Some law firms get it right: the emailed article includes a link directly to a web page where the article can be found. In those cases, it’s only a matter of moments before I’ve got a tweet lined up summarizing the article (if the title or headline is good enough, I simply reproduce it) and linking to the piece online.You can tell those firms by how frequently they show up in the Twitter streams mentioned above.

But some law firms, unfortunately, miss the opportunity. They email the article, but the link (if you can find it) leads to their main publications page, leaving the reader to try digging around in the archives to locate a URL (sometimes the article hasn’t been posted to the website yet). Other firms attach the article as a PDF, or post it on their website in that format. And other firms provide nothing: the article apparently exists only in the body of email.

So this is a reminder, to law firms as well as to the rest of us, of one of the most important rules of the new social media world: if there’s no link, it might as well not exist. Good content is being under-circulated and under-read because its email recipients can’t post it to Facebook, tweet it on Twitter, or link to it on LinkedIn. Remember the advantage that emailed newsletters first had over the paper kind? That’s exactly the advantage that linkable articles have over every other kind.

This isn’t an either/or situation: you don’t have to choose between emailing an article to your contact database or posting it on your website. You can do both. Ideally, you post the article online first, as soon as it’s ready (that’s an entry-level definition of blogging, by the way). Then you email the article afterward, either on its own or as part of a collection of articles (aka, a newsletter). “Real-time publishing” means exactly that: the moment it’s ready, you publish it on your website. There’s no production schedule. There’s no waiting for that last article to come in to fill the hole on page 4. That’s how we used to publish; we don’t need to do it that way anymore.

So my modest suggestion to law firms is this: don’t email any content unless it comes with a clear, obvious link to a web page where the content can be found. Social media users (and there are several hundred million of us) would love to share your excellent content. But we can’t share an email. We can only share links.

1.  It seems that many leaders regard social media as something that should be left to “marketing” or “communications.” What role, if any, should leaders play?

Leaders who regard marketing and communications as not meriting their attention are either too busy for their own good or don’t fully appreciate the degree to which a law firm’s reach and reputation is linked to its business success. For social media to really catch on within a firm, there has to be clear buy-in from the top — not just from the managing partner, but to the extent possible, from senior rainmakers and other influencers.

Some firms talk a nice game about the importance of social media to their marketing and business development, but then delegate complete authority for social media to a young partner or a communications staffer. That will have exactly as much impact on the firm’s communications culture that you would expect it will. If you want social media to have a reasonable shot at success, you need to provide some visible leadership. A managing partner’s blog would be a nice start.

2.  Is social media “up there” as a strategic issue for law firm leaders?

Law firm leaders are not treating social media as a strategic issue, nor should they. There are only so many truly strategic matters that a law firm’s leadership can address and execute at one time, and issues like market reputation, talent retention, workflow redesign, and rainmaker management are going to occupy most if not all the available bandwidth. Those are the keys to firms’ survival and growth; social media may be more than just a “nice-to-have,” but it can’t be called “strategic” unless you seriously stretch the meaning of the word.

Two exceptions. One is if your firm has certain characteristics (e.g., start-up clientele, virtual offices, extremely strong consumer focus) that place a powerful social media plan at the core of the firm’s marketing and business development efforts. Two, we don’t yet know what social media is going to become. Social media can reasonably be said to be in its infancy, but this is a pretty massive infant. It’s correct to say that for most firms today, social media is not a critical strategic matter; it would not be correct, or wise, to say that social media will never come to completely dominate online interaction, or that such a development is decades away.

3.  What should leaders know about social media?

Law firm leaders should understand two things about social media. The first is to ensure they don’t swallow too much hype. I once told a conference of managing partners that they should have a social media strategy if they also have a magazine strategy and a billboard strategy. That is to say, social media is a communications tool, one of those in the toolbox their firms have been using for decades.

Social media should be part of a sophisticated and well-supported communications strategy — and this is where I’d say most firms are lacking. Firms that ask me about social media strategy quickly find themselves in a conversation about communications strategy, answering questions about how they approach their newsletters, websites, magazine articles, advertisements, media interviews and so on. Social media is a tool, and it’s not as important as the box it’s carried around in.

The second thing law firm leaders should understand is that they have never seen a communications tool like this. It’s true that magazines and billboards and social media are all communications tools; but no magazine in the world has 750 million subscribers the way Facebook does, and nobody uses billboards to issue hourly updates on legal issues, as Twitter allows you to do. Social media has something else that no other tool offers: two-way communication.

