Blawg In A Box

Friendly reminder: the special advance reservation price of $49 that I opened up to everyone because I was a doofus and didn’t have a redundant back-up system, thus delaying the release a week, for Cheap & Brilliant Blawggingis going to end tonight at midnight. At that point, the price goes up to $89. Details for the purchase at $49 are in the sidebar, including the PayPal link.

For current coaching and Blawg In A Box clients who have not already purchased it at the lower price (or for whom it wasn’t included in their package — if you’re uncertain if that’s you, let me know via our contact form and I’ll check for you), I will offer a 10% discount, the instructions for which will be emailed to you directly.

To all those who’ve responded to the survey, I can only say a hearty and sincere “Thank you!” Your input has been invaluable, and has already had a significant impact on the finished product. I can promise that there will be much more emphasis on productivity issues than I’d originally planned, as well as on content. (In fact, I’ve created an additional appendix of over 101 time- and battle-tested writing tips which will be included in the text.)

Posting at The Inspired Solo will be light next week (though if you want to contribute a guest post, I’d be delighted to let you use my blog); but here, we’re having a blawg party! Look for blog posts about the book, featuring excerpts and (please, fingers crossed) maybe even some video.

As I wrote to my list earlier today, “it never rains but it pours.” And I’m in a downpour!

For those of you who didn’t read about my infamous run-in with a sync and file-sharing program called FolderShare, here’s what happened in a nutshell: this free service went wonky in December and messed with a lot of users’ files and folder architecture — mine included.

Flash forward a few months: I thought I’d rectified most of the damage, and so I’m busily working on this release of the ebook, when it dawns on me: “Hmm. Maybe I better double-check those old files I’d been saving the drafts in pre-December…” The file names are still there but … who knows, right?

(You can see this one coming, can’t you?) They’re gone.

Now, this is not fatal. I have other copies (although in varying degrees of readiness) and copious notes. What was lost can be reconstructed, but it will take another week, at least.

So - the bad news is this: we’re being forced to push back the release of Cheap & Inspired Blawgging to April 8th. I hope that will be the last delay necessary.

The good news is this: I feel guilty. Not so good for me — great for you. So, I’m doing two things to make it up to everyone:

(1) I’m adding a fourth, undisclosed (until launch) bonus. This will be worth at least an additional $50. I’m working on finalizing that but it will take a few more days, at a minimum. So, I can’t tell you what it is now but it will be useful.

(2) I’m going to open up the $49 price to everyone through the weekend. It seemed only fair to those who were waiting for the release on April 1 to purchase, who didn’t want to take the survey, for whatever reason, to at least give them the option of getting the ebook at a lower rate.

And even though this means that I’ll be giving away a lot of bonuses (including thirty minutes of my time for each purchaser, either for a brainstorming session for a new blawg, or a review & case study of an existing blawg) at a much lower price — well, I think it’s the right thing to do. However, I am taking this offer down at 12:01 AM EST on Monday, March 31, 2008, without exception.

Therefore, if you want Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging at a 45% discount off its regular rate (that will be $89 on April 8th), you can pre-purchase it at that $49 price by going to PayPay via this secure link. You can pay with any major credit card or your account, if you already have one set up at PayPal. On April 8th, before I open it up to everyone, you’ll get the instructions to download your copy, and claim your bonuses.

Speaking of: I haven’t told you what the bonuses are yet. Without further adieu, here’s what you get with each purchase:

• Of course, you get a copy of the first ebook ever for lawyer/bloggers, Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging
• A special workbook designed to help you plan and execute your own “cheap and brilliant blawg” — over 40 pages of exercises and worksheets so you can get it right the first time
• A $50 coupon off any $200 Blawg Coach service, including one-on-one coaching
• Your choice of either (A) a 30-minute brainstorming session with me, the Blawg Coach, OR (B) a written review and critique of your own blawg or website, including my suggestions for how to ramp up your own results
• A fourth as-yet-undisclosed bonus worth at least $50

This offer is open to the world. So, if there’s anyone you know of that might enjoy this book or needs some info on blogging, or just wants more clients, please feel free to pass along to them the links I’ve shared with you already, as well as the Table of Contents (Note: PDF file).

I hope that helps, at least. I do apologize for this; and if I can serve as an object lesson to any others out there, then by all means let this motivate you to back up your own work frequently and with redundant systems. (My backup failed, and I had no redundancy at the time, so I’m out of luck with this one, but you can bet I’ll get another backup tool soon.)

Now, onward to the good (or better) stuff!

Jason McCready Asks: Too Basic?

