South Carolina Trial Law Blog

In an interview at LawFirmBlogging,  Burkey Belser states:  “Here’s a gospel we preach to our clients every day: ‘Don’t advertise, contribute to the conversation.’ When there is good conversation, there are good feelings all around, mutual respect and pleasure in the activity.”

I think that’s exactly right. One of the appeals of blogs is that it is a conversation. The great thing is that with his news aggregator, the reader gets to pick who he listens to and who joins his personal conversation. But of course it couldn’t last forever. I’m starting to see attorneys using blogs for search engine placement and straight out advertising instead of adding to the conversation. Here’s a few:

• Boating Safety Law and News blog. It posts about 10 stories from news feeds and 5 nautical pics automatically. The attorneys appear to write a few posts a month. Pics and news clippings are fine, but they don’t add to the conversation and don’t tell a potential client or referring attorney anything about the lawyer.
• The Injury Law Blog appears to be run by a Dallas lawyer. The posts of his weblog, look to be pages of text from his website. Granted, he looks to be quite an internet marketer, by having a different domain name for every area of his practice.  and a different front page for every one of the domains. I’m not faulting him for that, but his weblog doesn’t provide any information. On the other hand, Bob Kraft is a Dallas attorney that gets blogs.
• Atticus Media is a legal marketing company that does weblog development. In their blog development page they state “Blogs provide touch-marketing at its best. Legal Blogs will elevate your reputation as a reliable authority in your area of the law.” And to establish someone in their field, the marketers at Atticus have pre-built a very nice website and weblog for a Special Needs Lawyer that wants an internet presence. Hmmm… I guess the marketers provide the reliable authority and just drop in the appropriate attorney who is willing to pony up the bucks.

• Atticus Media also has a domain Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer that looks to be a site designed for optimal search engine rankings on a national level and then lawyers purchase an exclusive right to get case referrals for a particular state. They seem to have 4–5 states taken so far.

So we’re starting to see legal blogs used specifically for higher search engine placement or advertising without adding to the conversation. Without the attorneys giving their input and sharing their thoughts. Without talking to their colleagues, clients or the public. They’re allowed to do that. But, I think they’re missing out on the greatest value of blogs. (Of course, there's always the possibility that they're new to the blogosphere and don't get blogging yet, but I don't think that's the case)./p>

Thank you for the compliment about my blog at www.pissd.com. I appreciate the mention!