Social media allows the public to talk back to a company; more importantly, it also allows members of the public to talk to each other about a company. If social media provided law firms nothing else but the opportunity to receive instant feedback on their content, respond to public inquiries, and conduct free market research about their brand and the things that matters to the people who care enough about the firm to talk about it, social media would be a breakthrough technology. And that’s only one small part of what it does.

4. Some leaders would undoubtedly feel the social media landscape is awash with blogs, tweets and posts and that any further contribution their firm makes will get lost in this – any comments?

I’ve also come across some lawyers who feel that way. Oddly enough, they don’t feel the same way about a traditional media landscape already littered with advertisements, advertorials, and lawyer-contributed content: they’re more than happy to keep buying ad space and sending in articles to overstuffed magazines. This tells me that the problem is not with an overdose of social media content; it’s with the fact that social media is new and still developing and lawyers don’t trust it yet.

Far fewer law firms publish blogs than newsletters; far fewer have Twitter feeds than send articles to their local legal newspaper. Compared to the traditional sea of legal content, social media is as close to a “blue ocean” as lawyers are likely to find. But it’s not going to last forever, and the firms that wait the longest for everyone else to jump in will find that the pool really is too crowded by the time they arrive.

5.  What are the stand-out benefits that arise from a strategic and structured approach to implementation of social media that leaders should be aware of?

Here’s just one. There are no better, more effective and more affordable content publishing and distribution platforms than blogs and Twitter (or possibly Google Plus). It’s almost ridiculous how easy and cheap it is to publish a blog and create a specialized legal news feed on Twitter: much easier, faster, and less expensive than cranking out and mailing yet another printed newsletter (or emailing yet another PDF newsletter).

Law firms produce tons of content, and with some editing, most of it will prove very effective in building profile and attracting business — if it receives outstanding (defined in both quantitative and qualitative terms) publishing and distribution. No law firm in the world has an email database that can compare (either in size or in pass-along functionality) to Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Create blogs, as many as you can manage, as niched and as specialized and as client-focused as you can make them.

Trust your people to publish great content and give them the best and most advanced editing, publishing and circulation functionality to multiply the impact of that content a hundredfold. Then watch the marketing and business development payoffs begin to pile up.

Accordingly, smaller firms need to work harder not just to differentiate themselves on a basis unrelated to size, but also to firmly establish that “fewer lawyers” does not correspond with “lower quality.” Differentiation usually comes in three categories:

Focus: Large full-service firms are vulnerable to the suggestion that trying to do everything means they don’t do any one thing extremely well. Small firms focused on a particular narrow practice area can claim “boutique expertise” and “niche specialization” to boost their attractiveness.

Service: Small businesses have always emphasized their “personal touch,” and no market could use that touch more than law. Extraordinary standards of client response, communication, accessibility and service can set smaller law firms apart from the giants, which rarely prioritize these things.

Price: Proceed with caution, because “lower price = lower quality” is a powerful presumption in this market; in addition, you don’t want to price yourself below profitability. But lower overhead and more efficient procedures can raise legitimate price advantages and should be promoted as such.

Online marketing is an excellent way for smaller firms to express these differentiators, because it scales so easily and affordably. You can’t afford full-page ads in a national magazine or billboards at the airport and you shouldn’t try — leave mass marketing to the mass firms. A small law firm can punch far above its weight class through a superb website, a powerhouse blog, tremendous content distribution, and a hard-earned reputation for great results on a small budget. Here are some suggestions for each of the foregoing categories.

1. Focus. This is where the strongest ties can be created between a firm’s strategic positioning and its online marketing. Here are a few thoughts:

• Generate lots of superb content on your focused practice area.
• Promote your specialties throughout your website, principally on your practice area page, your lawyer biographies, and your home page.
• Choose the few things (if not the one thing) you want to be known for and push it hard.
• Publish at least one blog on your narrow practice area and update it at least once week.
• If there are profitable sub-niches, isolate each topic in a separate sub-category.
• Use Twitter, JD Supra, and LinkedIn as distribution channels for your content.
• Identify industry or other community media outlets in this area and strike up relationships with their editors.

Make it clear to the world that you own this practice area in this market, that no other firm knows as much or can turn out as much insightful and relevant insight as your firm. Resist the temptation to generalize as a fallback position; have confidence in your ability to serve your chosen niches and make it what you’re known for.