Jason McCready is my kind of guy. He’s already got the WordPress thing down, in a side business he has going, and he knows how to use link-building to get a blog to the coveted #1 slot in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Placement). So he wrote to me and asked:

I have a question about whether your book is targeted to beginners … I’m wondering whether your book will have substantial new information that will help bloggers such as myself who have already created semi-successful blogs.

I already answered Jason directly, but I also asked him if it was OK if I shared his question, and my response, with you all through the blog. He kindly agreed, so here’s my answer.

Who Will Benefit from Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging?

As I told Jason, I estimate that roughly 30-40% of the content in Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging is what I’d call “beginner level.” I address all of the following topics, all of which I consider basic or beginner level:

• How to register a URL and sign up for hosting
• What to look for in a hosting plan
• How to install WordPress and set up your blawg
• How to choose, download, and install a theme
• What plugins are, which ones I recommend, and how to install and activate them
• How to interact with the WordPress user interface (the “dashboard”)

These topics are old hat to Jason, and many others, but they’re pretty mysterious to 80-90% of the lawyers out there judging from the emails and comments I routinely get from other lawyers at CLEs and seminars and otherwise. A lot of you have been sold on this idea that you have to pay $2500 for a basic blog that you could create yourself for the cost of a basic hosting plan (I currently pay about $8/month per blog). And, so, a good bit of the first three chapters of the book, and some of the beginning of the other chapters, do fit into this “beginner” category.

However, the rest of the book covers a slightly different approach to blogging that, I think, is uniquely beneficial to lawyers. While I imagine any service-oriented profession or business could use these concepts and apply them to their own marketing plan, I’m writing this for the legal profession. And while some of it’s basic-level setup “here’s how you monitor comments” stuff, much of it is aimed at explaining how you fit the blawg into your overall marketing plan to make it more holistic (my new favorite word).

I mentioned above in the prior section the Table of Contents; if you haven’t read it already, then I hope this will help you decide, although I realize it doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail. For instance, you can see that I write about “Commenting on Other Blogs” in Chapter 10, but you can’t tell that I actually lay out a specific plan and timeline aimed at using commenting on other blogs to help build your referral-based marketing program. Likewise, it’s apparent that I cover productivity issues in Chapter 11, but perhaps not so readily apparent that I actually give you several specific tools and new approaches that can shave off hours from your blogging time each week.

Do I think advanced users could benefit from it? Yes. Will some of it be, at most, a review for those advanced users? Undoubtedly. However, I do think it can get you thinking about using this medium that’s familiar to you in a brand new way that, eventually, becomes much more intuitive and “user friendly” (not to mention “life friendly“) in the long run. (Advanced bloggers already know how effective blogs are for driving both traffic AND sales — and that’s the business we’re all in: the sale of legal services.)

Following up from the last post (”Eight Reasons Search Engines Adore Blogs“), here’s part 2 of the “whys and wherefores” explanation I promised Robert and the rest of you who are still wondering:

What Clients Are Looking For

Your potential clients are out there. They’re hitting the web in droves, typing in keywords like “divorce lawyer los angeles” and “texas discrimination lawyer” at Google, at MSN, at Yahoo, at Dogpile …

They’re looking for someone like you. Not you. Someone who does what you do. They don’t care who it is, as long as they get the sense that:

1. The lawyer knows what she’s talking about. She’s good.
2. She cares about the client more than about padding her bottom line.
3. She treats the client with respect.

Please don’t underestimate the powers of these last two criteria. For far too long, some of us in the legal profession have been giving the public the mistaken impression that we don’t care about them. If you need proof, consult any volume of “lawyer jokes” in your local bookstore.

A lawyer who can convince his potential clients that he’s “not like that”? Is winning the game.

How do we do that? How do we fight decades of ingrained stereotypes and mean-spirited jokes about our profession to show our clients we do care, we are different, we’re in this for the right reasons, and we are the only ones who can solve their specific problem the way they want it solved?

We answer their questions. We give away that super-secret special sauce we hold so dear: our legal knowledge. We help them understand — yes, for free — what this strange new playground they’re in is really like and what its rules are.

This doesn’t mean we do their work for free. That’s a pathetic business model, and anyway, they don’t expect that. Rather, it means we reassure them. We give them some information up front that helps calm them down, take some immediate steps to protect their interests … and convinces them that we’re the only ones who can do what they need done.

How You Give Them What They’re Looking For

This is why the web is such an incredibly powerful marketing forum — because it is, essentially, a ready-made library that’s accessible at all hours, at the whim of the searcher. Now, what you put in that library, how easily those “book” can be found by those who are looking for that information … these are the tricky parts, yes.

