When it comes to blogs, the question on almost every solo or small firm lawyer’s lips is “Will a blog get me business?” Once my answer to that question was a qualified “possibly,” – I felt that that blogs wouldn’t necessarily generate clients directly, but nonetheless, could help diversity a solo’s overall marketing portfolio. Now, I’m wondering whether perhaps I was too conservative. Because as Kevin O’Keefe of Lex Blog reports, solos are getting clients from their blogs – and the example he’s used is my blogging colleague, Kansas Family Law Attorney (and Home Office Lawyer), Grant Griffiths.
So I decided to try to figure out the reasons for Grant’s success. I visited his blog and it’s a great example of a practice-focused blog, a mix of helpful information for clients and links to current events and news stories. Then, I put myself in the shoes of a prospective client using the Internet to find a divorce lawyer in Kansas and ran a couple of searches like this and this and this. No surprise that Grant’s firm comes in top five under any of these combinations.
But not all blogs will generate those results. For example, I applied the same test to Andrew Ewalt’s Law Blog which is a test case for the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine and law marketing guru Larry Bodine.
Ewalt’s blog isn’t bad; he offers lots of good client tips – and it
probably helps him reel in clients who have already located him. But
because Ewalt doesn’t post or link as much as Grant – or have his
practice specialty in his blog title, it’s hard to find his blog
running searches. In fact, the only search (besides a name search)
that generated any links to Ewalt was this one – and that located his Findlaw listing, not his firm website or his blog. (question for Larry or anyone else familiar with the study – what results is it generating so far?)
These days, more and more people are using the Internet to find legal services. Moreover, Google has become so pervasive, that potential clients are using it to run searches, rather than relying on portal sites like Lawyers.com. So a properly targeted and expertly executed blog will get you at the top of the search engine for your specialty – and will enable you to make a top notch impression the first time a prospective client visits. And if that’s the case, then yes, maybe blogs can serve as a static and measurable source of business just like the Yellow Pages or a newspaper ad.
Related posts:
- Shortcuts So You Can Benefit from Blogs
- Let One Thousand Solo Blogs Bloom!
- I’m quoted in a story on blogs
- Should Lawyers Accept Ads on Their Blogs? Why Not?
- Do We Really Need OLM (OnLine Marketing) With Blogs?
