Last week, I was speaking to the head of business development of a mid-sized Boston law who I’ve known for a long time.
Her firm is building out a series of niche focused law blogs over the next year. The blogs will be stand alone publications, each with its own title and url, separate and apart from the firm’s website.
She said, as a heads up to me, that there were a number of law firm website developers and legal marketers advising law firms that blogs ought to be put inside of law firm websites.
The first thing I thought of was the ABA’s 2016 Blawg 100. Each year the ABA Journal recognizes the leading law blogs in the industry by the quality of insight and commentary, established authortity and other criteria.
Without knowing, I told the business development professional that I’d bet few, if any, of the ABA’s recognized law blogs were inside a website.
After our call I went and counted. Turns out there are two that could be called inside a website. One by a solo practioner that just blends his website into the blog. And another by a small firm with a section of their website labeled a blog.
The whole idea of putting a blog inside a law firm website is foolish to begin with. Blogs build business, a name for a lawyer and relationships because of the authority the blogs establish. Authority is eroded when you publish inside your leading piece of advertsing and marketing — the firm’s website.
Now the ABA all but comes out out and verifies that blogs do not belong inside a website.
I haven’t yet gone back and counted the “blogs” inside a website for the previous nine years of the ABA top 100 or that have made the ABA’s law blog Hall of Fame.
Perhaps the website developers and marketers advising law firms to put niche publications inside a website could point out the blogs they’ve developed which are in the top 100. Or their own industry blogs which are in the ABA 100 – the ABA Journal has included a number of blogs covering other than the law over the years.
Everytime I blog on this inside-outside question veteran legal bloggers cannot believe the issue is even being discussed. They tell me they thought no one one would even advise putting a blog inside a website any longer and that the issue had long been put to bed. Unfortunately no.
The ABA Blawg 100 though is another nail in the coffin of the inside the website crusaders.