lawyers often use paralegals or younger associates to draft pleadings, motions or other court papers in the lawyer’s name, and a similar practice for blogging and social media posting is not inherently unethical if the lawyer is also providing input into the work, supervising, reviewing content for accuracy, ensuring that no ethics issues exist, and signing off on it before it is posted online.

Tips for choosing a ghostwriter, outside service or employee for blog or social media activities:

• Use a service that understands the difference between promotion and providing value to your audience
• Use someone who has worked with lawyers and understands that ethical rules may prohibit some activities, words, phrases or posts.
• Thoroughly investigate the company or individual, their philosophy, writing style, and approach to blogging and social media. Ask for examples that demonstrate how they use these tools themselves or on behalf of other clients.
• Require that all content be original, and provided only to you, rather than generic content provided to many other attorneys who practice in your area of law (even if those other attorneys are outside of your geographic area)
• Insist on a work for hire agreement stating that the work created for you and your blog or social media accounts belongs to you and not to the writer or their company
• Develop a written agreement that states that nothing may be posted on your behalf without your prior approval, whether the posts are made on your accounts or are comments on others’ accounts or sites
• Review all content – you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of all content posted on your behalf and for ensuring that it complies with the ethical rules. You’ll also want to be familiar with what is being posted so that you can speak intelligently about it if you receive inquiries or comments about it, and to confirm that it presents you and your firm in the best light possible
• Check that the legal information is correct and that you agree with and support any opinions expressed, and that those opinions will not offend or otherwise upset or create conflicts with your clients and referral sources
• Establish a good mix of posts that provide value and link to other sources in addition to providing your own content and links to your own content, and make sure that promotional posts are kept to a minimum

Finally, remember that social media is meant to be social. To be the most effective, you should be the one engaging with your readers and followers. Respond to comments and communicate one on one. Take online relationships offline into the real world; set up meetings and phone calls. Make introductions and connections between people in your network. Share others’ content; it not only reduces the amount of original content you need to post, but it builds your networks and your relationships with those whose content you share.

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Delegation Tips for Lawyer Blogs and Social Media Accounts

Marketing experts recommend that to gain visibility and get traffic to your firm’s website, you should maintain a blog and participate in social media. But for attorneys in firms of all sizes, especially small firms and solo practices, it can be a challenge to find the time to properly manage these activities and develop professional quality content that provides value to readers and followers while at the same time managing your clients, your cases, and your practice.

Personally engaging in these activities is the gold standard; writing your own posts creates a greater connection with your audience because the audience feels as if you are speaking directly to them. But it requires a regular commitment of time. However, there are ways that you can delegate or outsource some of the work of creating an active and engaged blog and social media presence to reduce some of the burden on you, while still gaining the benefits of participation.

Ways to Delegate Blogging and Social Media Tasks

For example, you could hire a writer to do some repurposing for you – taking some of your existing materials or writing and developing blog posts and social media posts or campaigns around them. If you have written a legal brief, a writer may be able to turn the writing you’ve done for a legal audience (the court) into writing on the same topic for a different audience – potential clients or referral sources – by explaining the legal concepts to a lay audience and breaking down your brief into a series of blog posts.

Or you could also ask someone to interview you about a timely topic or a story in the news. That interview could become a podcast or audio posted to your website, and the transcript of the interview could be transcribed into text as a blog post. You could also have a writer expand a bit on some of what you discuss in the interview.

You can also ask others to write guest posts for your blog. They can be other lawyers, clients, experts, or other service providers. Guest posts are a win- win: they provide the guest poster with increased visibility and access to your audience, and give your audience a different perspective or new information that you might not be able to provide on your own, while reducing the frequency with which you have to create your own content. (You may want to include a disclaimer on these posts and make it clear they are written by third parties and represent their views, and not necessarily yours.)

Other Blogging and Social Media Tasks to Delegate or Outsource

Other tasks you can delegate or outsource include:

• Conducting basic research
• Identifying of story ideas or news items as the basis for posts
• Maintaining an editorial calendar
• Developing a first draft of a post based on some bullet points or a topic idea you provide
• Suggesting other blogs to follow or link to
• Setting up a blogs or social media accounts
• Proofreading and editing
• Reviewing analytics and post performance
• Posting links to articles, blog posts or to your website on social media

For those that don’t have the time or don’t want to actually write themselves, but still want to maintain a blog or social media accounts, using a ghostwriter or subscribing to a blogging service may solve the problem. But you’ll want to be sure that their writing fits with your firm’s style, voice, and the image you’re trying to project.

