Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog

So sayeth the Wall Street Journal in the March 1 paper on page B8.  Blogs are no longer the exclusive domain of teenagers talking about the band they heard last night.  "Blogs can connect with consumers on a personal level -- and keep them visiting a company's Web site regularly," says the article by Riva Richmond.

Kevin O'Keefe has an excellent summary of the article on his blog.  Kevin advises, "cut the Journal article out and circulate it around the office. If you read the article and still do not think blogs need be on the front burner of your law firm's marketing plans for this year, you probably didn't think Amazon would be a big deal when the Wall Street Journal told you it would be about 8 years ago."

Here are the key reasons blogs work:

• Build high name recognition
• Outstanding search engine results
• Establish reputation as authority
• Interactive medium
• Connect with people
• More effective than static, brochurelike Web sites.
• Big increases in Web site visitors within months, thanks largely to search engines' enthusiasm for the medium.
• Blogs offer little-known small businesses name recognition, and the chance to boost traffic.

Blogs work for DVD-rental, research, public relations, muscle-car restoration, dating service and dairy businesses.  They'll certainly work for professional firms.  "Blogging is one of a wide range of ways that we can connect with people [and] strengthen what I call our handshake with the consumer," says Stoneyfield Farms CEO Gray Hirschberg in the Journal.