Blawg In A Box

Blogged.com has launched a new blog directory which features not only referral links but ratings and reviews of the blog entries. Over 200,000 blogs are indexed so far — most not currently rated yet — and the number promises to increase.

Andy Merrett, writing for The Blog Herald, mentioned Blogged.com earlier this week, and some of the comments are pretty interesting. One user wrote:

I think Blogged.com is a great place to start when I’m going to look for blogs about a certain topic. I find myself wanting to delve into a new subject and blogs are a great way to do it, but trying to find good ones (or even a decent list) via other methods or searching Google is a chore. Blogged improves on this area and makes it much easier to find new sites in certain areas. So far, I like it!

However, as Andy pointed out, there are some issues. Blogged.com entries feature a “related” resource that purports to list blogs that are — well, related to the entry blog in question. Andy quibbles with the relation of one of his blogs, about families and relationships, to gambling sites and something called “Webster’s Is My Bitch.” Yes, I can see where that might be problematic.

Another issue is the search function. A search for “the inspired solo” (in quotes) resulted in over 400 entries, most with neither “inspired” nor “solo” in the title — although The Inspired Solo is, in fact, in the directory (though not as yet rated).

Certainly, I think Blogged.com has some value, and it’s definitely a tool to keep an eye on in the coming weeks and months. If, as Andy points out, it gets sufficient ad revenue to keep itself healthy and robust, it very well could be a valuable resource both for blawggers and those who read their sites.

Today’s post is the second in a series titled “Blawg Focus” and explores how to tell when your blawg might be in need of some tweaking or major reworking. The first post addressed why blawg focus is so important.

When Your Blawg Needs a Focus Makeover

Your blawg might be in need of a focus makeover in any or all of the circumstances below:

1. Your original focus was too scrambled or “mixed” to be effective. Most blawgs are highly targeted to a specific area of the law and even further niched, for instance by way of particular demographics or a discrete aspect of the practice area. If you started off your blawg too generally, writing about every aspect of your practice — a criminal defense post here, a wills FAQ there — then you’ll want to reexamine your blawg’s purpose and design, and narrow your sights a bit.
2. Your blawg is too personal. A lot of novice blawggers make this mistake, and I cringe every time I see it. They mistake the common (and wise) advice to “be personable” with an exhortation to write about personal things. For more on this, see my post “Personality - NOT ‘Personal’ - Makes the Blawg.” If you’re writing about your weekend and what you had for dinner, take a step back and refocus on professional matters; you can always start a personal blog on one of the free sites such as WordPress.com to scratch that itch to divulge the random trivia of your life.
3. Your original focus is too narrow to be useful. This — in some ways the opposite of the first circumstance — is slightly less common a problem but it does happen, especially among lawyers who possess a high degree of expertise with respect to a particular practice area. There’s a tendency among experts to slant the blog so narrowly that they run out of blog fodder too quickly and can’t think of anything else to write. Likewise, if the focus is at all uncommon, you might begin to get desperate for blog post ideas; with no daily cases or legislation to report, there are just so many ways you can state your personal opinions or the elements of a cause of action, for instance!

Conversions Tell the Story

One of the most solidly valuable tools to interpret the success of your blawg is its conversion rate. For those unfamiliar with the term, conversion is simply a reference to change in status — how well, or how poorly, your readers move along the pipeline you’ve established for them from vaguely interested reader to committed client, and every step in between.

You can define conversion in any way you want — number of subscribers, number of those who’ve signed up for a weekly newsletter, those who’ve called in and mentioned the blawg, those who called in for an appointment and became paying clients.

It’s critical to track this information properly, as it is without doubt the most precise metric of your success in marketing your services with a blawg. If those numbers are solid and steadily improving, you can be assured that you’re doing something right and perhaps all that’s needed is a bit of tweaking or refinement. If the numbers, however, are cause for concern, then it’s a sign that you’re losing those prospects at some point — if, indeed, you ever had them in the first place.

Focus is an essential part of this analysis. You’re looking for clients who have a specific legal problem that you have the expertise to resolve for them in a beneficial way. Your focus is a strong part of the equation that’s at work in convincing those prospects that you’re the lawyer for the job.

Changing Your Blawg’s Focus

The next post in this series will address how to go about the process of changing your blawg’s focus or theme, beginning with planning the shift and whether to announce the change or just implement it. Future posts will also look at debriefing your focus-shift’s success, and analyzing it for future tweaks.

