The 2008 Canadian Law Blog Awards are now live on Clawbies.ca. Congratulations to the winners, and even more so, to all those who were nominated. I have a roundup of all the nominations we found listed over at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, and would encourage everyone to surf those peer-to-peer recommendations.

Similar to last year, we’ll give everyone a chance to blog an ‘acceptance speech’ and relay those posts during the second week of January.

Happy New Year everyone!
Steve

TechCrunch published an important post yesterday about the amount of time we invest in Twitter. Using Robert Scoble as an example, this post demonstrates a valuable lesson for everyone. There’s a risk involved when we disproportionately web-publish to another company’s service. The cost is that we increasingly ignore our personal web-publishing efforts.

While this may seem strange coming from the guy who penned Lawyer Marketing with Twitter, the issue is not about twitter, facebook, linkedin or friendfeed. The issue is our ability to create a balanced approach.

Earlier this year, D’Arcy Norman wrote about social network sharecropping. The idea that we are dumping our thoughts, pictures, notable links and relationships into the hands of others. And let’s make no bones about it, that’s what’s happening. When we publish to servers that are not ours, we are giving away control. But at what price?

The issue as I see it, is not that we’re using these services. But rather, that we are participating in an unbalanced way. In the legal sphere, my big concern is for those lawyers are engaging these tools without first having a personal web presence. That’s right, a blog!

Using social networks and social media without a blog to tie these services together, is simply a bad move. Especially for lawyers, who may be starting late in the game, you cannot skip steps. Guess what Connie Crosby did last year when her twitter account was accidentally cancelled? She blogged about it, and more important, she got results! Not having a blog means you are not a player. If you lack that personal publishing presence, that means you don’t have a voice on the modern web. It’s a position of web marketing weakness.

The other problem I see is the ‘no follow’ trend of the big social networks. Most of these services, including Twitter, have cut off the outbound link value of their links, including individual profile pages. That means, while many believe they are contributing quality content to these services and getting a valuable link back to their firm or company website, this is increasingly not the case.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way the ‘nofollow’ attribute or link popularity was intended to work. Link popularity is supposed to reward quality content & the people who create it.  Similarly, the ‘no follow’ attribute was created to prevent blog comment spam. But now combined, these two features are used by the big social networks to create black holes of link value. Draw you’re own conclusions here, but either way, the loss of publishing control puts the content creator at a disadvantage. At the whim of a third party, who may delete your account at a moment’s notice, and without recourse.

Now what all this adds up to, is that web publishers should own their own land (ie. websites & blogs). This is an extremely important point for lawyers & law firms. You wouldn’t let an outside company own your firm domain name, right? You protect it! It’s the same lesson here.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t participate in these communities. You should participate! But in a balanced way, and not at the expense of establishing a personal blog. Frankly, twitter without a blog is just playing around. If you are using social media to participate and build a reputation, you need to back it up with some substance. And though some may disagree, my take is that substance frequently requires more that 140 characters.

I understand that blogs are hard work, and that twitter is easier. So what? If you’re going to put hours into this, the last thing you want to do is take the easy way out. As the TechCrunch post says, blogging  delivers those memorable pieces that you (and others!) will refer to for years to come.

It’s an easy equation really. Blog something of value first, and then go chat with your friends about it.

Related to my last post, Legal web2.0 guru Doug Cornelius (he’ll hate that I’m calling him a guru) and I are conducting a survey for an upcoming LegalWeb2.0 column. We’re trying to gather some intelligence about the practice of blocking social media websites by law firms. That is, you try to visit the Facebook’s, LinkedIn’s and Twitter’s of the world, and you get a big old access denied message.

Now, there are plenty of reasons for and against this practice, and that’s what will be addressed in the upcoming article. But before we get that far, we want you to tell us (anonymously, using this survey) if your firm is blocking, which sites are being blocked, and if you are in favour or against the practice.

Any help in spreading the word would be greatly appreciated! Especially if you know someone, say at another firm, is being blocked. They might not ever know about this survey, unless a kind friend discreetly emailed them this link. Would they? :)

Soon to be unveiled in the upcoming issue of the ABA LPM’s Law Practice magazine will be LegalWEB2.0, a new column to be edited by yours truly.  I’ve included a small image capture below to pique your interest! If you care to squint, you can probably get a sneak peak at the into blurb from the first article, written by PMA extraordinaire Erik Mazzone!

The focus of this new column will be on the practical aspects of web innovation within the legal community. My role, or at least as I see it, will be to track down stories (and authors) that highlight the latest methods of web engagement. The read write web is an environment that’s constantly evolving, both on the public-Internet and within law firms. My hope, is that this column will help lawyers decide which tactics & technologies are valuable investments of their time, and which are not.

I’m very excited to be expanding my role with Law Practice in 2009.  I’m also thankful to have the mentoring and guidance of Editor-in-Chief Dan Pinnington, as well as Joan Feldman and Joy White.  All three have been incredibly helpful, and I feel confident going forward knowing that I have their support.

And while I’m on the thank-you circuit… I’d also like to acknowledge former Editor-in-Chief Dave Bilinsky, who both got me involved in LPM and persuaded me to sign up for (yet) another volunteer gig. Thanks Dave! ;) Actually, all sarcasm aside, my time with LPM has been an exceptional experience.  It’s a extremely smart and fun group to be around. And I highly recommend it.

This month’s Texas Bar Journal inlcudes a republication of my article, It’s Not the Tool, It’s You! Many thanks to the TBJ’s technology editor, John Sirman, for picking it up from Slaw‘s RSS feed.

It’s also worth noting from a web-marketing perspective. The next time someone says blogging & RSS aren’t valuable marketing tactics, consider routing them over to this post.  This is the fourth article I’ve had published by the Texas Bar Journal, and each was picked up via personal web publishing. The State of Texas has been extremely kind to Stem on the client front too, introducing us to both McClanahan Myers Espey LLP and Hissey Kientz LLP.  Two top quality firms we’re looking forward to working with in 2009!

My point being … I don’t just talk the talk. The vast majority of Stem’s own marketing efforts involve web-publishing and content marketing.  If I slow down on the content flow, especially when things get busy as they are now, then Stem pays the price. Email inquiries slow, and the phone stops ringing.  Conversely, when I jump back into the fray, good business things happen.

It’s not always that simple. But lesson learned: sometimes it is.

As noted on Clawbies.ca this afternoon, the 2008 Canadian Law Blog Awards will once again be announced on New Year’s Eve.

This will be the third year of the awards, with this year’s edition adding a couple of new changes to the nomination process. First, we have opened up email nominations so bloggers, and friends of bloggers, can tell us why their blogs should be considered. The second available method, and clearly more intriguing, is nomination option #2.  In option #2,  we’re asking blog owners to nominate three other Canadian law blogs that they are currently reading, and why they were important in 2008.

The added wrinkle here, is that we’ve asked bloggers show their humble Canadian outlook, and mention nothing about their own blog. And in doing so, we’ve promised due attention to the nominator’s blog, their recommended peers, and are forcing some audience sharing & link-based infrastructure between members of the Canadian law blog community. It’s a win-win for everyone, right? ;)

Many thanks to Jordan Furlong at Law 21 for getting the process rolling this afternoon!  If you write a law blog in Canada, or know someone who does, please consider taking part.