We’re in the midst of a massive redesign of the BlawgInABox.com site - your patience is appreciated! When the dropcloths come off, Blawg In A Box will be practicing what it preaches - powerful blogging advice for law bloggers, from a blog!
Note: This post was originally published at The Inspired Solo, and is reprinted here for your convenience.
Today’s deal at DealDotCom is Atomic Blogging, by Alvin Phang. DealDotCom has this to say about Alvin:
Alvin Phang is a whiz kid who’s solved the equation of getting more traffic, more ad revenue, and more affiliate revenue with blogging, and now he’s showing all of us how to create a cash cow of our own.
It covers topics such as Google’s PageRank, driving traffic through search engine results and how to crack the coveted top 10 in your SERPs, using Web 2.0 social sites, and much more.
While I haven’t personally reviewed Alvin’s work, and so can’t speak to it directly, the product appears to cover the crucial topics that all bloggers - be they lawyers or not - need to have a solid grasp of in order to keep their blogs performing well.
According to Alvin’s website for the product, Atomic Blogging sells normally for slightly under $47. It’s available today only at DealDotCom for just under $27. That’s quite a savings.
If you missed earlier posts, DealDotCom is all about informational products. Like Woot.com, it offers only one “for-sale” item a day, but that’s usually at very reduced prices. In DealDotCom’s case, it will be an informational product - an ebook, a software program or guide, or something like that - and they generally seem to be aimed at the blogging and internet marketing fields.
You can sign up for a completely free account here (note: affiliate link) and go to town. Check the site daily for items that might be of interest to you.
Consider Atomic Blogging if:
As I indicated on Monday, I’ll be debuting my own e-book about these and other aspects of blogging for lawyers by the end of the year. It will be available for purchase on Blawg In A Box’s site, and will be given free to all Blawg In A Box purchasers. But that’s about two to three months away - an eternity in blog-ville. If you’re looking for information now - albeit of general applicability, not strictly for lawyers as mine will be - Atomic Blogging might be the product for you.
Technorati Tags:
dealdotcom, atomic blogging
I don’t intend to talk about too many DealDotCom products, but for this one I made an exception. But to get it, you’re going to need an account first - it’s completely free, so sign up here. (Note: affiliate link)
The product is Long Tail Traffic Secrets, and it teaches something everyone who wants to conduct business (any business) with an online component needs to understand fully and completely: the skills necessary to accomplish strong traffic numbers for any website - including your law blog or static law firm site.
See, the problem is that too many so-called experts out there are teaching 2004’s methods - keyword-stuffing, blog-and-ping, get massive links. That sort of “get traffic fast” approach will get you nowhere fast today, and worse - it might even get you shunned from Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engine results. How’s that for shooting yourself in the foot?
You need to know what works today, and that’s something very different - a completely new approach. Long Tail Traffic Secrets will help you do that. Simply put, you need to understand these things:
And much, much more. It’s brought to you by Jason Dolman. I did a quick blog search for reviews of this product. The one complaint I found was the original price - $97. Well, DealDotCom has that covered by reducing the price to less than $40 - a more than 50% price cut.
So, sign up for an account here, then go check out Long Tail Traffic Secrets for yourself. I should also note that I’m working on an ebook myself that will cover many of the same information but for lawyers - but it’s about 3 months away at least, so if you want to start making improvements in your traffic now, start with Long Tail Traffic Secrets.
Note: This post was originally published at The Inspired Solo, and is reprinted here for your convenience. It refers to a service and sidebar widget called BlogRush which I have elected not to install on Blawg In A Box, the better to gauge the results on TIS. To see the widget in action, visit TIS’s home page.
It’s been 3 days since I implemented BlogRush in [the TIS] sidebar, and while some apparently aren’t pleased with the service’s performance on their blogs, I have to say I’m not one of those unhappy campers. I’ve noted a significant uptick in traffic of about 10% over the last three days, and the one major complaint I had about the widget - that the headlines were stale, and weren’t rotating quickly enough to generate interest - has been rectified by the company.
As this blogger points out, BlogRush is a traffic-generation tool - not a lead generating tool. What’s the difference? Traffic comes first. You convert traffic - readers, in other words - to leads by the strength of your content and the value you offer them once they get to your site. Tools like BlogRush help drive those folks to your website where you will (we hope) convert them to leads, and thence to clients. It’s a process - sometimes a long, arduous one - but it has to start with the traffic. And in a crowded blogosphere, you need any assistance you can get that will legitimately drive traffic to your site. If it’s traffic that will stick around a bit - in other words, if it’s traffic looking for what you have to offer - then you’re off to a good start. So, if you haven’t signed up yet, my advice is: sign up. Give it a try. Monitor the results on your own blog and see if works for you.