Today’s post presents the first in a series title “Blawg Focus.” The first entry looks at why focus is so important to the success of a blawg that’s published for marketing purposes. You’ll be able to read all the posts in this series, eventually, on this page.

Why Focus Is So Important

My blog coach, Yaro Starak, frequently preaches the importance of communicating what your blog’s all about to your visitor within the first few seconds of the visitor first accessing the home page. That’s seconds, not minutes. The death knell for a blog in this day and age “millions of blogs served, and thousands more cropping up daily” is a failure to communicate to your targeted reader that “this is the blog you’re looking for!”

Your readers and potential readers are looking for answers to specific problems, and those problems are probably fairly significant in their lives. Unlike other bloggers, you don’t have the luxury of readers who browse laconically, giving each blog half an hour to convince them that they should stick around. Lawyer blogs are different; it’s a refrain you’ve read here before, and will undoubtedly see again, because it’s true. Blawgs designed for marketing purposes must communicate, in a matter of seconds:

• The subject matter of the blawg
• The blawgger’s qualifications to discuss the subject matter authoritatively
• The blawgger’s rapport with the targeted reader

That’s a lot of talking for a web page to manage in such a short amount of time.

Competition Is Your Frenemy

As part of each blog setup process, I coach my clients to perform an analysis of what I call “the community” — the larger subsection of the blogosphere that deals with subject matter that’s related to the blawg we’re working on.

This community includes non-law-related blogs that are targeted to the same kinds of readers the blawgger seeks to reach; the blogs of journalists that write in the geographic area of the blawgger or about issues pertinent to the blawg’s focus; and — this might surprise you a bit — the competition. Yes, your competitors are part of your community, like it or not. While it’s tempting to ignore those pesky critters, it’s not a very smart thing to do.

Your competition can (and ideally should) be both friend and enemy: friend, because it prompts you on to achieve even greater clarity and value to your reader, and enemy, because you’re both competing for a finite resource — the attention of your targeted readers.

In order to come out on top of that struggle, you have two choices, essentially:

1. Target different readers
2. Target the same readers more effectively than your competition

Take a look at your competition, once you’ve identified them. What is the extent of their online presence, and what does it say about them? Do they have a blog, or just a static website, or nothing? (The latter is obviously better for you!) What does that presence, if it exists at all, say about their services, and their ideal clients? Who are they trying to reach? Are they doing a good job?

Most importantly, realize this: to achieve market dominance, you must show your targeted clients that you are the only one who can help them. How are you going to do that? By relying on your blawg’s focus to convey your brand identity and your “story” to your prospects. If that story is compelling enough, and the focus carefully drawn to say to those prospects “I’m the expert you’re looking for on this issue,” then you will achieve the top spot in time.

Critiquing Your Own Blawg

Now that you’ve analyzed the competition, take a look at your own site with a critical, objective eye. Is your site communicating your brand adequately? Is it saying what you need it to say? Is it telling the right story to the right people? Both of these elements are crucial to success: it must tell the right story, and it must tell it to the right people. Remember: 1,000 visitors a day will mean nothing to you if they’re the wrong visitors!

So look at your home page with a fresh eye. What is your eye drawn to immediately? Look at your layout — does it lend itself to communicating the site’s purpose, and is it easy to navigate? Are tags and button text large enough to catch the attention of your reader? What about your RSS button? Is it prominent enough? Above the fold? Properly labeled? Does the list of category names elucidate your blawg’s purpose or does it just serve to confuse a new reader?

Sharpening Your Focus to Convey Your Brand

Once you’ve established how well your current focus (if you have one already established) is conveying your brand and your story, you can start to explore ways to sharpen that focus and make it even more effective — the subject of future posts in this series.

There’s apparently a conflict between Talian (our prior theme) and the latest WordPress upgrade. I’ve disabled the theme temporarily while we work to resolve the CSS in the template files to “play nice.” Enjoy the “classic look” for now!

Edited: We’ve installed a new theme called “130106.” Haven’t made a decision about it one way or the other yet. It’ll do until we can either (A) fix Talian or (B) find a new (FREE!) theme we like better. Comments welcome!