But here, again: blawgs win this game, too. How? Consider:

• The old wisdom is the same as the new wisdom: it takes on average 7 contacts to convince an otherwise-primed lead to purchase — to close the deal, as it were, and hire you as a lawyer (or buy a car, or select an accountant, or whatever).
• Each post in your blawg is another one of those contacts.
• Not only is it another opportunity to speak to your targeted readers and potential clients, it’s an opportunity that’s entirely under your control. You design and script the client’s experience, from start to finish. In what other marketing context can you say that?
• Your blawg, being a conversationally-toned set of entries together with high-value resources (freely available) and the ability for the consumer/client to participate in the conversation via comments, reaches the people you’re targeting in a way they find much more amiable and “user-friendly.”
• The bottom line: NO ONE wants to be “sold to.” They find it unpleasant, disrespectful, inauthentic, disingenuous, and untrustworthy. Blawgs, if done right, are the very antithesis of this “selling-to” approach.

Blawgs, in short, are the true client-centered marketing medium.

Robert, I hope that answers your question, at least somewhat. I hope you’ll continue the conversation here, in our comments section below. Ask a question! Rant! Tell me what your biggest concern is. And if you haven’t yet, please take our short 3-question survey. There’s a reward offered for completion (completely optional, of course).

Reader Robert Schrage posted a fantastic comment recently on this blog, regarding the upcoming release of Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging.

Robert’s Challenge: Show Me

I love the “show-me” types! Basically, Robert is telling me, “Hey, not so fast. Back up to the beginning and prove it to me that this endeavor is worth my while.”

To which I respond: “With pleasure.”

The Power of the Words That Work

Now, I was really hoping I could do this in some tricked-out video for you. But alas, such was not to be. Between A. Weber (and my completely idiotic mess-up therewith) and — you know, that whole “practicing law” thing — I just couldn’t get it to go. So, you’re stuck with plain old text.

But that’s probably appropriate for this post, because what I want to demonstrate for you is the power of the written word.

Not just any written word, of course: written words in particular format, published on a particular schedule, with specific kinds of formatting, and all in the larger context of a fairly complex (yet still completely organic, authentic, and effective) marketing program.

Why Blogs Work

Essentially, there are two reasons why blogs are, in my view, the lynchpin of a dynamic and effective marketing program for solos and small firm lawyers. Unfortunately, to understand them adequately enough for a real conversation, we have to take a trip down Technical Lane. (Don’t worry. I’ll make it as simple as I can without crossing over onto Inaccurate Boulevard or So Simplified You Might As Well Be Lying Street.) So this post will cover reason #1 — Because Google Loves Blogs. Reason #2 — that’s for tomorrow’s post.

Why You Must Be On The Web

I hope we can all start from the premise that small firm and solo lawyers today must have some sort of web presence to be viable in all but the most isolated of markets. (If you want to argue with me on that point, all I can do is direct you to any law practice management publication since — oh, say, the late ’90’s. Go ahead, we’ll be here when you get back.)

The simple, cold truth is that your clients are looking for you on the web, in droves. This doesn’t mean you should put all your marketing eggs in the website basket, but it does mean that she who has no web presence is operating at a serious disadvantage, right out of the gate.

But having a website is not enough. You must have a web presence that can be found. And even that’s not enough: it must be capable of being found by the right people at the right time. And that happens via any number of ways, but predominantly for those who are looking for legal assistance, it starts with a search engine.

In short: we live and die by the Google.

What Search Engines Do

Search engines work in one of two ways (actually three, but the third is a hybrid of the first two). Either they’re bot-driven or human-powered (or a combination of the two).

Envision if you will thousands of little tiny mechanical spiders roaming along a Matrix-like connection of wires and nodes. These spiders are looking for information. Specifically, they’re looking for new information — sites that have been updated since the last time they took this stroll along the information superhighway (how long has it been since you’ve heard that term?).

These spiders take a digital snapshot, if you will, of the new stuff and then scurry back home to the Google base camp, where they dump their snapshots into the Google databases (just using Google as an example, if the most obvious one).

There, the info sits until the next time someone enters a keyword or set of keywords that matches, in some way, the info the spider collected. Google pulls that info (along with the info from all the other hundreds of pages that fit the relevant criteria), crunch some numbers according to a complex proprietary algorithm designed to calculate relevance, and then spits it all back in the now-familiar 10-item-per-page list format we all know and love.

Stale SEO Gets You Nowhere Slowly

By now you can probably get an idea of why those little spiders are the keepers of the keys to your kingdom, at least in one sense. That’s the sense that if you’re not on page one, you can probably hang it up because your clients aren’t likely to click on pages 2 through 8,467 of their Google results, and thus aren’t likely to find you at all.

But that’s not the end of the story. There is, unfortunately for us all, a lot more. Now, it’d be great if it were different. We could all just run some numbers, figure out the ideal percentage and location of the right keywords, and be done with it. Of course, that approach to SEO (Search Engine Optimization — the process of making a site more search-engine-friendly and readable by those spiders) is, frankly, a stale and limited interpretation of SEO’s concepts. (Also, it doesn’t work.)