2. Service. Many small firms, however, find themselves obliged by circumstance to generalize their practice and/or their market; but that doesn’t mean they can’t still stand out. Extraordinary client service is within the reach of every law firm of every size and type.

• Choose a client service standard at which you can be (and want to be) exceptional and make it a core element of your practice, e.g.,

1. Return every call the same day or within 24 hours;
2. Guarantee clients their money back if they’re not fully satisfied with your work;
3. Give clients 24/7 access to a private website for status and billing updates on their files, but send them a written update every month regardless.

• Then make this feature of your business the backbone of your (online) marketing, e.g.:

1. Write a blog about your fixed-fee approach to billing or your relentless focus on customers.
2. Cover your website with testimonials from clients raving about your service standards.
3. Pitch articles to journalists about the personalized legal audits you create for every client or the training you give your lawyers and staff in emotional intelligence.

Find the service-based hook that will set you apart in a tough market and become famous for it.

3. Price. The risks of marketing on price are detailed above. Nevertheless, we’re now in a period of great economic turmoil that could go deeper and longer than many people suspect, so it would be unwise to ignore price as a competitive advantage. This is especially the case for smaller firms, since they disproportionately serve individuals and small businesses hit hardest by the recession, and because price is a factor upon which large firms simply cannot compete, for structural and cultural reasons.

• Document automation, cloud-based practice management software, virtual assistants and project management are just a few of the ways in which internal costs can be reduced so as to allow lower prices without consequent hits to profitability, quality or reputation.
• Market these measures: tell the world about the programs, practices and priorities you use to reduce costs.
• Blogs, newsletters, Twitter accounts, and press releases should relentlessly use terms like “efficient” “automated,” “streamlined,” “user-friendly” and “systematized.”
• Use your content production and publishing arms to ensure that your firm is known not simply for being affordable, but for being smartly affordable.
• The key to marketing on price is to articulate the cause of the price advantage — you cannot let clients perceive that you cost less because you’re not as good. You cost less because you run a tighter ship.

In terms of marketing, survival and success for small firms in the decade to come rests on one thing: being remarkable. It almost doesn’t matter what you’re remarkable for — what you do, who you do it for, how you deliver it, how you price it, how you relate to your clients, whatever. What matters is that you stand out, that there’s something arresting and noteworthy about you and your firm. Know what sets you apart — and then take steps to ensure the rest of the world finds out.

Likewise, whether you use social media, and which types you employ if you do, is less important than the quality of the content you’re delivering through them. For me, this is the Achilles’ heel of most law firm social media efforts: content is the central feature of social media, and lawyers, as a general rule, aren’t very good at content.

Obviously I don’t mean that lawyers provide poor or mistaken information about the law, which is rarely the case. But “content,” as we use the term in this context, is more than “just the facts,” the bare, need-to-know essentials. The thing about content is that it needs to be read by people. And people read content for more than just the facts.

Take a moment and reflect: why do you read content, personally? What makes you pick up and continue reading a story in a newspaper or magazine or book? Chances are, it’s because the content is:

• accurate
• relevant
• reliable
• concise
• well-written
• engaging
• enjoyable
• funny
• memorable

As you go down that list, the chances that a piece of lawyer-written content will satisfy one of those criteria steadily diminishes. There are two reasons for this. One is that lawyers tend to be painstakingly utilitarian writers — probably because we also tend to be painstakingly utilitarian people.

The other, more important reason is that many lawyers don’t really believe content has much worth beyond its factual value. Lawyers don’t try to write enjoyably or memorably because they don’t see how it matters. Who cares if it’s engaging or not? I’m not paid to be engaging. I’m paid to be right.

Good content has narrative, a story to tell — but lawyers tend to distrust narrative. To lawyers, narrative feels unprofessional, because it’s not stiff and formal and proper enough. Narrative is risky, because it allows for the possibility of interpretation, and lawyers want only one type of interpretation, their own. Most of all, narrative is wasteful: it consumes otherwise billable time in an effort to connect with a reader whose reading experience is not really a priority.

I’m a big supporter of blogging for lawyers, but I’m not a big supporter of a lot of content I see on lawyers’ blogs. I see case summaries that are 90% recitation of the facts and law and 10% general advice to the reader. I see 1,000-word expositions on the evolution of a legal concept that’s irrelevant to a client’s daily life. I see detached and passive writing that goes out of its way to avoid a personal touch. And I still see uncomfortably self-serving copy that seems to have gotten lost on its way to an advertorial. Double all this for content that gets amplified through Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth.