Checking on Style

If you decide to hire others to write for your blog or post to your social media accounts, do a trial run and check their writing style:

• Does the writer’s style match yours?
• Does it convey the impression you want to convey?
• Does their language reflect the language you use with clients?
• Does their writing reflect your philosophy and values as a lawyer?
• Does it reflect your personality? Is it more or less formal, conversational, lighthearted, humorous, etc. than you usually are?
• Are posts written specifically to connect with your target audience?

Using outside services to write or post for you may raise some additional issues you should be aware of, including potential ethical issues. For example, having someone else writing blog posts in the lawyer’s name could be potentially misleading. And posting about clients or cases could run afoul of confidentiality rules. In my next post, I'll give you some tips and things to think about when choosing a ghostwriter, outside service or employee to run your blog or social media activities. (Hint: you'll still need to be involved).

For more on blogs and ghostwriting, see my posts Should You Use a Ghostwriter for Your Blog and Ghostwriting and Legal Blogs or my post on the Lawyerist blog, Outsourcing Blogs and Social Media. 

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NY Ethics Opinions Address Technology

Next week I’ll be presenting at the ABA Women Rainmakers Mid-Career Workshop on “Lawyering in the Digital Age.” My presentation covers technology issues that the lawyers of today are faced with that didn’t exist 20, 10, or sometimes even 5 years ago, including issues involving electronic communication, data storage and security, “cloud” services, websites and virtual law offices.

In the past several months, the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics has issued a number of ethics opinions that deal with some of these topics.

Here is a quick overview of the New York Opinions.

Remote Access to Law Firm Electronic Files

Perhaps the most comprehensive of the recent New York opinions dealing with the application of the New York ethics rules to modern technology is Opinion 1019, discussing confidentiality and remote access to a law firm’s electronic files. The opinion concludes that, “A law firm may give its lawyers remote access to client files, so that lawyers may work from home, as long as the firm determines that the particular technology used provides reasonable protection to client confidential information, or, in the absence of such reasonable protection, if the law firm obtains informed consent from the client, after informing the client of the risks.”

This reasonableness standard comes from Rule 1.6, Confidentiality. Rule 1.6(c) provides that a lawyer must "exercise reasonable care to prevent . . . others whose services are utilized by the lawyer from disclosing or using confidential information of a client" except as provided in Rule 1.6(b). 

Comment 17 to Rule 1.6 provides some additional guidance regarding reasonableness, and notes that “special circumstances might require additional security precautions.” Comment 17 also sets forth factors to be considered in determining reasonableness, including the sensitivity of the information and the extent to which the privacy of the communication is protected by law or by a confidentiality agreement.

Opinion 1019 concludes that,

Because of the fact-specific and evolving nature of both technology and cyber risks, we cannot recommend particular steps that would constitute reasonable precautions to prevent confidential information from coming into the hands of unintended recipients, including the degree of password protection to ensure that persons who access the system are authorized, the degree of security of the devices that firm lawyers use to gain access, whether encryption is required, and the security measures the firm must use to determine whether there has been any unauthorized access to client confidential information. However, assuming that the law firm determines that its precautions are reasonable, we believe it may provide such remote access. When the law firm is able to make a determination of reasonableness, we do not believe that client consent is necessary.

However, if a law firm cannot make such a conclusion, the client’s informed consent may be obtained.

Use of Cloud Services for a Transaction

In Opinion 1020, issued September 12, 2014, the Committee addressed a question raised by a real estate attorney who wanted to use an electronic project management tool which would allow sellers’ attorneys, buyers’ attorneys, real estate brokers and mortgage brokers to post and view documents, including contracts and building financials, using a cloud-based data storage tool.

As they did in Opinion 1019, the Committee referred to Rule 1.6(c) and the reasonableness standard, stating that,

Whether a lawyer to a party in a transaction may post and share documents using a “cloud” data storage tool depends on whether the particular technology employed provides reasonable protection to confidential client information and, if not, whether the lawyer obtains informed consent from the client after advising the client of the relevant risks,” and that lawyers must “exercise reasonable care to prevent … [persons] whose services are utilized by the lawyer from disclosing or using confidential information of a client."

Virtual Law Offices

In Opinion 1025, issued September 25, 2014,  the Committee opined that a lawyer would be permitted to have an entirely virtual law practice in the State of New York (operating solely online, with no physical location to meet with clients or conduct the practice of law), as long as the attorney complied with the requirements of Judiciary Law §470.

