Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing,August 2007,V9.N716

Getting Blogs on Your Side

by John Hellerman

I n the March edition of Strategies, an article entitled“When Blogs Attack – Your Firm,That Is” [p. 4], dis-cussed the downside of blogs and their tendency to

be less conventional sources of news. However, as the arti-cle points out, ignoring blogs won’t make them go away.

In fact, the legal community is actively engaged in theever-expanding blogosphere.With more than 1,000 legalblogs on the Web, firms and attorneys are beginning to rec-ognize the value of blogs as unique marketing and busi-ness development tools. Whether embracing thealready-established blogosphere or creating your ownblog, blogs can be useful components in a firm’s commu-nication plan.

The first step is identifying the most influential andrespected blogs in your desired market.The best way to dothis is by using specialty search engines such as Technorati(www.technorati.com) and Google (http://blogsearch.google.com). By using key words to search, you willundoubtedly find hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs.However, it is important to spend an appropriate amountof time visiting these blogs and weeding out those that youdeem less credible. Asking the right questions as youreview a blog makes it fairly easy to tell a legitimate onefrom a waste of time. For instance, does it have a high Tech-norati ranking? Do lots of other blogs link to it? Is it car-rying legitimate advertising? Is it updated regularly? Is itinteractive and, if so, are there a lot of comments posted?Are the comments thoughtful or wacky? Did it or itseditors receive any media attention?

Another terrific way to identify legitimate and relevantblogs for a campaign is to identify one and then review its“Blogroll” (typically a list found on the side of the pageof similar subject-matter blogs that are favorites of the cur-rent blog’s editor). It’s a safe bet to assume that if you likethe style and content of a particular blog, you will alsoappreciate the blogs that particular author depends onfor news. Put another way, someone invested enough toblog regularly about, for instance, the marketing of off-labelgeneric pharmaceuticals will likely be a good referralsource to evaluate similar blogs.

Maintaining BuzzWhile bloggers aim to break news and get the insidescoop in order to demonstrate their blogs are current andactive, they’re often very happy to circulate (and commenton) already reported news.

In recent years, Cornerstone Research, a consulting andexpert witness firm, has relied heavily on this tendency ofthe blogosphere to maintain buzz about a bi-annual “Secu-rities Class Action Survey” it publishes in conjunctionwith Stanford Law School. The survey provides detailedinformation relating to the prosecution, defense and set-tlement of federal class-action securities fraud litigation andis released twice a year in January and July.While regularnews and trade publications such as “The Wall StreetJournal,” “New York Times” and Bloomberg devote asubstantial amount of coverage to the report, the surveyreally gets its “legs” on blogs. Blogs create multiple linksback to the data on both Stanford and Cornerstone’s Websites and rip it apart with their own analysis and commen-tary, thus creating multiple interactive discussions about theresearch findings.

To facilitate this sort of mutually beneficial interaction, itis important to give bloggers the information they needin the proper format. Offering sources to interview israrely helpful–bloggers want to provide their own com-mentary. However, because they rely so heavily on hyper-linking, providing bloggers with primary materials (Websites, memos, etc.) will almost always lead to coverage.

Every blog–from the most trafficked to the mostobscure–looks for ways to “fill the news hole.” It’s how theykeep their readers coming back. Knowing this provedadvantageous for consulting and expert witness firmAnalysis Group, which recently released a highly techni-cal report on generic pharmaceutical drugs.

The story was much too complex for a national generalmedia campaign, and there was concern that even tradejournals would consider the report too narrowly focusedfor their broad audience of pharmaceutical executives.Rather than let the story go untold,Analysis Group lever-aged the blogosphere to achieve significant results.The firmwas able to identify a handful of pharmaceutical blogsgeared specifically to the esoteric focus of its report andit shared their findings with them, including making a copyof the report available for downloading off its Web site.Asa result, the report received feature coverage on morethan a half-dozen of the most respected blogs in the sec-tor and, given the demonstrable grass-roots interest fromthe community, was eventually picked up by “The PinkSheet,” a major industry trade for the prescription phar-maceutical industry, and one of Analysis Group’s prioritymedia targets. Continued on page 22

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Join the PartyA more ambitious way to get blogs on your side is to jointhe party and launch your own. Developing a well-respect-ed, often-visited blog is not easy, but if done properly it willposition your firm as a respected voice in any given indus-try. For a blog to become popular, though, it must distin-guish itself from the diluted market through creativity,consistency and a strategic media plan.