You can see this general disrespect for content in the way law firms budget for content: they don’t. As a rule, I find law firms interesting in direct proportion to the number of non-lawyer professionals they rely upon. Even smaller and midsize firms have a sort of “chief of staff” position; as the firms get bigger, you’ll see technology people and eventually marketing people too. But content professionals? Very few and far between. “Our lawyers can create content,” partners say. And indeed lawyers can. They can type their own correspondence too, but few of them do.

Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog suggests that one way for law firms to get serious about content is to hire independent journalists — real, actual journalists, not just copywriters — to build up a respected and authoritative body of professionally produced content to enhance the firm’s reputation in its chosen fields. As both a lawyer by training and a former journalist by trade, I love this idea, and I wish that some firms would try it.

But I suspect that very few will. Journalists and lawyers are pretty much Mars and Venus in terms of compatible outlooks. Journalists, for instance, are trained to be fair and to look at both sides of a story; lawyers advocating for their clients’ interests (or their own) have no time for that sort of thing. A journalist at an average law firm would last as long as it takes the journalist to make a complimentary reference about a leading lawyer who happens to be the hated rival of the firm’s top rainmaker.

Law firms that want to successfully connect with their audiences have to get serious about content. They have to respect content as something that needs to be readable, trustworthy, and at least halfway fair for it to be of real value to the reader. There are ways in which they can do this:

Budget for content. I’ve written before about how ghostblogging is a short road to a bad ending, but not all law firm content needs to be lawyer-authored. Non-lawyers can and should produce content under a law firm banner, so long as they’re duly recognized as content professionals supporting the work of the lawyers.

Recruit lawyers for content. Law firms maintain “research lawyers” whose job is partly to practise law but primarily to provide compelling legal research. There’s no reason firms can’t similarly identify lawyers whose strengths lie with the written word more than with making rain. Lawyers who write well are rare, but demand for this asset is rarer still.

Stand up for content. The more distinctive and engaging the content, the more risk attends its circulation. Inevitably, sooner rather than later, a firm that concentrates on an innovative, differentiated approach to content will stumble and make a mistake, maybe a big one. The firm needs to be unstinting in support of the content provider, lawyer or otherwise, or it will revert to its bad old habits.

Remember the reader of content. Any serious law firm effort to leverage content has to start with understanding who the firm’s audience is and what they care about. Smart law firms will quickly figure out that their audience is diverse and its preferences even more so; but if massive international media companies can gauge all their specific mini-audiences, I’m pretty sure a law firm can do the same. And here’s a hint in advance: your clients want to read well-written, enjoyable copy.

Invest wisely in good content, and it will reward your firm in a host of ways. High-quality, engaging, memorable law firm content is a very scarce resource right now; see what you can do about cornering this market at your firm.

The principle is that the only reliable way for a law firm to build a lasting positive presence on the web is through the steady and timely production of relevant content: no amount of SEO gamesmanship will outperform good content that builds links with other websites. The theory is that law firms are filled with expert content producers who collectively can generate a tremendous amount of knowledge to fill the growing number of available vehicles (web pages, newsletters, blogs, Twitter, and so forth). The reality is that this is often more difficult to achieve than it sounds.

I’ve spoken with a few law firms recently about ways in which Stem can help them promote their presence online, and on each occasion, I’ve brought up the critical importance of content. What I’ve often heard back is that lawyers are surprisingly (to me, anyway) reluctant to commit to content contribution. It might be that such efforts are unbillable and therefore unattractive to busy lawyers under pressure to produce revenue. It might be that the firm has failed to sufficiently motivate and prioritize lawyer content production. Or it might simply be that lawyers want to practise law and leave the content to non-lawyer staff.

But whatever the reason, this reluctance constitutes a major roadblock to firms’ chances of using the web to successfully promote themselves. I’ve read a lot lately about how law firms are poised to essentially become legal publishers, and it’s certainly true that the potential is there. But it seems to be the rare firm whose lawyers are both willing to regularly produce content and are able to ensure that content is readable, compelling and engaging. This is more than a minor annoyance; this is a fundamental challenge to the execution of a marketing strategy.

It’s not hopeless, however. If this sounds like your firm, there are ways out of this bind. Here are a few measures you might consider.

1. Help lawyers prioritize content production. No outside consultant is going to successfully motivate your lawyers that producing content is a good thing; politically and culturally, this message can only be delivered by colleagues. How should the message be packaged?