The issue presented was based on Rule 7.1(h) of the Rule of Professional Conduct, which requires that advertisements contain the attorney's principal law office address. An attorney inquired about whether Rule 7.1(h) prohibited the attorney from operating via a purely virtual law office.

Previous NYSBA Opinions concluded that Rule 7.1(h) required all attorneys who advertise to have and disclose a physical office address, however, based in part on court rulings applying Judiciary Law §470, Opinion 1025 comes to a somewhat different conclusion, stating that, “[W]e no longer believe that Rule 7.1(h) -- a rule that on its face regulates only advertising -- provides an independent basis for requiring a physical office.”

The opinion points out that there is potential value to clients of having a lawyer who works solely through a virtual law office, particularly where the client themselves works only virtually, and stating that, "The robustness of electronic communications, and the appointment of a virtual law office service as an agent for accepting service of process, effectively combine to eliminate any concern that a physical office is necessary in all cases for the receipt of service and other communications,” and that, “there is nothing inherently misleading about advertising a virtual law office.”

The opinion cites N.Y. City opinion 2014-2, which deals with a similar issue. It was noted however, that the lack of requirement for a physical law office was not automatic, and would depend heavily on the circumstances.

New York Rule of Professional Conduct 1.1, Competence, requires all attorneys to ensure competence, which Opinion 1025 notes

[N]ot only includes competence in performing the legal work but also competence in handling communications and storing and providing access to client files. An attorney should only use technology that he or she is competent to use. Attorneys owe duties of effective communication with clients to keep them promptly and reasonably informed and consulted about the means of achieving the client's objectives (Rule 1.4). Attorneys owe duties to maintain confidentiality (Rule 1.6), and there are unique concerns about confidentiality that relate to conducting all communications and client file storage electronically. Attorneys have numerous duties relating to the proper preservation of client materials (Rules 1.6(c) and 1.15). Attorneys must assure adequate supervision of subordinate lawyers and of non-lawyers (Rule 5.1 and 5.3). There is no “virtual law office exception” to any of the Rules.

Website Domain Names

As I discussed in this post, in mid-2013, the NYSBA Committee on Professional Ethics issued Opinion 972, in which it noted that attorneys are prohibited from listing their services under the heading “Specialties” on a social media site unless the lawyer is certified in conformity with the provisions of Rule 7.4(c).

On September 12, 2014, the Committee issued Opinion 1021, which addresses the issue of the use of the word “expert” in a law firm’s domain name, citing New York Rule of Professional Conduct 7.5(e)(3), which prohibits firms from using a domain name that implies the ability to obtain results in the matter. The opinion notes that, “The implication of the word [expert] is that the law firm may bring to the matter a seal of approval that provides comparatively greater assurance of some favorable outcome which no disclaimer may readily cure.”

With the rapid pace of technology change in today’s legal environment, all attorneys must remain up to date not only on the changes in technology that affect the delivery of legal services and advertising for those services, but in the ethical rules implicated in the use of such technology.

 

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Book Review - Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers

Although some lawyers have been blogging for quite a while now, others are just starting out. I still hear even established lawyers asking questions like, “Should I start a blog?” “What is the difference between a blog and a website?” and “How do I get started with blogging?”

All of these questions and more are answered in Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers, by Ernie Svenson, published recently by the ABA Law Practice Management Section. The book truly is, as Ernie says, “A short guide on how to start and maintain a law-related weblog.”

Ernie started his blog in 2002 and was one of the very first legal bloggers, and he’s still going strong. So I guess you could say he’s been around the blogging block. Although no book can teach you everything you need to know about starting a blog in one hour, Ernie’s book does a good job of giving you the basics and walking you through the setup, showing you how to post, how to gather information, and how to monitor and maintain your blog. And although it may take you longer than an hour to set up your blog (particularly if you want to customize design and add plug-ins or other features), you can certainly read Ernie’s book in an hour.

Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers is an easy to read, step by step guide that provides all of the information you need to know: why to start a legal blog, the important elements of a good blog, the ethical issues you need to be aware of, how to set up and customize your blog, how to find ideas for blog posts, and how to build your audience.

One of the features of the book I think many new bloggers will find exceptionally helpful is the Checklist for New Bloggers, found in the Appendix. I recommend that you read through the entire book and then use the checklist as your guide to walk you through the steps while you’re sitting at your computer setting up your new blog. If you need clarification or more detail on a particular step, you can always refer back to the more detailed chapter in the book.

