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Does Blogging Generate Business?
Once again, a perennial question has resurfaced in the legal blogosphere: Does blogging generate revenues? Leading off is Mark Hermann, of Drug and Device Law, who writes:
In our little niche, however, we're pretty well known. To the extent
that a blog of this type can generate business, we would have expected
that to have happened during the two years we've been at this. It really has not.
Hermann speculates that one reason blogs don't work as well for large firm lawyers is that his target clients -- large companies and corporate general counsel -- typically don't surf the Internet to find counsel. Thus, to the extent blogs generate business by attracting prospects through search engines, they're not as effective a marketing tool for a large firm lawyer as for those with smaller practices. At the same time, Hermann leaves open the possibility that blogging, when combined with other marketing, could prove an effective business development tool over the long term. In the interim, Hermann advises large firm lawyers who aspire to blog to do it for pleasure or to keep abreast of the law, but not for profit.
On the other side of the argument, Kevin O'Keefe of Lexblog offers several instant success stories from blogging Iowa lawyers. As O'Keefe describes, Rush Nigut, Austin Kennedy and Patrick Burk have attracted calls from prospective clients via their blog (though O'Keefe doesn't provide details on how much business each lawyer generates from his respective blog).
So who wins the argument over whether lawyers should blog for business? Without data, it's tough for me to quantitatively evaluate the return on investment. But anecdotally, I note that Hermann's curmudgeonly attitude toward blogging (which produced an invitation to the curmudgeon's club from Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice) also earned Hermann coverage in the popular WSJ Law Blog. Apparently, when it comes to legal blogging, being a skeptic rather than a cheerleader garners the most publicity.
Posted by Carolyn Elefant on January 13, 2009 at 04:01 PM | Permalink
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