• Evangelize the benefits of content for increased prestige and prominence — if some lawyers aren’t yet sold on content’s virtues, show them how their competitors get attention and influence from content and encourage them to become “thought leaders” in their areas.
• Ensure that senior or influential lawyers lead by example — you need champions (a managing partner, a practice group leader, a rising rainmaker) who consistently produce articles for a newsletter or posts for a blog to set the tone (and create expectations) for others.
• Create financial and career advancement incentives for content production — if your firm doesn’t recognize non-billable contributions to marketing efforts, change that now. Offer weekend getaway packages for the most prolific authors. Make it cool to produce content.
• Remove the hassle and complications of content production –  create editorial schedules that call for a lawyer to write every second Wednesday, or what have you. Assign “beats” or specific topics to lawyers. Make it easy and quick for lawyers to produce content.

2. Bring in professional content assistance. Even lawyers who’ve drunk the kool-aid and are ready to write will need help organizing their thoughts and creating client-focused content. And virtually every lawyer, enthusiastic contributor or not, will need editing help to turn typical lawyer prose into something that clients would willingly read. On this point, I echo the advice of Dion Algeri at The Great Jakes Blog: hire a director of content,

a full-time employee who can help attorneys take dry legal thinking and turn it into compelling, readable stories that will attract a loyal following.  Perhaps this person has a background as the editor of a magazine or trade publication. … [S]ocial media tools and tactics are relatively easy to learn.  In my opinion, the tough part is creating the kind of content that will rise above the clutter and help build the reputations of your attorneys.

At the very least, you should engage professional editors who can chart the content mandate, help guide lawyers’ contributions, edit the content (or in some cases, interview the lawyers and write it themselves), and package it in a readable fashion. Just make sure, however, that the lawyers are the source of the content: don’t let them delegate the choice of topics or the expression of opinions to staff. That leads us to a third, related point:

3. Approach social media with caution. From time to time, I’ve been asked (indirectly and otherwise) if in addition to advising law firms on blogging strategies and recommending an editorial direction, I would also be prepared to write the blog entries themselves. My response is always the same: I’m happy to review a draft post or brainstorm ideas, but the whole point of a blog post is that it’s personal and authentic. What is published under your name and your photo must come from you. Avoid “ghostblogging” in the law unless sincerity and trustworthiness aren’t important reputational assets to you.

This position rapidly bumps up against the problem of lawyer reluctance to produce content. Is it better to have a law firm’s blog posts composed by a professional writer under the lawyer’s name, or to have no blog at all? I’m a huge believer in law firm blogs, but not at the cost of the blog’s claim to authenticity. If your firm really can’t persuade lawyers to contribute their own content without having it basically written for them, then blogs are probably not for you.

E-newsletters, sure: articles don’t even need bylines, and they can be professionally written with a lawyer’s input. Twitter feeds under the firm’s logo (but not under a lawyer’s name and photo) can and probably should be manned by professional communications staff; ditto a Facebook page. But blogs are a different animal. Bring in all the help you need to make a law firm or practice group blog timely, engaging and must-read. But the author and the voice of the blog must be the lawyer or lawyers behind it, or else all the relationship-, reputation-, and profile-enhancing aspects of blogging will be wasted, or worse.

Make no mistake: your law firm needs lawyer-generated content if it hopes to compete for attention and respect on the Web. So if your lawyers don’t think content matters, if they don’t have the right incentives to produce it, or if they think it’s something they can delegate to a staff person and forget about, you need to correct those misperceptions, and fast.

Nonetheless, there’s been a lot of discussion recently about law firms’ burgeoning roles as publishers of content, and what that might mean in this extraordinarily unsettled time for both law and publishing. Three articles in particular caught my attention:

• 2011: The Year That Law Firm Websites Become Publishing Platforms, by Robert Algeri, sets the scene: “[T]he content on the firm’s website is often scattered throughout sections like ‘Multimedia,’ ‘Experience’ and ‘Publications.’ Very few prospective clients can be expected to bounce around the website looking for relevant content in all those different sections. The solution: a publishing platform … a website that is designed to showcase a firm’s content in a way that maximizes its ability to help generate business.”
• Legal content on iPads and tablets: what’s the business model for publishers and law firms? by Kevin O’Keefe: “You [law firms] are in the media business, in that you share your intellectual capital via blogs. You’ve led with content for client development for years, and that will become increasingly important with the iPad and tablets. If you think you’ve seen wide distribution of your content via the Web and blogs, you haven’t seen anything close to what iPad, tablet, and other mobile devices are going to enable you to do as far as content delivery and distribution.”
• Transformation, by American Lawyer Media CEO Bill Pollak (hat tip to Jason Wilson): “The new constraint will be content. We’re going to need to create, curate, license and otherwise gain access to the content we’ll need for our rapidly growing family of websites and data products. Some of that content may be ‘news’ in the traditional sense, but I suspect only a small part. More will be substantive, must-have information that our audience values, either on its own or when integrated with other content that makes it more valuable. “