When I read the book, I had the same thought blogger and law practice management expert Bob Ambrogi did (you can see his review of the book here) - with the popularity of WordPress for legal blogs, it was a bit surprising that Ernie focused on TypePad in the book.  Ernie has responded to this issue by stating in the blog that accompanies the book (see below) that he now recommends WordPress for legal bloggers, but when writing the book, it was easier for him to demonstrate the blog setup using TypePad.

If your blog is currently on WordPress or you’re planning to create a new blog on WordPress, don’t let that stop you from getting Ernie’s book. This blog was created and is still hosted on TypePad, although my Lawyer Meltdown site is now hosted on WordPress, so I’ve used both. The screen shots in the book may show you TypePad’s platform, but all of the same functionality is available in WordPress and all of the same principles apply.

If you’d like to learn more about blogging, Ernie has even started a website as a companion to the book. The site includes interviews with lawyer-bloggers about their blogging experience, resources for those who want to start a WordPress blog, articles about what other activities bloggers should be engaging in, and more.

Blogging "Do"s and "Don't"s

This week I came across a whole bunch of articles and posts on blogging, so I thought I'd share some of them with you.

First, Morgan Smith of Cogent Legal posted some blogging tips from a panel he participated in at the recent Legal Marketing Technology Conference/West in SanFrancisco. The panel's tips include:

• Successful blogs consist of high quality, original posts at least weekly
• Quote or cite reporters covering your area of law or blog topic - they may start following you and quote you back
• Anticipate potential clients' questions and create blog posts that answer them
• Use the 'related posts' plug in (if your blog has one) to keep visitors on the site and engaged
• Track analytics to see which posts get the most traffic and write more on those topics
• Remember that in addition to attracting potential clients, blogs can lead to speaking engagements and other writing assignments, not to mention relationships with thought leaders and other colleagues.

Next up, from the Inbound Marketing Blog comes the 7 Worst Business Blogging Mistakes You Need to Avoid (and I admit that my blog makes some of them). I recommend you read the post for the whole list, but these are some of the common mistakes I see lawyers making from his list:

• Not writing often
• Over-optimizing for search (write for human beings - it makes a better impression on web visitors and won't get you penalized by Google or other search engines for trying to "game" the system)
• Not including calls to action in blog posts (tell your reader what you want them to do next, whether it's leaving a comment, checking out another post or a particular page on your site or taking action on your advice)

And from Boostblogtraffic.com, 12 Blogging Mistakes that Make You Look Like a World-Class Idiot warns bloggers not to:

• Hold back their best content
• Make empty promises
• Let blog posts go on and on, losing the essential message in a lot of 'fat'
• Write posts devoid of personality
• Get defensive

...and more.

What are your best blogging tips? Share with me in the comments.

 

Ghostwriting and Legal Blogs

Last week on Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Kevin posted two separate posts on the issue of ghostwriting and lawyer blogs. The first: Are ghostwritten lawyer blogs unethical? explores the issue of whether lawyers who allow others to write blog posts under the lawyer's name violates the lawyer's ethical rules and responsibilities. It generated a number of comments.

That post was followed by another, "Why ghost blogging for lawyers is misguided," in which Kevin opines that

[G]hostwriting shows a lack of understanding of what blogging is all about and is not going to bring you the business development success you're after.

Rather than using a ghostwriter, Kevin gives a number of suggestions for alternative ways to make blogging work for your firm.

I've written about the issue of ghostwriting and legal blogs in the past, in my post, "Should you use a ghostwriter for your blog" and more recently on the Lawyerist blog: "Outsourcing Blogs and Social Media". In general, I'm not a fan of using a ghostwriter or oursourcing your social media and blogging activities. It's like asking someone else to go out and build relationships for you.

Can you use other experts to help you create an active and engaged blog? Sure. Last week's post on this blog was a guest post by Loretta Ruppert from LexisNexis. And you can certainly have others do basic research, provide ideas, and possibly even give you bullet points or a first draft of some blog posts. Experts may be able to provide you with suggestions of other blogs to follow or link to. But to be the most effective, (and the most ethical), a blog post with your name on it should be written by you, in your voice, and you should be the one engaging with your readers. And the same goes for social media.

If you do decide to allow someone else to engage in these activities in your name, the best bet is a disclaimer with full disclosure.

(To read another perspective on ghostblogging, see Jay Fleischman's post on Legal Practice Pro on Law Firm Blogs and Ghostblogging.)

Making Your Blog Content More "Share-Worthy"

Amy Porterfield of Social Media Examiner recently posted 5 Tips for Creating Shareable Blog Content. After all, if you are writing a blog, you not only want your 'regular' followers to read it, but you want them to share it with their networks, too. That way you get more exposure.