Note: This post was originally published at The Inspired Solo; it’s reprinted here for your convenience. However, I have elected not to place BlogRush on this blog, in order to better gauge the results at TIS. You can see BlogRush’s widget in action at TIS, at least as of this posting (9/29/2007).
You might note a new addition to the far right sidebar over there, with a heading of “From the Blogosphere.” That’s BlogRush’s sidebar widget in action, and the links will take you to other quality law blogs and specific posts on those blogs.
What makes that rather revolutionary might not be immediately apparent from the face of the tool. So, let me start from the beginning: John Reese, a fairly brilliant guy from many accounts, has been working at his Income.com site behind the scenes for quite some time on something he called “it” - raising all kinds of intrigue and piqued interest in the blogosphere. “It” was revealed this past week as BlogRush, a sidebar widget and referral-based program that allows your blog content to be syndicated across lots of related blogs, for vastly increased exposure to new readers. You put the widget in your sidebar, via a simple copy and paste of an even simpler six-line piece of code that’s provided to you free of charge (at least during the public beta, so if you’re interested, move fast). The more bloggers you refer to the BlogRush program, the greater the exposure you earn.
John has carved up his users into several distinct categories - one of which is “Law and Legal.” So, if you’re looking to drive more traffic to your site, get incoming links, improve your subscription rate, reach more potential clients?
Couldn’t be simpler. You not only improve your own traffic, but you offer greater value to your readers by presenting them a rich and varied menu of related posts right there on your own blog. It sounds counterintuitive to many beginner bloggers who, when I coach them to link out, protest that they don’t want to “send the readers away!” As I point out to them, ‘If you love someone . . . ‘ - it’s true of all relationships, including yours with your blog’s readers!
Read more about the program in John’s own words here.
Kevin O’Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs hosts a terrific Blawg Review this week, and it’s all about blogs for lawyers. . . . go read the blawg review.
I didn’t come up with the concept - that was the cluetrain manifesto - but as Liz Strauss’s guest blogger “Vern The Idea Dude” points out at her Successful Blog, blogs are “catalysts for engagement.” And that engagement begins with a very personal connection between blogger and reader, just like a table set for two.
It might seem odd at first to think of blogging in this way. After all, you’ve been conditioned to seek massive amounts of traffic - lots of traffic. Many readers, all eyes on your page - it’s an image that leads dangerously to another image, of you at the lectern in the biggest lecture hall imaginable. And it’s an image that’s anathema to your success, because it’s impersonal, detached, the very opposite of immediate and compelling. And that’s what you want your blog posts to provoke in your readers - a sense of immediacy and a provocation to act.
That’s not just true at personal blogs, or true for big Internet dudes like Seth Godin - in fact, it’s especially true for you, the inspired solo lawyer whose blawg is the foundation of his or her marketing plan.
How do we as lawyers start that intimate conversation with our potential clients? Like any good conversationalist, we start it by first being interested in what the other person is interested in. Think about it. In every single self-help book aimed at helping people overcome their fear of small talk or networking events, there will appear some variation on the following advice: “Show interest in the other person and their ideas/interests/problems/lives.”
Ask yourself these questions:
Forget questions of why you’re the best person for the job - forget trying to sell the prospect on your services. Those things don’t come across well in an intimate conversation, do they? Focus on your reader - your dinner partner, if you will. The rest will come.
Note: This post was originally published at The Inspired Solo, and is reprinted here for your convenience.
This is the third post in an ongoing series called “Blogging For Clients.” Previous posts can be found here (”Introduction to Blogging For Solo Lawyers”) and here (”Why Design Is the Least Of Your Problems”). Today’s post focuses on setting your blog up for maximum ROI (Return On Investment).
Just how much effort are we talking about for a new blog, anyway? Well, not to be too sarcastic about it, but it depends on what kind of post you want to create. Sure, anyone can jot down a few lines, slap a hyperlink in there somewhere, click “publish” and be done with it in under five minutes a day. But that’s not the kind of blogging we want. It’s certainly not the kind of blogging that’s going to net you clients, or create your aura of expertise.
To achieve the goals you’re after, you’re going to have to put a bit more original thought into each post - and, unfortunately, that means time and effort. I usually advise brand new bloggers to estimate half an hour, start to finish, for each post. That includes the following tasks:
And, of course, you’re going to have to do this every day (or at least sufficiently to create five to seven posts a week) for the first several weeks of the blog’s publication in order to build interest, establish that yours isn’t just another flash in the pan blog, and begin to draw repeat traffic. If you want to put a meatier “pillar” article in there (such as this series - pillar articles being more substantial and substantive posts containing unique and original content that’s highly on point and generally of greater length than the typical 100-300 word blog post), you can probably safely double that time estimate.