Each of these articles raises interesting and valid points, especially with regard to the impact of the mobile web on publishing of all kinds. Law firms, though, are still coming to terms with publishing on the immobile web. Firms have lots of content lying around, but it often seems they’re not quite sure why they have it or what they should do with it. So I’d like to consider the nature and purpose of law firm content — what is its practical purpose and point? What does it really mean for a law firm to consider itself a “publisher”?

Almost all law firms answer those questions by treating content as marketing material, as a way to show off their knowledge and expertise in hopes of attracting and impressing clients. That would work really well if no other law firm anywhere was producing content of similar quantity or quality. But since every law firm in the universe does, this content comes across to clients in much the same way as firm-branded highlighters come across to trade show delegates: easily obtained, rarely used, easily discarded. Most law firm content is basically a commodity.

The reason for this is simple: law firms don’t take the publishing of content seriously. Most firms collect whatever content lawyers feel like producing — the side effects of their own learning, the output of their own interests, the 30-page CLE paper that was actually written by a first-year associate — and offer them to the market; the market responds much as you might expect. Ask your clients how much of your content they’ve read in the past six months and how much they’ve acted on; the answer, in most cases, is not a whole lot. Most lawyers really produce content for themselves, not for their readers, and that’s why their readers (clients) mostly don’t care.

Publishers take publishing seriously because it’s their livelihood, focusing completely on readers’ needs and interests, which is why they’re much better at this than law firms are. But law firms can take publishing seriously, too. In fact, I think they should: in an era when legal publishers are getting into the business of providing legal services, law firms ought to think seriously about returning the favour. I don’t mean that law firms should try to make publishing a profit center — publishers are having a hard enough time of that themselves. I mean that law firms can use content to drive real results in marketing, prestige and business development — if they are extraordinarily focused about content, and if they become ruthless about the process of acquiring and publishing it.

Chief among the new rules of publishing is this: you can’t compete on volume, because the web will defeat you. No news publisher can beat Google, no bookstore can compete with Amazon, no record company can rival iTunes, when it comes to volume and size of selection; but all these companies are themselves up against the worldwide Web, great seas vying (probably in vain, long-term) with a vast ocean. Even the biggest law firm in the world will be only a pond by comparison. So law firms that take publishing seriously need to go in the opposite direction: ever more focused, ever more niched. They need to decide what specific area they want to occupy, and then they need to own it.

In his book The Dip, Seth Godin talks about the importance of being the best in the world at what you do — “the best,” not “the best you can do,” and “the world,” meaning “the specific universe within which your buyers operate.” If you’re going take publishing seriously, then you need to be the best in the world at what you publish. If you’re going to publish about wrongful dismissal in New York State, then your publication should strive to be the comprehensive, unquestioned, nobody-else-is-close authority on the subject. People should say, of your publication, “That’s the Wall Street Journal of wrongful dismissal in New York State.” Powerful, reliable, influential, indispensable — these are the modifiers your content should be pursuing, because they’re also the modifiers your firm should be pursuing, no?

How do you get to be the best? By being uncompromising about the creation and distribution of content. That means doing a lot of things that make law firms uncomfortable:

• identifying a niche strategically critical to your firm’s objectives and going after it, guns blazing;
• turning down proffered lawyer content because it’s not what you need or it’s not good enough;
• requisitioning specific content from lawyers, and having the power to enforce those requisitions;
• hiring professional writers and editors to create new content or greatly enhance existing content;
• pouring money into design, so that you rival what professional publishers produce in look, feel and accessibility;
• consulting professionals who understand both publishing and the law to provide strategic guidance; and
• making the (expensive) effort to deliver your finished product in a customized, mobile, timely manner to the clearly identified audience(s) of your choice.