But (in my experience anyway), it isn't always easy to predict which posts are going to 'hit' and which ones will fall flat. These tips might help you create more content that lands in the 'hit' category.

Here are Porterfield's 5 tips (with a little commentary from me along the way):

1. Build instant rapport - Write as if you are writing to one person at a time.  

One good way to do this is to think about your best client (or your best referral source or even that reporter who you want to take notice of your post), and write your post as if you were writing to them personally. Don't write as if you were writing a legal brief - write as if you are explaining a concept to your best client.

2. Create relevance - focus on delivering value to your audience

The key here is to get people wanting more - and wanting to come back to your blog (and to share it - and keep sharing it with others). The way to do that is by consistently providing quality content that your audience wants and needs. Back up what you are saying with case studies, stories, statistics and visual aids.

3. Provide instant gratification - deliver your message in bite-sized pieces

This is probably the most difficult one for me, since I tend to write lengthy posts. As Amy says, your blog should be about making your readers' lives easier. Most of us are pressed for time, so if your message can be read and understood quickly, your readers will thank you for it. Stick with one idea per post. If you're full of ideas as you write, write a bunch of shorter posts at once (less writing to do later!), or break larger topics down into pieces and post them as a series, focusing on one aspect at a time.

4. Ignite shareability

This is about making things easy for your readers as well - only this time you want to make it easy for them to share your content. Provide easy ways for readers to share by adding Facebook "Like" buttons, Google +1 buttons and other sharing mechanisms along with every post to make sharing your content as easy as one simple click.

Porterfield recommends that you think about your audience when you create your posts - what would they be interested in learning about? What might be of value to them? It isn't always related to what you do or the services you provide. Providing information about related topics can be very useful and keep readers coming back to you as a good source of information.

5. Make Your Closing Count - spark conversation

If your goal is for others to share your blog content, you want to make your post the beginning of a conversation - and you want to invite your readers to participate in that conversation. Ask readers a question at the end of your post, or ask for their point of view. As a lawyer, you want to be careful when inviting readers to participate or comment on your blog - make sure you have all necessary disclaimers in place about confidentiality and attorney-client relationships, but remember, too that you can invite conversation or invite sharing without specifically inviting comments on the blog itself.

For more tips on making your content more shareable, see my October post, "Make your content more share-worthy on social networks."

What are YOUR best tips for creating content that others want to share?

What kind of content are YOU most likely to share? Leave a comment, send me a tweet or post your ideas on my Facebook page.

photo credit: http://flic.kr/p/7tRph2

Make Your Content More "Share-Worthy" on Social Networks

If you want to increase the chances that your content will be shared on social media, you may want to consider these tips from Phil Mershon of the  Social Media Examiner:

1. Build Trust

People share content online only when they trust the source. Lawyers who share inaccurate information or seem to be hiding something online will not be seen as trustworthy.

2. Give Them What They Want

What content or information is most important to your audience, your clients and potential clients? If your readers do not care what you write about, they won't share it with others - and they may stop reading entirely.

3. Be Interesting

Nobody wants to read boring content. There's too much good content out there to waste time slogging through boring content that's filled with legalese or is difficult to understand.

4. Show Your Passion

People like sharing content that they are passionate about. When you show what turns you on, it will turn like-minded readers on, which makes them much more likely to share your content.

5. Keep Relationships in Mind

Sharing is a way of building relationships. What is it about your content that will help to build relationships? Why would your readers want to share your content? Think about what how your readers build relationsihps with others when writing your content.

6. Make Your Readers Look Good

Your readers, clients, potential clients and strategic alliances are trying to build their credibility in the same way that you are. Provide them with content that will help them in their business or make them look like an expert when they share it with others.

7. Be Thought-Provoking

When your content makes people think or shows a new perspective, it encourages conversation and sharing.

8. Know Your Audience

If you don't know what your audience values, you can't provide them with content that they will want to share. Mershon's article cites a New York Times study on the psychology of sharing* which identifies 6 online sharing personas and Mershon has added a seventh. It makes sense to know what kind of content your audience prefers and how they like to share.

9. Integrate Your Content with Email Strategies

Although social media is popular, some people still prefer to share more privately, through email. Integrating an email strategy to disseminate your content and allow it to be shared through email takes advantage of those more private sharers. 

UPDATE: The New York Times removed the study from the internet in 2016, but another site has posted a link to the PDF report of the study, which you can find here.