Last week was fun, as we celebrated the increasingly-ubiquitous Macintosh computer and OS during Macs Practice Law Week. Here are the highlights from The Inspired Solo and around the blawgosphere:

The Inspired Solo: Macs Practice Law Week Highlights

• “What It’s Like to Switch. Really.”
• “Luigi Benetton Sings the Praises of … Who?!?!”
• “Web Resources for Mac Lawyers and Those Who Want to Be”

Other Blawgs

• the [non]billable hour - how recent research on the psychology behind “the devil you know” might impact the reluctance to give up the billable hour model
• Avvo Blog - Lawyers in the News - are you one?
• Bankruptcy Law Network - Wendell Sherk, one of the fine group bloggers at BLN, busts Countrywide’s chops for its role in the ongoing foreclosure crisis
• Chuck Newton - writes about The No Asshole Rule and what it has to say about declining civility in the legal profession. (Y’know, before this week’s DSS hearing, I would have said “what declining civility?” … ah, youth.)
• Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips - a roundup of PowerPoint resources for those who like that sort of thing
• Robert Ambrogi’s Law Sites - “Low-cost” websites from legal printer and office suppliers Blumberg Excelsior. OK, halt the presses for a sec - editorial rant ahead: $75 a month is NOT in any universe a low-cost solution for hosting. Hosting should cost no more than $10 a month (and that only for month-by-month payment options). I just signed up with well-reviewed Lunarpages Hosting and paid only $6.95 a month for a 2-year contract. THAT’S a low-cost site. I really get irked at this growing tendency to rip off lawyers. What’s the deal? Is it because lawyers are supposed to be wealthy and have more disposable income? Or is it because lawyers are perceived as being techno-impaired and will pay any amount just to not have to deal with those issues? I realize there’s more to this package from BP than simply obscenely priced hosting, and I’ll write more on this later.
• Thoughtful Legal Management - David Bilinsky writes about a new phishing scam using a law firm as bait.

After much angst and such, we finally got the contact form working again. Actually, there was a conflict between the plugin and the blog’s theme. Tinkering with the CSS didn’t seem to resolve it, so I went with a simpler form plugin. I’d actually preferred the earlier plugin’s resulting form, but this gets the job done without the conflict.

Lesson for blawggers: Sometimes you just have to tinker until you get it right, and don’t get married to one solution too quickly. Keep looking until you get it right. And what’s right for one blog isn’t necessarily right for another.

Also: whatever you do, get that contact form up! Treat it as a priority, which it is.

From Blog Herald:

Clusty is a cluster search engine. Carnegie Mellon computer science researchers began researching search clusters in the 1990s and eventually brought the first “high-quality text clustering search engine” online through Vivisimo in 2000. The idea behind clustering is to gather related information into groups or folders, thus directing the searcher to more specific information rather than just a big list. The result eventually became Clusty.

I tried Clusty out today, playing around with several searches I conducted recently for one of my blawgs, The SC Bankruptcy & Consumer Law Blog. Here’s what I experienced, in a nutshell.

Using Clusty For Law-Related News

One of the biggest topics in bankruptcy-land recently is HR 3609; here’s a recent post of mine on the subject.

I performed several searches on Clusty for each of the following assorted keywords:

• HR 3609
• Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage Equity Protection Act of 2007
• Bradley Miller D-NC (NB: the bill’s original sponsor)

For purposes of this post, however, I’m only covering the first and the last searches, as they had the most interesting results.

For the “HR 3609″ search, we had some interesting results. The two paid links at the top of the page had nothing to do with HR 3609 (HP printer toner cartridge and basic human resources training from something called “EmployeeHandbooks911.com”). The top 4 organic links were related to the bill; number 5, oddly enough, was about the herpes simplex virus.

However, on the left side of the page, we see the “clusters” list. This list included several categories that could be incredibly useful in a blog search, as shown in this screenshot:

I can imagine this feature giving some welcome context to law bloggers. Being able to distinguish between links associated with the Act itself and those associated with foreclosure generally. Let’s test it out.

Testing the Clusters

I click on the first link in the clusters list: Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage — an abbreviated form of the Act’s name. Here are the results:

The first link from OpenCongress.com is an information and status page about the bill. The second link from The Orator is the text of the bill. The third link is a call to action from the Center for Responsible Lending.

What about the “Legislation/Law” cluster?

The first link is the text of the bill, a link that was #2 under the first cluster. Number 2: again from Open Congress, showing a collection of news articles about HR 3609. Third up is what looks to be the suggested text of a letter opposing 3609 from the Arkansas Bankers Association. The fourth link is a PDF from the US International Trade Commission — a memo on “proposed tariff legislation.”