The truth is no one knows exactly how to get your site to number one with a bullet except for Google’s engineers and with few exceptions, they ain’t talking.

But what we can do is suss out some general principles judging from what works and what doesn’t. And that leaves us with this:

8 Bits of Generally Accepted SEO Wisdom

• Relevant content beats irrelevant content.
• Many incoming links beats fewer incoming links.
• Incoming links from popular sites beats incoming links from unpopular sites.
• Incoming links from relevant and trusted sites beats incoming links from sites commonly referred to as “link farms” (spammy sites that don’t offer any unique contribution but merely offer page after page of links).
• Frequently updated beats stagnant and stale.
• Relevant keywords in meta tags, in page titles, and in headings on the page beats no meta tags, no page titles and no headings as well as tags, titles and headings without relevant keywords.
• Text that’s friendly to search engines beats “the unfriendlies” — text contained in Flash, image, or Java files on the page, or that’s accessible only via a form or other required action on the part of the viewer.
• Structure that requires no more than 2 clicks to get from any page to any other page beats byzantine site architecture and the “can’t get there from here” approach.

Remind you of anything? Frequently updated … relevant content … many incoming links … from trusted and relevant sites (when even appellate judges are linking to blogs in their opinions, you know blogs have arrived) … keyword-rich (because you’re writing about the same stuff in different ways) … archives and categories make for easy navigation in the preferred 2-click model …

This is a blog, in a nutshell. And they are natural SEO winners.

Not the End of the Story — Just a Very Good Beginning

I don’t want anyone out there like Robert to get the wrong idea. Blogs are not the end of your SEO story. You can’t just put the blawg on the web and say “OK, come and get me!” Not by a long shot.

There’s a lot of work to be done with that blawg — and that, really, is what this book’s all about.

In a bit I’m going to edit this post with an upload of the Table of Contents — just for David G. who asked very nicely, but also for all those who might be interested in taking a look at what’s “under the cover” so you can make an informed choice about whether Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging might be right for you.

Ask me your questions in the comments below, just like Robert did, and just as I did with this post, I’ll do my best to answer them all! (And don’t worry, Robert - this isn’t the end of the answer. Part 2 - and Reason #2 that blogs rule where lawyer marketing is concerned — is coming tomorrow.)

Update: Here it is, the Table of Contents for Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging in PDF format. (Ignore the page numbers — that happened because this draft was taken from the outline version. The actual book is now at 200+ pages.)

The old saw goes that, in the beginning of your entrepreneurial launch days, you have “more time than money.” Oh, how true. But my unique (I hope) experiences, even though they were very difficult to go through at the time, came with a invaluable gift attached: the gift of intense need, which necessitated that I focus my efforts with precision.

In other words: I had no money, and very little time.

I wanted to share that story here, in hopes that it might illuminate a bit about the program I describe in Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging, so you can decide if it’s for you or not.

This particular journey started about four years back, with the growing realization that my then-current job, as a staff attorney for a local government, was neither rewarding nor fulfilling. I had a great salary, mind you — wonderful benefits, too. But there’s a saying that “local politics is a blood sport,” and that was certainly true here. I even developed hypertension from the incredible stress. If it had been just a little bit fun or rewarding on top of that stress, I think I’d still be there, to be honest. But it wasn’t.

Finally, something happened that, in a millisecond, crystallized every doubt and every yearning for something better in my mind. I won’t go into all the details (’cause it would make this post go on for days) but let’s just say that I suddenly realized this was a dead-end place, a dead-end job, and if I stayed, I’d have nothing but more of the same to look forward to. A friend then commented to me, “Seems to me you can either put yourself at the mercy of a group of elected officials, or you can put yourself at the mercy of your own efforts.” That comment, along with the earlier realization, gave me just what I needed to gather my courage and say, at least to myself, “I’m not happy, and I need something better.”

But, as it often does, life had other plans. Two years ago exactly today, my mother fell and broke her hip. While she was recovering, the doctors learned that her breast cancer had returned with a vengeance. These two conditions together meant that Mom could never again live by herself. She’d need round the clock care. And since ours was never a very wealthy family, we all knew what that meant: someone would have to move in with her.

That meant that, a few months later, just before she was finally released from the hospital and extended care clinic, my husband, daughter and I sold our house and moved in with Mom (her house was slightly bigger than ours and had one more room than ours did).

But that wasn’t enough. I needed to figure out how to work from home. I admit, it would have been nice not to have had to worry about money at a time like that, knowing my mother had a terminal illness, wanting to spend as much time with her as possible. But it just wasn’t possible. Our family had been wiped out financially after my brother’s battle with terminal cancer just two years before, and so I had to come up with some sort of solution that would allow me to earn some income but stay home, at least most of the time.

