Heather Morrison of the CNW Group, formerly Canada News Wire, released a 11-pg report yesterday titled Canadian Law Firms and their Use of Social Media. I am quoted in it, so please excuse the vanity reference.

The report itself offers a nice overview of the benefits of social media investment. That’s important, but the part I appreciated most was the focus on relationship building. Great relationships are a key driver of success for any law firm (or lawyer’s) search strategy. The reason? Relationships not only improve our network of contacts, which alone is a worthy goal, but they form the basis of the link network behind most firm websites.

Links, remember, are ultimately a form of online currency and a driver of what many people refer to as ‘google juice’ – a measure of trust, and better search rankings.

At one point in the paper, I’m also quoted saying that firms ‘not skip steps‘. Let me explain that further. Broken down, I often consider these three components:

• content – eg. blogs, papers, newsletters;
• distribution channels – eg. twitter, email, RSS, JD Supra; and
• relationships - either mirroring & codifying one’s existing relationships with links, or driving new relationships with social media;

Most firms (not all) have content at least partially covered. They may be sending out paper or email newsletters (distribution) and connecting with existing clients. In the past, that’s what firms had to work with. Could they now have more forms of content? or distribute via more channels? Absolutely, but it’s hard to argue that having those basic pieces functioning (think: 80:20 rule, existing clients…) didn’t create some success.

But this 2/3 element scenario, also created a huge gap in search marketing. Without relationships driving links, firms weren’t creating any kind of an ‘after effect‘; where their published content continues to rank well in the search engines, and continues to drive new readers creating exposure. But with Social Media participation (I include blogger-to-blogger relationships here), and creating new relationships with the associated links, firms are often able to make their publishing work harder & longer. In the cases of extremely popular content, years after the date of publication.

As the years pass, and a firm’s volume of substantive publishing increases, so too does this ‘after effect‘.  And the driver in all this is pretty consistent. Having a solid network of ‘web friends’, who are also web publishers, is one tough combination.

There are lots of other benefits to social media usage, which are covered in the report. But that’s my take on the why SM participation reflects positively on search marketing.

If a blog post doesn’t receive any comments, does that mean you struck out?

Actually, it’s quite common for blog posts not to receive comments. In the legal industry, and especially with lawyer blogs, we see it all the time.  The truth is the majority of online readers are lurkers. It’s called the 90-9-1 Rule, where 90% of your readers won’t respond in any way, 9% will contribute and participate once in a while, and 1% will do the vast majority of digital interaction.

This can be a difficult phenomenon to explain, but it hardly means that you haven’t connected with your intended audience.  Remember: the more focused the subject, the smaller the target audience. Apply the  90-9-1 rule to most lawyer blog audiences, and it’s a recipe for a comment-free wasteland.  I also think it’s quite unfair to compare a lawyer’s blog comment numbers to the more news-y blogs out there. You can’t compare a lawyer’s substantive commentary to ATL or ABA Journal.

Two important points:

1. Some blog posts just don’t warrant a comment — case in point, see my last post on the sudden abundance of twitter experts our there. It’s received zero comments, but 41 retweets and 1500+ visitors. The post was a fun lark, but clearly not worth commenting on.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t strike a chord or find an audience.
2. There’s always a chance for commentary to connect with readers in the future — Another example: back in 2006 I wrote the Top 10 Uses of RSS in Law Firms.   Three weeks passed and it might have had 30 readers. It subsequently got picked up by Dave Winer, and took on a life of its own.  To this day, that post drives more visitors to my personal blog than anything I’ve written there since. … Side comment: This story is also one of the reasons I still believe in search marketing and the power of positioning content in front of audiences. Blog commentary & search exposure combined continue to have a long-term impact on my own content marketing.

Bottom line: Are comments nice?  Of course they are, but you have to see the big picture.  As most experienced bloggers will tell you, comments are only one form of feedback. Don’t forget to also watch:  site traffic (both post specific, and general trends),  social media mentions, email feedback, mentions on other blogs, and general increases in your profile (eg. offers for speaking engagements) & your personal network (eg. more industry-based friends & contacts).  You need to consider all the available metrics as a group.  Micro-measuring comment counts (or even counting interactions post-by-post…) isn’t going to cut it in face of the 90-9-1 rule.