Law firms that take publishing seriously adopt a strategic approach to it. They recognize that standalone content, produced more or less randomly and left to its own devices, serves little purpose. They also know that law firm content can’t be too useful, or else it becomes law firm advice and therefore a dangerous proposition. So they figure out what business development ends content can support, which specific firm or practice group goals it advances, and then they go get it. Specifically:

• They create websites built around clients, not lawyers — a key difference most law firms ignore.
• They blog about their specialty areas until they’re among the very few recognized authorities on the subject.
• They use Twitter streams to establish themselves as invaluable suppliers of target industry know-how.
• They build FAQ collections on their practice subjects so that web users seeking answers to their questions inevitably find them.
• They pay close attention to design and to distribution, which matter far more than lawyers think.
• They invest serious resources (money, time, personnel) equal to their serious ambitions.
• They ensure support for their work at the highest levels and participation from the ground up.
• They always, always, always ask: what does the client need and want? They find out, and they deliver it.

In short, they act like publishers — as well they should, because to play in this league requires measuring yourself against the leaders and taking them on. Commit to publishing as a key element of your marketing, brand-building and professional development strategy, and you’ll get results commensurate with high expectations.

For law firms, content is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Understand your end and commit the means: that’s how law firms can be publishers.

• Ontario (100)
• British Columbia (53)
• National (22)
• Quebec (18)
• Alberta (17)
• Nova Scotia (9)
• Manitoba (7)
• Newfoundland & Labrador (2)
• Prince Edward Island (1)
• Saskatchewan (1)

Of the 240 blogs we list, 63 percent now originate from either Ontario or British Columbia.  Lopsided? Yes, but not surprising. Especially if we consider that up until about three years ago, that percentage was probably well above 80%. The spike of new blogs from the Maritime and Prairie provinces is also a growing trend. Prior to 2009, we couldn’t have counted more than a handful of blogs from either region.

If we exclude BC, Ontario and the National firms and look at the second tier, Alberta’s growth seems to have (finally) slowed.  Alberta’s been though a big growth period over the past few years, but that role now seems to have been passed to Quebec.  If we also consider that our list likely under-represents French language law blogs, Quebec now seems pretty solid in the number three spot.

I don’t have the current growth numbers, but anecdotally can say that the number of law blog submissions we receive continues to rise.  In fact, 2010 may be the biggest growth year we’ve had since starting the list back in 2005.  Social media may be “all the craze” these days, but if the rate of new blog launches is any indication, legal blogs are mirroring a similar growth period.

Finally, I’d like to say that I really hope these numbers continue. The alternative could be consuming our legal web-commentary in 140-character sound bites.  And as much as I like Twitter, a social web without blogs would be a huge step backward.

To date, LinkedIn has only offered a handful of sidebar applications that users can install.  They’ve been very picky, and only a few are aligned with vertical industries. Even then, it’s obvious that industry apps must have a broader application and be applicable to the general business community.  Late last night, the rollout began for Legal Updates on LinkedIn and it’s a huge win for my friends at JD Supra.

I’ve written about JD Supra before, so I won’t spell out their core offering for law firms.  They are, however, a company that’s been built around constructing web-based channels for content delivery.  With 70 million business members, the embedding of JD Supra functionality into LinkedIn – not sure how else to describe it, it’s quite seamless -  has to be their biggest win yet.  Looking at past partnering, and the LinkedIn effect for companies like Slideshare and Tripit, the future must seem limitless in San Francisco this morning!

I’m going to offer a bullet point summary below, but I’d like to point out Bob Ambrogi’s post this morning. It’s a thorough review, complete with screen shots.

Here’s my ‘reader’s digest’ summary, including some notes from the preview Jordan Furlong and I had on Monday:

• JD Supra and LinkedIn accounts are tethered – you can upload and distribute from either location.
• Without any promotion last night, signups were rolling in fast. This is going to be big.
• You can display your JD Supra collection on your LinkedIn profile for free.
• It’s also free to follow the content of others, and sharing your documents within your network’s homepage update stream.
• Distributing documents towards targeted professional groups across LinkedIn costs: $75/mo.  Account upgrades are possible in LinkedIn or on JD Supra.
• Current premium accounts at JD Supra will be grandfathered, and distribution included at current pricing.
• The Legal Updates application smartly uses the meta-data from both websites – so content is automatically matched to users by industry or profession.
• LinkedIn looks like it might target more vertical industries in future.
• It’s an exclusive arrangement. So this will be the only searchable, browsable repository of legal information on LI.
• With 70M LI users available, JD Supra is likely the largest legal content distribution network.