It was then that my former dreams of glory as a solo practitioner came back to me in vivid, glorious color. Why not? I thought.

The answer came back from the super-critical part of myself I call “The Editor” (because this wench is always sniffing at my writing, usually, though she doesn’t restrict her critiques to my literary efforts by a long shot): “Because you have NO MONEY, that’s why. All the books say ‘one full year’s worth of expenses must be saved before launching a solo practice.’”

Well — to be accurate, one book says that, I demurred.

“Hmph,” she sniffed. “Even so, you have no experience, no skill in marketing.”

Yes, but … I know how to blog ….

So, I quit my cushy but terribly unfulfilling $70,000 a year job as a government staff lawyer, and quickly launched my practice on a shoestring budget, working first out of a corner of my mother’s house and then, after her death, moving into the room she’d occupied — a sunny room of many windows, looking out over the Intracoastal Waterway.

The Editor was right: my asset list was tiny, compared to the list of liabilities I carried into that new practice. No money to speak of (not even enough for a Yellow Pages ad); no portable business or clients I could take with me (not after 10 years as a government lawyer, and literally no private practice experience); having to learn brand new practice areas (not much call in the private practice arena for “municipal airport lawyers”) … on top of that, add in the intense personal pressures of a marriage on its last legs and taking care of a parent with a terminal illness, and honestly, sometimes I wonder how I got up in the morning.

What I did have:

• A fairly sharp mind and a proven method for learning new stuff fast
• Loads of motivation
• A critical need (due to my mother’s illness)
• A talent for writing
• A facility with computers and the internet
• And a couple of years’ experience with blogs

In fact, I had a love of blogs. I’d been writing them for personal use, and as something of a journal to chart my progress in first deciding whether to leave my old job, and then in setting up my solo practice. Of course, I’d also maintained a subject-matter blawg, “The Airport Lawyer” (no longer mine).

And while the blog format was perfectly adequate to all of those tasks, it was the potential of blogs as a means of education and communication in the business context that really piqued my curiosity. It struck me that the blawg, properly set up and used as only part of one’s marketing plan, could be the single pivotal key to this whole “new way” of doing legal business that I had in mind.

Now — a moment’s clarity. Was it really “new” in the sense of unique to me, or some brainstorm only I had? I doubt it seriously. But it was new to me, and to my area, and to most of the other lawyers to whom I ventured cautiously with highly-hedged openers at bar functions like “What do you think about this….?” and “I heard about this one lawyer who’s doing something weird ….”

Yeah. Brave, right?

But the responses I got — while admittedly mixed — just intrigued me further. There were enough emphatic nods and interested looks that I felt comfortable going with this approach with my own practice.

So I launched a practice area blawg and a static website. I created both myself, using free tools that were available from the hosting company I’d selected. The static site was built with 1and1.com’s Website Builder application, which is accessed solely through the site’s version of a control panel (not cpanel, if you’re familiar with that interface, which is now my preferred method of working on a site). I wrote all the copy.

SCBankruptcyBlog.com was originally created using 1and1.com’s “WordPress Lite” package, but I quickly contracted with the talented Lisa Sabin Wilson of E Webscapes for a different look (the design you see now on the Bankruptcy & Consumer Law Blog as of the date of this writing is Lisa’s). Lisa, it should be noted, literally wrote the book on WordPress. It was Lisa’s enthusiastic suggestions about my blog that got me thinking about WordPress, as a platform and website solution, in a much broader context than “just blogs.”

I’ll get more into the details about how this happened in tomorrow’s post (which I hope will have an added fun feature that most BIAB and Inspired Solo readers will find unusual for me, but which I hope will become more and more common). But for now, let me just sum up this post with this conclusion:

I took my sites from nothing (two brand new sites, in other words) to the first page of Google results for my selected keywords in six months.

There is no technical trick to this. I did not hire any SEO expert or consultant. I didn’t engage in a single “black hat” SEO technique - no link farms, no keyword stuffing. These are organic, holistic results.

By the way, that’s all I’m offering with this e-book. I make no promises as to how high up the list you’ll get. I don’t concentrate on teaching SEO the way most people think of that topic. Instead, I approached — and I write about approaching — SEO in a completely different way: by focusing on the purpose of search engines — their driving mission, in other words — and on the real goal.

See, this is where most folks get it dead wrong: the real goal isn’t “#1 on Google.” You might think it is, but let me ask you this:

• What if you’re #1 on Google for a particular keyword phrase, but your ideal clients aren’t using that phrase to search for you?
• Or what if you’re #5 — but numbers 1 through 4 are so off-putting and deliver so little value that your searchers get fed up before they even get to you?

