Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
Sam’s manifesto on why your blog sucks is worth the read. I thought I’d take the micro-approach and tackle one comparatively tiny thing: headlines.
What is a headline?
A headline is the title of your post. The best headlines, generally speaking, are short and descriptive. The worst are cute or clever and objectively fail to match the post’s content, like a bait-and-switch. I’ve written good headlines. I’ve written bad ones. Just like anything else, writing a “good” headline depends on your overall level of skill and what you want to accomplish.
But one thing’s for sure: the best headlines provoke an emotionalresponse from the reader. Do new lawyers really get rich and famous by blogging, as the headline of this post says? No, generally not. But I bet you’re curious.
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
People create blogs to attract readers. And in other news, fire is hot.
But how to attract readers? Sure, you can follow Sam’s advice and strive to write well on topics you’re knowledgeable about. I’ve tried that. I’ve combined my experience with my own independent study to provide a lot of sober advice on good lawyering. Almost all those posts were greeted with a yawn, followed, I suspect, by an immediate click over to Buzzfeed.
I’ve also had a handful of posts get rather popular all at once. I’ve been wondering why, so I conducted an entirely unscientific study (okay, I thought about it for a while). You really should follow Sam’s advice—strive for informative, useful content. But when you want to mix it up a little, here are my Top 5 ways to get eyeballs on your posts.
The truth is that a lot of law firm websites and blogs are terrible—either they have bad design, are out of date, or they don’t understand how to write great content for readers.
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
Update: April 30, 2013
Warning: This is a “long, boring, and not even funny” rant about snark. You win some, you lose some. Maybe I’ll follow up at a later date with something else about snark. Probably I won’t. Read at your own peril.
…
Of all the law blogs in this world, there’s only one ingredient found in the best of them—the kind of blawg that elevates lawyers and the legal profession the way we all want it to be elevated—that is, the ingredient of snark. (Did you see what I did there? Italic emphasis on the word “snark” really made it pop.) When it comes to snark, no one does it better than lawyers.
As a young lawyer who considers himself primarily a writer—an occasional lawyer when I’m not writing marketing copy or blogging, to be precise—I eat lots of snark. Sometimes I serve it up myself. But mostly I eat it. Snark, in my opinion (if I may voice my opinion on this matter), is what makes superstars out of blawgs. If you’re thinking of getting into the snark game yourself, use caution. You might be a lawyer, which makes you predisposed, but that doesn’t mean you can pull it off.
Here’s what it takes to inject snark into your blawg.
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
This is the text of the talk I gave this afternoon at the Lawyernomics marketing conference in sunny Las Vegas.
A lot of lawyers have blogs. A lot of those blogs suck.
I suppose I am partly to blame for this. For years, I told every lawyer who would listen that he or she ought to start a blog. I explained that a blog was a great way to get clients in the door, as if that would magically happen if you started posting something on your blog every few days. I neglected to explain how to write a blog that doesn’t suck.
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
I’m getting excited for my trip to Las Vegas on Thursday for Lawyernomics. Mostly I’m excited because it’s 20 degrees in Minneapolis and it’s been snowing for three weeks. From LXBN, here is a sneak peek at what I will be talking about on Friday in my presentation, “Why Your Blog Sucks, and What To Do About It.”
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
I launched my first law blog in 2005 and continue to blog to this day. Along the way I’ve discovered a number of web-based content curation and blogging tools that I’ve found to be invaluable time savers. In this post, I’m going to share my top 5 favorite blogging tools with you.
One commenter in particular (an appellate lawyer, natch) kept stubbornly insisting that it made sense to have his blog on his law firm website because he ranked #1 on Google for his target search terms. (If I had a dollar … )
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers is one of the latest in the ABA’s “trendy topics in one hour for lawyers” series of overpriced books. This is unfortunate, because Ernie Svenson’s practical, quick-start guide to blogging, written with lawyers in mind, is actually quite good, despite its silly name (it takes more like 2 or 3 hours to read) and hefty price tag ($40, unless you get the iBook version I linked to above, which is more reasonably-priced at $20).
Want a great blog on Lawyerist's network of blogs? Get a great one for just $99/month from Lawyerist Sites.
Criminal defense lawyer and blogger Rick Horowitz said something offensive on his blog, which he says, “in retrospect, I even wish I had not said.” This happens all the time. Provocativeness is to blogging as exhaling is to breathing, and the line between provocative and offensive is often quite blurry. Sometimes we all say a little more than we wish we would have.
The difference is that a cop read what Horowitz wrote, got mad, and decided to get even.