Gracey’s post offers some solid advice for good FAQs, including:

• don’t patronize/talk down to the visitor.
• Don’t include FAQs just for the sake of including FAQs.
• Keep them short & sweet.
• And most importantly, use real FAQs: questions people actually ask.

The post also quotes Jakob Neilson, who says “Too many websites have FAQs that list questions the company wished users would ask.”  Gracey concludes that ideally, if there are in fact legitimate questions that your users frequently asked, you shouldn’t just default to dumping them into an FAQ:

“FAQs are ubiquitous and familiar and occasionally helpful. They have a place in your content strategy, but use them carefully: if your users are asking the same questions frequently, consider how you can improve your content before reaching for a FAQ.”

At Stem, we’ve helped several clients develop custom FAQ collections [see: Ron Chapman's Florida Criminal Records FAQ, or Jonathan Rosenfeld's Bed Sore FAQ], and we agree with the majority of Gracey’s advice.  It’s important not to view FAQ collections as thinly-veiled sales pitches;  but rather an opportunity for lawyers to establish themselves and their knowledge in a professional manner.

Gracey’s advice is also somewhat distinguishable: the FAQs he refers to are likely from companies selling products and services.  The legal industry also sells service, but it’s the intangible product, expertise, that the user is really after.  The fact that most complex questions can’t be fully articulated in an FAQ item, or a blog post for that matter, helps make it a formidable style of content marketing.  And like other forms of content, there is a challenge: you must deliver enough quality information within the FAQ items to draw follow-up email questions and inbound links. Failing to do so, by the same measure, won’t have the marketing impact that most desire.

Some of the tasks and suggestions we’ve ‘tested’ when developing legal FAQ collections have included:

• Asking lawyers to put themselves in the potential client’s shoes.  What issues keep them up at night? What key industry changes are on the horizon?
• To that end, we’ve often assembled question collections (answers redacted) from other FAQs on the same subject (including non-legal collections, which often prove very valuable) and presented those questions as a starting point.
• Asking lawyers what questions they find themselves answering again and again?
• And related, encouraging them to keep a running list for future updates to the collection.
• Encouraging lawyers to give away their knowledge on topics they could never justify billing for.  Even the most basic questions (coming from the right client) can require a time investment. Similar to forwarding an ‘introductory article’ on a topic, an on-point legal FAQ can describe an issue in short order.  The fact it serves as online marketing collateral means your content is multitasking.
• Finding non-lawyer experts to help formulate potential questions. These individuals are often available either in-house (especially with boutique firms), or by tapping into the lawyer’s industry-oriented business relationships.
• Execute keyword and other web-based research to find out what topics are being searched for by the target audience. We tend to run keyword volume reports for any online publishing initiative.

We also encourage lawyers to stay away from the types of questions Gracey and Neilson dislike: questions lawyers wish their clients would ask. These include strictly self-serving questions like “Why should I hire you as my lawyer?” and “What can your firm offer me that others can’t?”

Of course, we can’t forget the money question: Where’s the value? Going beyond FAQs as an opportunity to show off lawyer expertise,  FAQ collections are a solid tactic to publish in a meaningful way.  When a collection stands alone, it can become a valuable addition to the lawyer’s group of web properties.  It also helps the lawyer become better aligned with the subject matter they most want to become associated with.  Especially for lawyers with a niche or boutique practice, content depth online can’t be underestimated. From an SEO point of view, this depth not only addresses the long-tail type searches, but over time, will help create the authority and trust qualities that are so important for competitive search terms.

Finally, I’d like to address the strong relationship legal FAQ collections can have with law blogs.  Consider the interplay, and how FAQs can:

• serve as a starting point for a blog discussion, without re-hashing factual details,
• act as a ‘best of’ collection for a blogger’s most important posts or an important sub-topic collection, or
• help remove non-opinion based posts from a lawyer’s blog.

FAQ collections do require maintenance, and ideally, authors are adding new Q&A sets as part of their publishing routine.  For those who just can’t see themselves blogging,  FAQs might also prove a viable alternative.  The overall time commitment is about the same, but FAQs can be less opinion-driven, and don’t have constant issue of post currency.  Those issues aside, I can’t imagine not pairing an FAQ collection together with a lawyer blog – the combined value, IMO, is worth more than the solo publishing efforts.

Many thanks to my colleague Emma Durand-Wood who’s helped me hash through these issues and co-draft this post. We both think  Legal FAQ collections are a publishing tool with room to evolve.  In the future, we’ll explore this topic in more depth, along with tactics for publishing and distribution.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.