An item just posted on the Stem news page: JD Supra announced its new law centers this morning; a feature that should add both context & browsablity to their community-driven collections.

The law centers are broken down into four core divisions: personal law, business law, government law, and law practice management; with each major area then divided into related sub-centers.

What I like generally about this addition, is that JD Supra seems much easier for the casual visitor. If you’re trying to track down an employment lawyer or personal injury lawyer, there’s now a single location I can point people to (or bookmark) that shows the latest postings, and who are leading contributors.

I also like the top-5 contributor list on each page’s sidebar, which is based on the publishing track record within the category. The top-10 contributor list on the homepage is great for larger groups or big contributors, but these top-5 lists are a great way to stand out with 20 to 50 documents.

And if I put my SEO hat on for a moment, the practice centers also offer a host of new landing page opportunities for topical searches from the search engines. Making legal content more accessibile is JD Supra’s goal, and the additional search exposure adds to that offering.  I expect the link value from the practice centers will distribute evenly across the site, and more importantly, into each of the content items. Both the contributor profile pages and the content pages should see an ongoing benefit.

But probably the biggest difference for me, is the balance JD Supra now has between search and browse. As many of my fellow law librarians can tell you, information seekers often vary in terms of their search-vs-browse orientation.  Not everyone is the same in that regard.  What JD Supra had been lacking, was the functionality to support the browsing style.  The practice centers, in my view, fill that gap and create a more complete service.

Congratulations to everyone at JD Supra!

This past Sunday I published my latest Web Law Connected column over at Slaw, titled “The Formal-to-Informal Rule of Lawyer Web Publishing“.

The title of month’s article is a bit of a misnomer, and my suggestion of a rule is a mental guideline more than anything. The basic premise is to be careful about taking raw unfiltered conversational exchanges online, and automating (RSS imports, Widgets) their re-publication to your business network. As stated in the article:

My formal-to-informal rule is simply that it’s always ok to route formal commentary to informal and conversational web tools; but that unfiltered, informal, or conversational tools should be considered a place of final destination.

For those who consistently stay on message, don’t mix their personal & business networks, or see little use for flippant or sarcastic comments, having a content routing strategy may make little difference. Unfortunately, I seem to fail those tests on a number of fronts. :)  But that’s ok. The important message here is self-reflection in an honest way, and recognizing when fail-safe measures are required.

As I said at the end of the article, I don’t know if everyone else needs a rule… but it makes sense to me. And if it raises awareness of potential problems with content routing, especially for those lawyers with more conservative clientele, then mission accomplished.

As an aside, I’ve altered my personal publishing routine, and will now try to coordinate new article releases to Stem’s JD Supra account. The rationale, for those interested, is two-fold. First, Canadian published content isn’t treated as nicely in the US search results (a.k.a. geo targeting), so I’m attempting to improve cross-border search exposure; and second, I want those JD Supra syndication partnerships to help increase content distribution.

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.

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.

I’ve come to the realization lately that a number of articles I’ve writen for my Web Law Connected column over at Slaw, don’t always get exposed well in the US market. Considering about 70% of Stem clients originate from south of the border, I’m going to call it for what it is – a  bit of a blunder on my part.

Fair enough, but this was also clearly a fixable situation. As a result, we spent some time yesterday trying to rectify things by uploading some of the backlog to the Stem JD Supra collection. And because of some nice comments from twitter friends, it seems worth capturing the titles & links to those articles in a blog post.

The five articles that went up yesterday were:

• Ethics & Legal Web Marketing: Never Lower Your Standards!
• Legal Web Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
• SEO for Law Firms: Why Adwords is Not the Solution
• Closed Networks and the Problem with Facebook
• Top Five Digital Landmines for Lawyers

Enjoy!

The content distribution channels just keep coming for legal documents sharing service JD Supra!

Just announced over on their JD Scoop blog, Stem client JD Supra has launched a new Facebook application to help users stream their content into their facebook profile.

There are two potential options during the install process. One is the mini feed, which will create a small summary of the last 3 documents the user has uploaded to JD Supra.