No, the real goal isn’t any particular spot in your SERPs (Search Engine Result Placements). It’s grabbing the right targeted readers for your blog and then converting them into potential clients. And while #1 on Google might help you by sheer force of statistics (the more eyes on your page, the likelier it is that at least some of those eyes will want to stay there), it isn’t the whole picture, not by a long shot.

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It’s huge — over 200 pages and counting (more being added every day).

It’s helpful — solving a real problem faced by every solo and small firm lawyer out there.

It’s proven — real world, demonstrable results.

And it’s blessedly free of hype.

Unfortunately, you can’t get it — not just yet. But you can do something now to help me make it even better — as well as be the first to get it, together with some equally powerful bonuses worth over $350, at almost half the cost that everyone else will pay when it goes live.

What is it? (It’s it. What is it? — sorry. Had to get my Faith No More on for a minute. I’m done now.)

It’s no secret I have been endeavoring to create a subniche for my coaching business as “the blawg coach.” But, I admit, my attention’s been scattered away from that for awhile — between the law practice (the post-Christmas period for consumer bankruptcy lawyers is like tax season is for accountants), plus my new About.com gig, and then the Macs Practice Law event (which was terrific, and I am SO glad I did it, for so many reasons, but — it did take some time).

And I didn’t even mention my very first priorities, which are always my well-being and my daughter’s well-being. (’Fess up - how many of you are shocked I didn’t list my daughter first? This is a lesson I learned from my amazing mom, and reinforced by dozens of flight attendants thereafter: always put your own oxygen mask on first, then you can assist others.)

But something happened lately that woke me up in a big way to this one, single, inescapable fact:

My colleagues — by whom I mean all solo and small firm lawyers, everywhere — have a desperate need to know how to build their businesses in an organic, inexpensive, effective way that maximizes their return on as little effort as possible.

What happened? I’ll tell you about that later. Right now, what I want to do is get your help.

By the way, this post is being cross-posted on both The Inspired Solo and Blawg In A Box, but both link to the same ultimate destination: this survey.

Here’s the deal: I’ve completely reevaluated how we launched “Blawg In A Box” (the product and services) last year — not just the launch but the way it was packaged. Now, the response to this launch was, frankly, amazing and immediate. It exceeded every expectation I had allowed myself. That proved to me that there was a real need for some direct assistance with marketing the solo and small firm practice online.

But the delivery method we chose, frankly — well, it sucked. It just wasn’t feasible to farm this stuff out to others in the time frame we needed. And the clients deserved better. Would that I could clone myself! (Then again, that never really works out too well in the movies …)

So, I took a deep breath, and dove in to a brand new concept for the delivery of this valuable information: an e-book. It’s called Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging: How to Stop Wishing For Clients & Start Getting Them — The Inspired Way.

It’s almost finished. But I need some help to put the finishing touches on and make sure I’m delivering what you really want to know — and this is where you come in:

I need to know what you need to know!

The book’s mostly written, and I can guarantee that it will have everything you need to know to set up, launch, and drive massive amounts of the right kind of traffic to your very own website or blog. But I don’t want to stop there — I want to make sure I really answer your questions.

I figured — why not go to the source?

So I’ve set up a VERY short 3 question survey here, and I’d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete it. Come April 1st (yep, you read that right!) Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging will be available for download, and it’ll be a better resource for your input.

Now, this survey is completely anonymous — you’re not required to give me your email address. I just want your input. However, you do have the option (completely within your discretion of course!) to request to receive more information about a very special pre-release offer of this ebook at almost half the cost the book will sell for come April 1.

That release price, by the way, is $89. The pre-release price will be $49. Only the people who ask to get that information will be eligible for the special pricing; the reason why is, frankly, that one of the bonuses requires a significant investment of time on my part, and I just cannot afford to give that away to lots of folks without at least recouping the full cost of the book. I’d love to, mind you — but I just can’t, between a full-time law practice and being a single parent! But for a few list members, it shouldn’t be a problem.

So, what do you say? Help me out?

There are in fact big doings afoot from inspired solo consulting, at both of our blogs — The Inspired Solo and Blawg In A Box.

For one thing, you might have noticed that things look a bit different around here. This design is also one of WordPress’s countless gorgeous, functional, and completely free themes. (Sorry, big blawg companies.)

And at The Inspired Solo, we got rid of all the ads — even the affiliate links! (We also removed the monthly archives, but that was pure aesthetics. I just didn’t like the way they looked.)

Yep — big doings. Huge news.

All I can say is this:

• There is a method to my madness.
• And there will be a MAJOR announcement here tomorrow.

Don’t miss it — watch this space!