A well regarded example is “That’s What She Said”(www.hrheroblogs.com), a blog produced by Ford & Har-rison LLP, a national labor and employment law firm,which uses NBC’s hit comedy “The Office” as a backdropto communicate with current and prospective clientsabout the difficult and complex legal issues facing employ-ers in today’s workplace.

As most know, the show takes place at a branch office offictional paper company Dunder Mifflin, an office settingthat could easily represent any in America. The showfocuses on the politically incorrect behavior of the officemanager Michael Scott and his employees, all of whom areinvolved in storylines that reflect everyday HR issues(e.g., inter-office relationships, inappropriate comments,personnel conflicts, etc.). As far as Ford & Harrison wasconcerned, the show was a weekly visual demonstration ofwhat not to do for HR managers and executives.

In order to keep reader’s engaged, Ford & Harrison usesa consistent format and creative hook: Julie Elgar, theattorney responsible for the blog, assigns a litigation valueto each episode.The number is a dollar estimate of howmuch the outlandish behavior of Dunder Mifflin employ-ees would cost real-life companies to defend in employ-ment lawsuits.The litigation value appraisal is consistentthroughout Elgar’s posts and attracts people to come back

each Friday to see how much financial damage Michelcaused on the previous night’s show.

The blogging community is close-knit and relies heavily onnetworking and cross-promotion. Other blogs, therefore,were among the first to recognize and embrace That’sWhat She Said. As buzz in the blog community grew, itpiqued the attention of the national and trade media, lead-ing to placements in various national publications andnow, regular calls from reporters seeking Ford & Harrison’scomments on a variety of labor and employment issues.

Another, albeit very different, example of a successful lawfirm blog is Sutherland Asbill & Brennan’s Liquefied Nat-ural Gas blog (www.lnglawblog.com). In an effort tocement its reputation as a leading LNG practice, the firmdeveloped a blog that has become the go-to source onLNG news. The blog links to industry news from toptrade publications and news services. Because it was oneof the first (if not the first) blogs to focus solely on theLNG market, journalists and editors from industry-lead-ing trade publications are regular visitors and often callupon Sutherland attorneys for interviews and guest pub-lishing opportunities.

Because they present unique communications tools forattorneys and firms, blogs will undoubtedly continue togrow in number and popularity. Legal marketers need toembrace the blogosphere by urging attorneys to blogthemselves and by including blogs in the media plan.While some may argue that the majority of individualblogs fail to generate a great deal of traffic and are there-fore irrelevant, it is safe to assume that the interestedreaders of a blog can be some of the most influentialpeople in a particular sector and should, therefore, neverbe ignored. ■

— Maggie Schmerin contributed to this article.

John Hellerman is a partner at Hellerman Baretz Communica-tions (www.hellermanbaretz.com), which designs and executesstrategic communications campaigns that support the businessgrowth objectives. Maggie Schmerin is an account executive atHellerman Baretz.

our expense and program payment tracking systems.Themuch-clearer picture of the Chapter’s fiscal position hasenabled us to focus on the reinvestment of funds into edu-cational content for the membership.

Raising the BarWe have been talking to other Chapters and legal market-ing colleagues about working with local bar associations.

We hope to determine possible opportunities for theChapter to write a regular marketing column in one of ourregional bar publications.

The underlying theme among the LMA Seattle ChapterBoard has been to provide and demonstrate value for ourmembership, and we are proud of the great strides we haveundertaken to do that.Thanks for all the hard work of ourterrific board members and the ongoing support of ourloyal sponsors! ■

Jason Miller is president of the LMA Seattle Chapter and direc-tor of marketing and business development at Ryan, Swanson &Cleveland, PLLC. He can be reached at miller@ryanlaw.com

Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing,August 2007,V9.N722

Chapter NewsContinued from page 18

Getting Blogs on Your SideContinued from page 16

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