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The more time I spend updating and tweaking my blogs, the more impressed I have become with the technology. Even though I create my own web sites with Net Objects Fusion and can update them anytime I want, I find that I rarely make any updates. Why? When you update a web site you have to worry about where the new page fits into the structure, you have to set up internal links and you have to really think about optimizing your content.
By contrast, blog software (I use the downloadable version of WordPress) takes care of the organization, linking and optimization automatically. I also think that the major search engines are adjusting their algorithms to favor blogs with real content as well as podcast. Interestingly, my podcast about Social Security disability rose very quickly in Google even though it had far less meaty content than my Social Security blog. My thought is that at this point there is no “blog and ping” type of automated posting software to populate blogs and the search engines may find it easier to identify legitimate and robust blog/podcast content.
In my law practice, I use my blogs to share ideas with other lawyers. For example, in the bankruptcy law world in Georgia there are very few bankruptcy lawyers with blogs at all. One of my fellow bloggers, Scott Riddle, has a well researched blog that focuses on important new bankruptcy cases. Although I have never met Scott in person and I did not know him prior to reading his blog, we have struck up a friendship and a kind of mini-mastermind group through our blogs. If I run across a strange fact pattern, I will either email him or post the issue on my consumer bankruptcy blog and he will usually respond with his take. He does the same on his end. The point here is that because blogs are by definition interactive tools, I get the benefit of another lawyer’s analysis and both of us can use our collaborative effort to create content for our respective blogs.
I therefore encourage my lawyer clients or any professional who publishes a blog to get the word out within their professional community. Potential clients and customers are not the only positive result from a blog.
[tags] blogging as mastermind tools, podcasts and SEO, blogging for lawyers [/tags]
