The Write Rainmaker

Writing for the Web

One of the hardest things to get across to lawyers is that writing for the internet is very different from writing a brief, or even a magazine article. [I use lawyers as an example only because they are the folks I've talked to the most about marketing.]

In his excellent article Web vs. Print: 5 Key Writing Differences, author Tim Morral does a great job explaining how different it is to write for an online source. I'm not going to repeat all of his information, but I want to focus on a few points that are crucial.

SEO is a term used a lot in marketing. Search Engine Optimization is important, because you want a search engine to find your words. However, oftentimes content that is clearly written for search engines comes off sounding robotic.

I had a call a couple of years ago from a young lawyer wanting me to write blogs for her boss, a DUI attorney. We had a lengthy discussion and at the end of it I felt like charging her for a therapy session. "I cannot keep writing blogs that work in the phrase 'DUI attorneys' 20 times in 2 paragraphs!" she wailed.  I looked at the blog and it was dreadful. She asked me if I would write blogs and I said sure, and quoted her double my normal price. She never called me back.

I didn't lose any sleep over it.

See the above sentence, "I didn't lose any sleep over it"? That brings me to my next point.

Writing a blog is not like writing for your high school English teacher. You don't have to write perfectly composed paragraphs with a topic sentence and supporting sentences. On the web, a paragraph containing one sentence is OK.

Bullet points are good.

White space on the page is good.

People tend to skim articles on the web, not read them in depth. They pay attention to bullet points and lists. Long, dense paragraphs are not the best for your typical article on the web.

Here is an example of an interesting article, from Reuters: Crisis forces Greeks to skimp on weddings, funerals. Notice all the one sentence paragraphs?

[FYI: Reuters is a respected source of news and information. Years ago when my brother was in the Army, he consulted Reuters for information he then used in briefings for generals. He's a tough critic of news outlets.]

Length is also important. Most people don't read long articles on the web. They want the information short and succinct.

Titles are also critical. I find that the blogs that attract the most hits over on my personal blog The Crab Chronicles are the ones that have titles like The World's Best Pound Cakes. If people want to make a great pound cake, that's the type of phrase they put into Google or Bing.

So your English teacher might hate what you write for the web, but don't worry about it. It's a whole new world out there and great SEO is the best letter grade you can get!

How I Learned About Blogging

I was thinking the other day about how I learned to blog.It has been an evolving process over a period of years.

I adopted my daughter from Russia  in 2004 and all of my friends and family members wanted daily updates on her. I found myself typing long emails every night after she went to bed.

Finally, after talking to my friend Paul who is a computer whiz kid, I thought I will save a ton of time every day if I just write blogs that everyone can read. I started blogging on Typepad in early 2005, and it made life a lot easier. Everyone could keep up with how my daughter was adjusting to life in America, and I could get more [badly needed] sleep.

Then I got intrigued with it a lot more after I made my blog public, when I adopted my son Michael in 2007.  I learned some interesting things.

Like, if I put a photo up of, say, Kazakhstan churches, then someone doing a Google search for images of Kazakhstan churches will find my blog. I put the url on my email signature and that gets folks to read the blog.

There are tons of tricks.

I've watched my blog traffic increase exponentially since then. Now I get 200-400 hits a day, on The Crab Chronicles. I have loyal readers who read it every day. I have folks who read it occasionally. I write whatever blather comes into my head. I am not trying to write for search engines. I write because it's therapeutic and fun. But the search engines find me.

One thing I've learned is that folks like me who blog every day or so get a lot more time on the first page of Google. Doesn't matter if I write 100 words or 1,000 words, the important thing is that I refresh the content ALL THE TIME.

Most business owners don't want to blog. Even if they are good writers, they need to work on their business itself, not marketing.

For my friend James Radford, I write two blogs a week. I usually just do a synopsis of a news article that deals with the type of law he practices [plaintiff's employment law and civil rights law] and link back to the original article. At the end, I remind the reader that if they have a similar issue they can call James for a free consultation. It works.

James' business is going great, and he spends less than 15 minutes a week reading and approving my blogs before he posts them on his blog.

I still do paralegal work, part-time, so I know this for a fact: 98% of the calls I get from people wanting an attorney say "I found your firm on Google!"

So, the upshot is, you want Google to display a link to your website within the first few pages.

I can help.

This is my daughter shortly after she came home from Russia, and our dog Coco.