Commentary: The case for blogging with WordPress

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Got a few seconds? How about starting a blog?

WordPress.com promises you can start a blog in "seconds," so I timed creating mine. In fact it did take about 30 seconds, not including the time it took to read the Terms of Service. And I'm a slow typist.

Just because you can get started quickly, doesn't mean you should take up blogging (although it helps). Rather, the reason to blog as a legal-marketing tool is because it works.

Clearly, blogs are on the increase. LexBlog Inc.'s CEO, former La Crosse attorney Kevin O'Keefe, recently reported on his blog (of course) that of the Am Law 200 firms, 96, or 48 percent, had blogs, including Wisconsin's two largest firms. Seven months earlier, he'd taken a similar look at the Am Law 200, and found a 20 percent increase in blogs in that short timeframe.

Madison lawyer Nathan J. Dosch can make the case, regarding his Wisconsin Estate Planning and Tax Law Blog: "It gets a lot of traffic. It's generated a number of e-mails, contacts and clients over the two or three years that I've had it."

Dosch adds that it does very well from the search-engine optimization standpoint. During our conversation, he Googled "Wisconsin estate tax." The first two non-sponsored results were the websites of Wisconsin Department of Revenue and the Legislature; No. 3 was his blog.

Even better, he says he didn't have to blog daily or even weekly to get there. He shoots for bi-weekly. Bolstered by its success, Dosch recently created the Digital Estate Planning blog as well.

Popular Blogging Platforms

O'Keefe happily reported in the previously-mentioned post that LexBlog is the Am Law 200's overwhelming blogging platform of choice, with 64 percent.

Interestingly for my purposes, of the runners-up, WordPress was number two, with 19 percent. What makes WordPress so intriguing to me is, it's free, while LexBlog, with a number of premium services, including technical and editorial support, custom designs and strategic and SEO consultations, is not.

There are countless other free platforms available, such as TypePad, Blogger and Windows Live.

But if you Google "Wisconsin attorney blog," you'll see from the first few pages of results that of our state's legal bloggers, WordPress is the preferred platform of the freebies. It's open-source, which appeals to some. And for some, this is all you need to know: Both Ross Kodner and Nerino Petro use WordPress for their blogs.

An important distinction needs to be made from the get-go. Kodner and Petro use WordPress.org which is designed for techier types. There's also WordPress.com, which caters to, well, people like me. Both are fine options – and did I mention they're free?

WordPress explains the differences between the two on its website. To see what a few of your brother and sister practitioners say, read on.

WordPress.org

Milwaukee lawyer Sean M. Sweeney opted for WordPress.org because it offers more control over the look and feel of his blog – it's a download that's completely customizable. WordPress.org requires Web hosting, which is cheap (as low as $6/per month). Sweeney's OK with that expense.

His blog's Web address is http://www.milwaukee-business-lawyer.com/. Because he's using WordPress.org, that address doesn't read "Milwaukee-business-lawyer.wordpress.com," as the WordPress.com version likely would. It's not a huge consideration, but it does matter to some people, Sweeney included.

Sweeney says over the three years he's been blogging with WordPress.org, it's become even easier to change the format.

"You do have to be able to edit code. It sounds daunting, but it really isn't. But if you're still nervous about it, get help from someone who's tech-savvy to help you get set up," he said.

He went with WordPress.org as well when he created the Wisconsin Lawyers Blog, written by several authors. Even the most tech-challenged of the group – we're not naming names — have reported no problems using WordPress.org.

WordPress.com

Superior attorney Johanna R. Kirk says that ease-of-use was a huge factor when she chose WordPress.com to create her Superior Law Offices Journal blog.

She's been blogging for about six months now. An accomplished multi-tasker, she makes it a part of her downtime, typically writing several drafts while watching hockey or some other televised sporting event. She saves the drafts, finalizes and posts them at a later date.

She finds the WordPress.com stats helpful, which tell her how many people are reading the blog, where they're coming from and which posts are the most popular. The stats appear every time she visits her "dashboard" to write a new post or make other changes. (A similar stats plug-in is available for WordPress.org.)

And, it should be noted that if you don't want "WordPress" as part of your blog's Web address, there's a WordPress.com workaround. For $15 per year, you can use your own custom domain name, also known as "domain mapping." If you've already registered a domain name elsewhere, it's $10 per year.

On the topic of upgrades, it costs $30 annually per blog for "No-ads" – something worth considering, although Kirk didn't see the need for it, and whenever I've viewed her blog, I didn't see any ads. Because you're in total control with WordPress.org, ads aren't an issue.

Kirk's law partners love the blog, she says. As for clients, well, they haven't mentioned it – yet. She believes that's in part due to the blog's newness, and the firm's location – people still find lawyers via word-of-mouth and the Yellow Pages, as opposed to the Internet alone, in smaller towns.

But she's in blogging for the long-haul, which is the attitude all bloggers must have, in Kirk's opinion. As seen in a story in the June 7 issue of the Wisconsin Law Journal, some lawyers are abandoning or neglecting their blogs, which isn't a very good way to draw more readers.

Dosch agrees.

"Some law blogs just don't look very good," Dosch said. "Or, they just grow stale over time because no one pays attention to them. The costs associated with those two things are more substantial than any actual financial component. Because someone who stumbles on a lawyer's blog and it looks like an elementary-school kid's blog – although some elementary-school kids could make a pretty nice-looking blog – or it hasn't been updated in six months, that's not very credible. You don't want that out there, on the Internet forever. So be careful about that."

On the Web:

Kevin O'Keefe on the state of the law blogosphere

The differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com

Blogging off: Posting by attorneys infrequent