Let’s test the “Foreclosure” cluster next.

It looks as if these links do indeed focus more on the effects of the bill on the foreclosure crisis. The first two links are from a blog linked to something called the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, and both advocate for passage of the bill in light of its effect on homeowners facing foreclosure (among other social effects). Third is a press release, also focused on the bill’s effects on foreclosure; fourth is from Banks.com but also stresses the foreclosure link.

“Blog” Cluster: Helpful or Misleading?

Now we’re getting somewhere:

These links all tag off the word “blog,” or some variation thereof, in the linked-to page’s title. This could be incredibly helpful for bloggers who want to seek out what other bloggers have to say on a particular issue. That’s a necessity for bloggers who are writing on any debated issue; presenting the “other side” is a critical part of any attempt at persuasion, after all, as well as for any attempt to cover an issue impartially.

So let’s see if that Blog Cluster repeats itself with another search.

The “Person” Search

Well, drat:

No blog cluster. (And I checked the full list. Nada.)

However, looking at the main results, as well as the clusters that do show up, it’s easy to see how this particular search could be useful to someone blogging about the legislator’s background and voting record.

As for the blog cluster, it may well be that no one’s blogging specifically about Representative Miller, apart from his connection to the main topic of HR 3609. So, don’t rule out the utility of blog cluster just yet.

Conclusion: Handy Tool for Bloggers Of All Stripes

Will Clusty replace Google? I don’t think so. For one, the results in many instances seem to mirror, if not straight out duplicate, Google results; at least, they’re not so different for some searches to make a meaningful difference. For another, Clusty is a good bit slower on my machine (a 13″ MacBook early ‘07 model with 2 GB memory) than Google is; analyzing those clusters might be quite a task.

But as an additional tool in the blogger’s toolbox, it’s a valuable addition, and definitely worth playing around with from time to time.

AWeber, the preeminent mailing list/autoresponder site, has another feature that many may not know about: an amazing blog in which all manner of Web 2.0 customer relation/contact development issues are discussed.

Not only “discussed,” mind you, but “discussed in clear, concise, jargon-free terms, complete in many instances with demonstrative how-tos and even video.” You really should sign up for email alerts and add it to your RSS reader.

The article that caught my eye today was about creating surveys and using the AWeber tools to mail them out.

Believe it or not, you can create forms using Google Docs. Normally, unless you use a free service like SurveyMonkey (which I have in the past, and with fairly decent results), it costs money to create a survey and send it out.

With the Google Docs approach, you can use Google’s free tools to create the survey form and AWeber to send it to the folks on your mailing list.

The step-by-step on how to do this is conveyed in the video in the post. And it really is quite simple — take a look at the comments below the post to see others’ reactions (universally, “this is great, and very easy”).

Why is this important? You need to send out surveys every once in awhile to the folks on your list to make sure that the information you’re providing is the information they want to see.

Think about it like this: would you rather slog away at your blawg, writing post after post in “FAQ” style, wondering why your numbers aren’t going up, thinking it might be your writing that’s at fault?

Or would you rather send out a simple survey and find out for sure what the problem is — namely, that your readers actually prefer the more newsy posts?

Of course, that’s just an example. There are lots of uses for surveys.

Explore and experiment, and think about how you can use surveys to more carefully target your blawg’s content to the people you want to reach.

NB: Due to an incorrect timestamp, this post - which was supposed to run on Tuesday, as promised on Monday - wasn’t. My bad. Lesson learned: double check your timestamps before you post!

WordPress is pretty well-established as the number-one recommended blogging platform, and it’s the only platform the Blawg Coach will work with. WordPress has earned its reputation as the most versatile and beneficial platform for serious bloggers. And if you’re blogging for business — any business, but especially service providers such as lawyers — then you are by definition a serious blogger. (Or should be. But that’s probably another post entirely.)

But the setup of WordPress software is notoriously difficult for technically-challenged folks and beginners (which also describes many lawyers who want to blog). Fortunately, there’s an easy solution.

First, however, an explanation …

The Difference Between WordPress and WordPress(.com)

It might surprise you to learn that there are two different “flavors” of WordPress. There’s the WordPress I’m writing about — the open-source blogging platform application that you upload to a server and utilize to create a dynamic, versatile, easily customizable blog that’s hosted at a URL of your choice — and then there’s the other WordPress.

