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Net Q & A
Question of the Month: March 2003
How should a lawyer prepare for starting a blog?
I have three pieces of advice: read blogs, read about blogs, and, perhaps most important, read blogs through news aggregators.
1. Reading blogs is important. Get an idea of what other people are doing. What works, what doesn't? Blawg.org and The Blawg Ring provide links to many legally-oriented blogs.
2. Reading about blogs will give you technical pointers that can save you time and make your blog more effective. Here are some books to get you started:
 | Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey & Meg Hourihan, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs. Well written, with many good ideas. |
| Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook. Has some good material, but overall, too touchy-feely for most tastes. The author sees blogs mainly as a type of personal therapy, a means of self-expression that increases self-esteem. Most legal professionals who are interested in blogging will have different objectives. |
| Shelly Powers (Ed.), Essential Blogging. A typical high quality O’Reilly Press book, with good discussion of technical aspects of Blogger, Movable Type, Radio & other key contenders. |
| Greg Siskind, Rick Klau and Deborah McMurray, The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet, 2nd Edition. Chapter 13 provides a concise (7 page) but well-written introduction to the use of blogs by lawyers. |
| Todd Stauffer, Blog On: The Essential Guide to Building Dynamic Weblogs. Excellent. |
| Biz Stone, Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Online Web Content. A poor title, but an extremely valuable book, with many great practical tips. |
3. Reading blogs through news aggregators may be the most important tip. News aggregators are a relatively new and still-evolving type of software that reads and organizes into a readily digestible form the key content from web pages selected by the user. As they become more popular, they will probably be the main way most users access blog content, if they are not already. Making your blog attractive to users of news aggregators may be the best way to enhance its long range growth potential.
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Send us your questions. We'll select the best each month and answer it here. On request, questions will be edited to conceal the questioner's identity. |
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This page last revised: March 1, 2003.