Online Thought Leadership for Lawyers - Blogs, Social Media, and Twitter

Online Thought Leadership & Reputation Management LeadershipSBOT Hyatt Lost Pines - Bastrop October 17 2008 1 Building Blogs for Lawyers lex Blog TM

What we’ll cover

Why become a thought leader?

Ability to become a thought leader online

Online tools for becoming a thought leader

Small town lawyer who became national thought leader solely via online tools

2 Building Blogs for Lawyers lex Blog TM

Why?

Professionally rewarding

Personally rewarding

Opportunity to serve others

Right thing to do

Professionally rewarding

Become “lawyers’ lawyer”

Learn from other leaders

Professionally

Personally

Better skills

More confidence

Personally rewarding

Feels good

Spouse/partner happier

Role model for children

Financially rewarding

You & spouse/partner

Children & grandchildren

Society

Helps others

Bar

Lawyers

Civic & business groups

Society

Image of our profession

Ability to do it

Easier than ever

Build muscles by acting outside your comfort zone

Opportunity lies online

Online for all ages

The how: online tools

Blogging

Social media

LinkedIn

Twitter

What’s a professional law blog?

Web site

Covers niche area of law or locale

Published by one lawyer or practice group

Directed to regular readers within target audience of blog publisher

As easy to update as writing an email - no coding experience needed

Distributes content via RSS and email

Unique domain name & url address

Found via search engines or known domain

What it’s not?

Journal

Posts archived by calendar

Blend of personal information, random thoughts and political views with legal information & insight

lex Blog TM

Blog advantages

New blog launched quickly

Easy to use - learning curve is low

Inexpensive

Comprehensive publishing, content syndication (RSS) and interactive communication tool

Relationship to your firm’s Web site

Complementary to site

How you network and enter conversation with thought leaders

Draw traffic to site & lawyer bios

Advantages to you

Enhances your reputation as trusted and reliable authorities

Establish brand based on expertise

Educational & tasteful

Syndication of content via RSS

Far superior search results to Web sites

Cost savings vs other networking

Why superior search results?

Relevant content

Regular content updates

Incoming links

“ Blog = b etter l isting o n G oogle”

Importance of search engines 15 Building Blogs for Lawyers

Two-thirds of people do online research before selecting a service or product

Nearly 70% of business executives and in house counsel go online to research lawyers during the hiring process

lex Blog TM

Advantages over current Internet networking

Web site articles

Poorly indexed & optimized for search engines

Pdf’s especially

Frequency of content?

Difficult search

No table of contents/navigation with each article

Users do not return to site

Email newsletters

Corporate firewalls may block

Spam filters may block

Far less viral marketing effect

Lawyers’ adoption of blogs 15 Building Blogs for Lawyers

3,000 plus law blogs

4 new law blogs per day

> 30% of large law firms

49% growth in large law firm blogs from November to March

BBC News 5/21/04 lex Blog TM

Who is reading blogs? 16 Building Blogs for Lawyers

75% of reporters to locate experts & get insight on stories

Senior executives

20% plus read business blogs

96% familiar with blogs

30% have familiarity with blogs

Busiest people read blogs

lex Blog TM

RSS feeds 17 Building Blogs for Lawyers

Oxygen of Internet today

Streams content to target audience

Syndicates content

Content reaches amplifiers

Bloggers

Media - trade & general mass media

Email as well

lex Blog TM

Newsreader Collects RSS feeds lex Blog TM

Blogs are a Rotary meeting

Find the discussion

Listen to the discussion

Engage in the discussion

Empower your audience

lex Blog Building Blogs for Lawyers 18

Early blog design (preconceived notion of blogs)

Professional marketing blogs -- The LexBlog Way

lex Blog TM

http://privacylaw.proskauer.com/

lex Blog TM

CT Employment Law Blog Dan Schwartz

5000 visits in first 6 weeks

Few calls a week, new client

Nearly 100 incoming links from third party websites and blogs

Regularly cited by leading law & employment bloggers (3 of the most read)

CT law periodical coverage

Where’s content coming from?

Current content - extend it’s reach

Online news

Legal cases

Info from trade magazines & newsletters

Info from CLE’s

RSS feeds = “The Discussion”

21 Building Blogs for Lawyers Time commitment?

Brief posts

2 to 3 paragraphs, 2 to 3 sentences each

Expectation is less than that of articles

Harvard Business School - 1x/week *

Less than articles, newsletters & alerts

* Harvard Management Communication Letter, Vol. 2, No. 4, November 2005 lex Blog TM

Blogging in current economy

Forget the economy

Time to grab market share & be bold

Let others run scared

Be deliberate

Invest in your network and reputation

Have long-term eyes & vision to succeed

Backend of Blog Platform

Professional networking tool

“ Facebook for business people”

216,000 private practice profiles

Law firm profiles with demographics

20 million users

150 industries

3.2 million visitors/month

Building Blogs for Lawyers 23 lex Blog TM

lex Blog TM

Twitter

“ Microblogging”

Updates are called “Tweets”

140 characters

Links are shortened

Who?

Lawyers

Reporters

Fire departments

New York Times

Fortune 200

Building Blogs for Lawyers 24 lex Blog TM

Small talk leads to big things

What talk?

Personal

Professional

Social media - ‘pass it along’

Twitter amplifies

News of China’s earthquake broke on Twitter

lex Blog TM

Search.twitter.com – Twitter Search lex Blog TM

TweetDeck– Desktop Twitter application lex Blog TM

Re lex Blog Results of blogging, networking & social media

Ethics 26 Building Blogs for Lawyers

Governed by cannons of ethics

Cannot give specific advise

Cannot breach client confidences

Do not create attorney client relationship

No false or misleading communication

Use disclaimer

lex Blog TM

Building Blogs for Lawyers lex Blog TM

Who is LexBlog, Inc.?

Leading provider of professional marketing blogs to law firms

500 blogs, almost 1,500 lawyer authors

75% of AmLaw 200 firm blogs use LexBlog

96% client retention over 5 years

Led by former practicing lawyers

Team of IT, design, web development, client service, and marketing professionals

Founded by Kevin O’Keefe

Practicing lawyer of 17 years

Successfully marketed own law firm on Internet

Founder of Internet consumer & small business legal resource, now sold to LexisNexis

Former VP of Martindale-Hubbell

Thanks & for more info or questions: Kevin O’Keefe CEO, LexBlog, Inc. 411 First Avenue, Suite 304 Seattle, WA 98104 Direct: 206 340 8204 Cell: 206 321 2627 mailto:kevin@lexblog.com Building Blogs for Lawyers lex Blog TM

www. lexBlog .com

Online Thought Leadership for Lawyers - Blogs, Social Media, and Twitter

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