That other WordPress is WordPress.com, a freely available blog hosting solution for bloggers who want to get set up quick and easy.

Why Not WordPress.com?

Well, you might say, if WordPress.com is so quick and easy (not to mention free, hello!) why not use it?

The answer: Because, while it’s fine for many non-professional uses, it’s not that great for our (read: your) needs. You need grad-school level blogging, if you’re doing this for your law practice (and I assume that’s why you’re here).

Here’s why: WordPress.com gives you a URL that’s what we call a “second level” — in other words, http://myblog.wordpress.com, as opposed to http://www.myblog.com. This is bad for many reasons, but mainly it affects your search engine results, looks unprofessional, and means that you lack any rights over the server on which your blog is hosted.

WordPress.com also offers a limited number of themes. If you set up a WordPress.com blog, and eagerly start hunting for the option to change your theme to a new one you just found online, you’re going to be sorely disappointed — it’s not there. You have to get an independently hosted blog run on WordPress software to get the vast theme choice that attracts so many bloggers to the platform.

Please note: don’t be offended if you have a WordPress.com blog. I’m sure it’s a great blog. But you would be getting better results if you had a independently hosted blog on your own URL.

The Solution: One-Stop Hosting

So, what’s a poor lawyer to do, then? You’re convinced you need WordPress but you don’t have the time or, frankly, desire, to wade through these instructions (and believe me, I understand — the first time I waded through them, lo, these many moons ago, I felt the same way). You could hire me to do it for you. Or any of the countless freelancers who advertise all over the web.

Or you can go to one of the select hosting companies that already have WordPress installed for you. Here are a few — you can find others, I’m sure, with a simple web search:

• Blue Host
• AN Hosting
• HostICan
• DreamHost
• Host Gator

These hosting companies give you the option of signing up for hosting services and getting your WordPress blog without going through the complicated install directions. Just follow the host’s directions for activating the blog (usually with one click or so), and you’re set to install any theme you like and set up your blog with relative ease.

The Not So Easy Way

Of course, if you prefer a different hosting company, and you’re technically skilled enough to be comfortable with the Codex directions, then here’s a simplified rundown. Please note, though, you’ll want to take a look at the full instructions located here.

1. Acquire your URL, unless you’re going to do so as part of your host company services.
2. Get your hosting account set up. Write down your FTP information.
3. Set up a database on the server, and create a user for it with full admin privileges.
4. Download and unzip the latest and greatest WordPress version.
5. Change the file named “wp-config-sample.php” to “wp-config.php.” Edit the file in a text editor to include your MySQL user’s info (which you set up in step #3).
6. Upload via FTP to your server.
7. Follow these instructions for further setup.

   Finally, A Note

   If you’re wondering why I’m divulging this awesome tip and thus potentially driving clients away from Blawg In A Box, the answer’s simple: I believe so strongly in blogging’s place in marketing the solo and small law firm that I would rather give this information away and get a few more bloggers out there than keep it to myself. If this gets more lawyers blogging, this is a good thing, in my view.

   Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 

Here’s more evidence that the conventional wisdom is wrong:

At DoshDosh — a blog you probably don’t read unless you’ve been interested in making money through blogging for awhile — blogger Maki writes here about how he brought his blog up to 10,000 subscribers. And he did it without:

• advertising;
• Digg frontpages;
• frequent posts;
• contests or projects;
• incentives;
• guest posts at other blogs, or guest bloggers at DoshDosh.

I don’t necessarily advocate that you follow Maki’s history as a recipe for success with your legal blog; blogging for money and blogging for marketing purposes for a law practice aren’t really equivalent. However, you can learn a lot from the story, for one simple but very major reason, and that is this: the reason for Maki’s success despite bucking all the conventional wisdom is that he knew the secret.

What’s the secret? It’s really no secret at all. It’s this, in Maki’s own words:

Readers subscribe to blogs when they provide an informational or entertainment value so great that it would be a loss to not subscribe to it.

This is how you get return visitors, too, by the way. It’s how you get people interested enough in your blog to come back and stay awhile. And it’s how you get your blog to rank more highly on search engine results for your targeted keywords.

So, just for today, why not forget the gimmicks, the SEO tricks, the glitzy design, and the fancy widgets in the sidebar? Ask yourself this simple question, and take some time to think about the answer: What’s the value you’re offering to your readers? It’s just as important for your blawg as it is for sites like DoshDosh.