And the second option, which I think is the preferred path, will display the full feed of your documents, plus display a replicated copy of your JD Supra profile page.  Here’s a screen capture from Stem’s JD Supra profile:

And one of the document summary screen:

Another impressive addition to JD Supra’s vision for social legal documents! And, I might add, a very subtle way to insert one’s professional profile and credentials into their facebook experience.

Anyone who says the legal industry doesn’t get web 2.0 … better take a look at this! :)

Google has finally put their name to a guide for SEO practices. Announced on their webmaster central blog late last week, Google released a 22 page PDF titled, oddly enough, Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starters Guide.

To those looking for a top secret advantage or holy grail to a top ranking website… well, you might have to wait a little longer. This guide offers little more than an acknowledgement of what most would consider industry best practises. But for those looking for a brief introduction to the topic, especially when it comes to on-page optimization basics — this guide is good enough that I may make it my first stop for recommended reading.

And for those simply looking to avoid reading a 22-pg PDF report, I offer my own bullet point readers digest consolidation as follows:

• Make your title tags unique on every page of your site;
• Be sure to add a meta-description tag to each of your pages;
• Incorporate logical site architecture / information architecture principles;
  • ie. broad topic > specific category > finite subject
  • use breadcrumb trails, text based navigation structures
• Make content fresh, organized, unique, and relevant to the site’s subject;
• Keywords embedded in the url structure of pages are valuable additions;
• Write your content for the user, not the search engines;
• Optimize using ALT tags on in-line page images;
• Link with shorter descriptive anchor text – both internally and externally;
• Use header tags to differentiate headlines or scannable content;
• Make use of robots.txt files, sitemap files, webmaster central tools, and so on.

These types of on-page optimization factors are pretty much standard fare these days, especially within more competitive search markets. However, the fact that Google has put their name to, and indirectly endorsed, what most consider to be both ethical and standard industry practises — makes the SEO world a little easier to navigate, for everyone.

And that is an olive branch worth commending. Well done Google!

I have a new Web Law Connected column up over at Slaw, titled It’s Not the Tool! It’s YOU!

My message this month is to have faith in experimentation, and to be passionate in the way we select & embrace our web marketing tools. Please drop by and have a look!

Alyn-Weiss & Associates have just released a new survey that shows “the number of local and regional corporate, transactional and defense law firms using search engine optimization (SEO), and getting cases and referrals as a result, has tripled in the past 24 months”.

Also from the press release:

• “59 percent of firms used SEO over the past 24 months. That compares to 20 percent in the two years prior to then. In 2007-2008, 20 percent of firms said they got cases from SEO, compared to 8 percent in 2005-2006.”

While that’s great news for those of us with SEO services as part of our legal marketing repertoire, it does make for a tougher playing field overall.  Five years ago, on-page optimization factors were enough in many legal markets to create a competitive search presence. Now of course, this is simply par for the course.

Where there used to be two or three pages of optimized results for a competitive search phrase, in many markets that number can now span eight to ten pages. Which supports a point I’ve been making for a while now – good search positioning is at least 70% about a website’s incoming link network (and likely more).

Most firms should be asking:

• Do we know what websites are linking to us?
• Do we have a strategy to improve the quality (& to a lesser degree, quantity) of those links?
• How closely aligned, subject-wise, are those links with website content?

As more firms get onboard with SEO, competition is clearly going to be on the rise. Unless Google suddenly decides to change their default result to 20 or 100 listings on the first page. Which seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with competition. As reputations build and performances are graded, there should be some culling within the industry. Which is good. But unfortunately, I suspect more competition also means more shady tactics from some providers in the short term. And even more unfortunate, SEO services aren’t going to get any easier to evaluate for law firm marketers or practitioners.

Not saying that as a scare tactic. Just a troubling fact. And from my own perspective, I can see how the next couple years are going to be a challenge to differentiate Stem as an ethical SEO option; and related, whether to train out those standards, recruit for them, or both.

Interesting times ahead.

I was very fortunate to be involved in a webex session this morning with the crew over at Lexblog. The topic was predictably … legal seo.