This is the fourth and last (planned) entry in the Blawg Focus Makeover series. Earlier posts examined the importance of focus, and how to tell when your blawg needs a focus makeover. This post tells you how to execute the planned makeover, and offers up some tips to make it easier on you.

Re-examine the Plan

You’ve decided your blawg needs to have its focus tweaked — or radically redone. Either way, you’ve taken a hard look at your practice, your ideal clients, and you know how you’re going to approach this blawgging business: demographically or by practice area.

Take a last critical look at the plan. Make sure you’ve covered contingencies such as:

• Likelihood of renewable resources – is this topic or demographic likely to have developing news, litigation, or legislation sufficient to “feed” your blawg topic needs?
• Self-interest — writing a blog of any kind takes some level of commitment. It’s not a project that lends itself to scattershot, hit-or-miss approaches. Is this topic likely to sustain your interest over the long haul? Sure you can “make” yourself keep at it, day after day, but why add yet another obstacle to an already complex undertaking?
• Appropriateness to business plan — you’re not blawgging in a vacuum, of course. Remember your business goals and your business plan. Keep these guiding principles in mind. Your blawg should serve your business plan — not the other way around.

Prepping the Blawg

Should you announce the coming shift in focus to current readers? Yes, I think you should — with one caveat: if it’s a minor tweak, then don’t talk about it — just do it.

Don’t tackle the work on your blawg directly. Instead, do your planning and pre-execution in a text editor or program such as MarsEdit (for Mac users), then upload all at once to minimize the interruption to the site.

When’s the best time to make over your blawg? Depends on your readers. Take a look at your analytics or stats package, and see when the most activity on your blawg takes place. Avoid that time frame, and go for the least active time slots. Generally speaking for my blogs, that’s the 4 AM — 6 AM EST time slot.

Consider tackling the makeover in stages — perhaps working on your blogroll first, and then the categories later. This might make the work a bit more tolerable, and the makeover itself less noticeable.

But if you’re going for a major overhaul, then don’t back down from it. Announce it; publicize your schedule for making the changes; tell your readers what those changes will be. Go even further and sponsor a contest for your readers to coincide with the makeover!

Debriefing Your Makeover

You’ll want to keep an eye on your blawg after the makeover. Ensure that your links are all working properly, and that each page displays correctly. Enlist a friend or two to test out the site on different browsers.

Finally, don’t look at a makeover as a one-shot deal. Keep alert for ways to refine your focus and your blog’s expression of that focus in small ways as you build out your site.

This is the third post in an ongoing series titled Blawg Focus, in which we’re exploring why focus is so important, how to tell when your blawg needs a “focus makeover,” and — here — how to plan such a makeover.

Plan Your Attack

So, you’ve taken a critical look at your blawg, and you think you need to either refine the blawg’s focus, or give it a complete overhaul. Either way, you want to start with a plan. Do the work now that, perhaps, you skipped or rushed through in the beginning.

This works starts with the formulation of an objective for your site. Your objective must consist of these three components:

• Your target readership;
• Your primary conversion factor; and
• Your focus.

While we’re obviously focusing for now on the final factor — the focus of your blawg — it’s advisable to consider all three factors in combination. So, let’s take a look at each in turn.

Your Target Readership

If there’s one aspect of publishing a successful blog of any type that most bloggers get “wrong” it’s this: not understanding and knowing intimately the blog’s target readership (”TR,” from here on out).

What is the target readership? At its most basic level, it’s simply the individuals you want to read your blog. But for a marketing-purposed blawg, it’s a little more complex than that. In order to identify and get to know such a blawg’s targeted readership, the blawgger needs to know who the practice’s ideal client is as well.

The ideal client is simply a three-dimensional persona that is used for marketing purposes, to enable the business owner to more accurately target all marketing efforts. You keep your ideal client in mind while you’re creating that three-panel brochure, laying out your Yellow Pages ad — or writing that blawg post.

While a full exploration of TR is beyond this post’s scope, here’s a brief rundown of what the concept means:

• Your ideal client (”IC”) for the practice area or demographic you’re targeting with your blawg
• That IC’s need: what problem does she want to solve? What question does she have that only you can answer?
• The tone or approach that will most effectively reach that IC and convince her of your expertise. Example: a CEO of a mid-size corporation will respond to one voice, but a consumer seeking to avoid foreclosure will respond to a completely different voice. Understand which voice your TR needs to hear in order to make a purchasing decision.

Your Primary Conversion Factor

The old saw works here: If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

It’s true for sales, road trips, disciplining kids — and blawgging. So, let’s think about conversions from the lawyer’s perspective. To do so, answer this question: What do you want your TR to do, once they’ve found you? Do you want them to call a number for an appointment? Sign up for an email newsletter? Download a PDF brochure?

