Home Office Lawyer

Should I use a Ghost Writer for my Blog?

This was posted today on a Listserv I am on. I could not let it go without responding. I am not providing who stated this and won't until such time as they might comment to this post.

“If you want to be seen/heard/read or increase your ranking in the search engines, content is king. If you're in a competitive market, you need steady, frequent content. Ghostwriters/content providers fill the minor holes that you don't have time to address.“

And let me reply. I have been blogging now for almost 3 years. I have started blogs and killed them. Some I have started to see what kind of SEO I can get and how quick. I have to report, I have yet not had one move up in Google quick.

Recently, I started a new project. While we are building it, I have been posting daily to the main blog the network is being built around. We are getting great results and it has only been up for a month. Last night I did some stat’s surfing and discovered that with some searches our readers are doing, we are showing up not only on the first page of Google, we are showing up in the top 5 most of the time.

Blogging takes a commitment. And if you want to blog, and if you want that blog to be successful, you have to make a commitment to make it happen.

Kevin O’Keefe and I have posted about this on our blogs. But, let me make just this one statement. I have always been a proponent of CONTENT. Not just content, but relevant content. However, I have neve said you can just throw up content and expect it to stick. That would be like throwing some crap on the wall and watching to see what sticks. It ain’t going to happen. And heres why.

Blogging is one of the best communication tools we have available today. It is one of the best ways to get involved in the conversation too. No where else can you so quickly become a part of a nationwide, worldwide conversation on a topic. But you have to get noticed. And you do that by becoming involved in the conversation. Post, link, trackback, comment, email bloggers, email commentors thanking them for commenting, allow comments and trackbacks.

But, how you say do I do this. First of all, you can't even attempt to keep up with what is going on in the blog world if you aren't using RSS and a good feeder. You have to find the conversations and you can best do that if you are being fed them.

Next, don't try to be all to everyone and everything. Pick a niche and blog about it. Pick something you are excited about. Get involved in it. Set your RSS feeder to feed you information about that niche, topic or interest. Blog about it, comment about it and get involved in it.

YOU CAN‘T DO THAT IF YOU AREN‘T THE ONE POSTING ABOUT IT.

If you can't think of something to blog about, ask a GUEST poster to do a post. Or in my case, I asked Allison Shields to do a series of post on billing. It was great and we BOTH had great traffic from it. We both had traffic for two reasons. It was a great series with some great content. And it was a hot topic at the time. We both knew that because we follow such topics in our RSS feeders and on Listservs.

Do a post about your competition. Post a comment to a competitor‘s blog. OMG, I cant do that. They might benefit from it. Yes, they will and best of all you will too. I call this my McDonald’s theory. Where is the best place to put a new fast food restaurant? Right next to a McDonald’s. They get traffic and you will too.

If you are not willing to make a commitment to make blogging work, don't even start one. You will be disappointed and you will not become a believer. If you are willing to make the time commitment, work commitment and focus on the results, you will become a believer and you will actually enjoy it.

Followup to Full or Partial RSS Feeds

I did a follow up on Blawg for Profit to the post I did here concerning Full-Text RSS Feeds!!!!! It would appear that even Darren Rowse agrees. Full-Text is the way to go.

Full-Text RSS Feeds!!!!!

I have written about full-text RSS feeds before. But, I must vent. There is nothing that is more troubling than reading my RSS feeds that come into my feeder and I am expected to “click” on the title so I can actually read it.

There is no solid research out there that says your traffic will decrease if you are providing full-text RSS feeds. In fact, I have to say as an experienced blogger, I usually don't read a post if I don't get to read it in my RSS feeder. I very seldom go to a blog to read “the rest of the story”.

For example, some of the “big boys” provide full-text RSS feeds. They include:

seomoz.org

ProBlogger

Web Worker Daily

Web Ink Now

CopyBlogger

Kevin O’Keefe

I would venture to guess none of the above have seen a decrease in traffic since they offer full-text RSS feeds. Get with it people, offer full-text RSS feeds. It is just a matter of setting it in your blogs preferences. And you never know, your traffic might actually increase. Your Trackbacks might increase. And the commenting on your blog may increase too.

Recent Webinar on Blogging with Collaborative Attorneys

We held a webinar today on the basics of blogging with a group of collaborative attorneys from around the country. We were online for almost 2 hours. Great exchange of information, questions and ideas. If anyone is interested in such an event, drop me an email or give me a call. I would be glad to discuss scheduling a webinar for another group.

RSS in Plain English

Common Craft had this great plain English explanation of what RSS is. Check it out. If you have not jumped on the RSS wagon because you were not quite clear what it does or how it can help you. This video should get you to a point you will use it.

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Source for Post: Lexblog

Homework and RSS

Don’t laugh. Why not? Can you imagine our schools actually advancing to the point that RSS might be used as a tool to educate our children.

More Uses for RSS

Like many, I use RSS feeds to get information to blog about. In addition to that, there are other uses that lawyers can use RSS feed for. Google Docs & Spreadsheets features RSS so you can be notified if someone updates a document you are working on with others.

I also use Basecamp in my own practice. Basecamp provides RSS feeds. However to protect your security, your RSS reader must support authentication or be password protected. Newsgator products provide both.

The future of RSS looks wonderful. But, how long will we have to wait before higher courts will provide case updates via RSS? How long before state legislatures will use RSS to update the public on updates in Bills that are in those houses? I hope it is soon.

The Connected Lawyer: RSS Feeder and Reader

Newsfire is another choice for RSS web feeds for the Mac. I use NetNewsWire for my RSS and have been very happy with it.

Give them both a look. It appears they both do the same. What the difference is, is mainly the interface and the look. I will give Newsfire a try to actually compare how it works to NetNewsWire.

Google Alert and Blogs

If you haven't noticed, over the last few days, Google Alerts has been sending feeds from blogs. I use Google Alerts as just one of my methods to get information to blog about. However, RSS is still my main way to receive this type of information on my computer. While Google Alerts is a good source, it is not the best way to get such information.

What excites me about this however is the fact, blogs are now being picked up in the alerts. Just another example of the power blogs are developing.

RSS screencast tutorial

Thanks to Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs for his heads up on this one.

Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, has produced an excellent 3 part screencast tutorial on RSS:

1. Introduction of RSS discusses importance of RSS and looks at an RSS feed.
2. How to set up an RSS aggregator and subscribe to RSS feeds.
3. Specific tools law librarians may use to set up RSS feeds.

Again, I can not stress enough that if you are not using RSS, you have to. This is a great tutorial on RSS, even if you are not a law librarian.

Source of post: Michel-Adrien Sheppard