Lexblog, as most readers will know, are one of the biggest builders of law blogs within our industry.  And the purpose of the session was simply to convey the basics, and to provide a few DIY tasks that lawyers can apply to their own web presence.

If you’re interested hearing what was said, Kevin will likely be posting a link to the archived session later today (or very soon…). However, in the mean time, Lexblog’s Rob LaGatta did some amazing live tweeting covering the session over on twitter. Click on that preceding link to see a recap of over 5 screens of Rob’s notes during the session.

Many thanks to Lexblog for having me this morning. If there are follow-up questions, please feel free to send them along to steve@stemlegal.com. I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner.

Yesterday morning, Adrian Lurssen (aka @jdtwitt), Communications Director at legal document sharing website JD Supra, blogged a list of 145 lawyers and legal professionals he’s following on Twitter, with the goal of encouraging a some legal community matchmaking.

Thanks to a short description he provides for almost every person on the list, I’m willing to bet the legal Twitter-sphere is a friendlier, better-connected place today! The proof? Within hours, the list had grown from 145 to 180, and will probably grow more.

If you’re still not getting this Twitter stuff, please check out my introductory post on the lawyer marketing value of twitter; and if you’re simply on the fence on whether to join? Preview some of the legal community’s exchanges over at Stem’s legalvoices.com – which has had a bit of a renaisance since Adrian’s list went live. And do remember that the twitter conversation is much more casual than the legal blogosphere…

So what are you waiting for? Drop by, find some folks to follow, and enjoy making new Twitter connections!

Thanks Adrian, for the LV mention and shout-out to @legalvoices too.  My inbox is also full now, and I spent a fair bit of time yesterday adding legal industry types to my @stevematthews account. It’s fantastic to see the legal Twitter community grow like this. This was a wonderful initiative!

I’ve been in the process of writing an article for Slaw that critiques the ROI of paid search advertising, and ended up conducting a bit of a research project.

My task? I wanted to know exactly what the average cost-per-click was with Google’s Adwords for search phrases that contained the word ‘lawyer’.

Using the Google keyword research tool, an item I blogged about back in July, I was able to turn synonyms off and then export those terms into a CSV file. That file was then imported into a spreadsheet. I tallied up the sum, and divided by the total number of terms, and…

The average price paid per click over the past year for all searches containing the word ‘lawyer’ was: $9.49 per click!

That’s close to $10,000 per 1000 monthly visitors received. And since it’s my research, let me be the first to say it – Wow!

This also comes on the heels of April’s Tamar 2008 Search Attitudes Report out of the UK, that said “91 per cent prefer using natural search results when looking to buy a product or service“.

I’ll have much more to say when my Slaw article comes out, but the short story is… give me strategic SEO and content marketing any day over those numbers.

I’m pleased to announce a new website for Stem, the DUI Lawyer Blog Watch!

Located at duiblogwatch.com, this site offers a one-page aggregation of the 50 most recent postings by attorneys blogging on the subject of DUI law. As of launch today, the number of blogs included was 54.

With some similarity to the Florida Lawyers Blog Watch site we launched in January, I would like to highlight how this site’s approach is slightly different, and perhaps improved. Rather than focusing on a particular region, the goal this time was to focus on an area of practice, that of DUI Law. In addition to including those blogs exclusively focused on DUI law, we’ve also included lawyers blogging on the broader subject of Criminal Law. These Criminal Law posts are then filtered to include only those posts that contain the terms ‘DUI’ or ‘DWI’, either in the subject or title of their post. … It’s an extra layer of filtering, but something we felt would keep the subject stream a bit more on topic.

Also once again, we’re sharing the spotlight with one of our clients. Stem client Lawrence Koplow, himself a Phoenix DUI lawyer who blogs at the Arizona DUI Defense Blog, will be helping me out as a co-contact point for the site. Very similar to the way West Palm Beach Lawyer Ron Chapman watches out for new Florida blogs to add, Lawrence will be doing the same for DUI bloggers.

Finally, the opportunity to be included in this website is once again free. Lawrence and I both welcome contact from those we might have missed in our original set of DUI blogs. All we need is the homepage of your blog, and the URL of your blog’s RSS feed!