Whatever your answer to this question, that’s your answer to the conversion inquiry. Then it’s a relatively simple matter of funneling your TR from the home page for your blawg to the point of contact on your blawg at which the conversion is made (i.e., the place where you’ve published the call to action with your phone number, the sign-up form your autoresponder, or the page where the TR can download your brochure).

Your Focus

Now that you have your TR and primary conversion factor identified and sussed out, you’re ready to look at your focus.

To some degree, your focus will be determined by your TR. Example: if you have three distinct practice areas, but you want to use the blawg to reach the IC for one of those areas, then that area will be your starting point for determining your focus. Or you may want to target a particular demographic, across several practice areas.

As an illustration, let’s take Loretta Lawyer. Loretta practices family law and personal injury litigation. She’d like to focus her blawgging efforts on the family law area. Loretta could take her IC for the family law portion of her practice (middle age professional women with 1-4 children, residing in homes with a particular dollar value, among other characteristics), and further refine her focus by blawgging primarily about questions those ICs would have about child custody issues.

Now, her actual focus is not the IC herself — that’s just a persona Loretta uses to help her target her writing to a particular audience. Her focus is the practice area’s specific sub-topic of child custody issues.

So, for instance, Loretta can write about the process by which courts determine custody issues, how to arrange for emotional and psychological support for both mom and children, the ways professional women are viewed by courts in custody issues — virtually anything that might occur to Loretta’s IC as a concern.

Illustration #2: Larry Lawyer has a practice that’s almost identical to Loretta’s — in fact, let’s say it is identical. But Larry chooses instead to focus his blawgging efforts on a demographic instead of a practice area. He chooses to focus on a demographic — particularly, on young entrepreneurs of both genders.

So, although Larry will also have a TR in mind (possibly more than one, since he’s focusing on both genders and including both practice areas, and will want to make sure he’s speaking effectively to both), that TR isn’t his focus.

His focus instead is this narrowly-defined conceptual demographic that will have questions about both family law and personal injury law, from the perspective of the entrepreneur. He can write about protecting business assets in a divorce, or arranging child care for the busy single parent, or even how to deal with employees’ torts on the job.

Wrapping It All Up

I hope you can see now a little more clearly how important planning your blawg’s focus is to your overall marketing success. But I also hope I’ve demonstrated how blawgging is not an isolated venture, separate and apart from your other marketing endeavors. It’s but one aspect of a well-thought-out and implemented marketing plan, or should be; it uses some of the same concepts, background, foundational concepts and planning that your other marketing efforts are built upon.

Once you have your three core concepts — TR, conversion factor, and focus — clearly enunciated, on paper or in whatever notetaking software you use (please don’t keep this valuable info in your head), you’re ready to expand on these concepts to create a plan for your focus makeover. This plan should outline how you intend to implement the makeover, paying special attention to these factors:

• Categories: How can you use your category listings to communicate your focus? Think about inherent organizational structures that will help your TR realize that this blawg is a valuable resource for their specific questions.
• Tags: Tags are another excellent way to communicate focus. Typically slightly or significantly more specific than categories, tags can direct readers to your blawg from social bookmarking sites like Technorati.
• Blogroll: Many blawgs skip this sidebar item, and that may be preferable for your blawg’s focus. But if you do choose to have a blogroll, stuff it with blogs that answer questions your TRs have — not just blogs you like. Use it to communicate focus.
• Other pages and links: A terrific way to add value to your blawg, creating other pages and links out to primary and secondary resources that are relevant to your TRs’ concerns should be a primary task in implementing your plan.
• Call to action: The old chestnut for all marketing, but it applies just as strongly to all internet marketing, including your blawg. What do you want your TR to do? You have to provide a clear, convincing call to action and provide all necessary information for your TR to carry it out right then and there.
• Voice and tone: Your TR will respond best to one particular approach over all others. Find it, make it your own, and use it consistently.
• Blawg post structure: “Top 10″ lists, frequently asked questions, story-based posts — blog posts have their own structure and architecture, and which you use will, to a lesser degree, also communicate focus. Structure will also come into play when planning how your blawg will communicate effectively with your TRs in general; some TRs want short bulletins with one single “black letter” piece of advice or solution, while others want to get a general overview of a topic.

Conclusion

It seems like a lot of work, I’m sure — and it is. But it’s work with a purpose, and it’s work that makes achieving your marketing goals ultimately much easier. So start at the beginning and create your blawg with focus and specific intent. It will pay off in more of the right kind of readers in the long run.

In the last post in this series, scheduled for later this week, we’ll wrap things up with a checklist and a summary of “Do’s and Don’ts” for giving your blawg a focus makeover.

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