On June 21st, we published a TechnoFeature by Joe Hartley that questioned the use of blogs as a legal marketing tool. As you might expect, several legal bloggers responded. The always insightful Bob Ambrogi penned the most detailed and fair-minded response in his article, Blogging's Contrarians.
My quick take on legal blogs as a marketing tool is that they can drive traffic to your site. In this respect, they can serve as a "search engine optimization" tool. But while you can pretty much get indexed in all the major blog search engines overnight, it will take some work to get indexed in the search engines that most people use to find lawyers — Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Once your blog gets indexed by the major search engines, you'll need to figure out how to convert that traffic into "qualified leads." In short, blogs can work, but they require work (both pre- and post-launch).
I personally think blogs work better for publicity than for generating leads. In my experience (thus far), an online ad campaign with optimized landing pages performs much better at delivering qualified leads. Yes, ad campaigns cost money, but well-designed ad campaigns usually pay off — and, unlike writing a blog, law firms can outsource an ad campaign. As I've said many times, today's world requires a multi-channel approach to marketing — you cannot rely on just one marketing channel to grow your law firm's business.
About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.
