Blogging works.  That’s pretty simple huh?  I have been blogging on this site for a few months, but much longer on one of my law practice sites, The South Carolina Tax Attorney. Specifically, on that blog we talk about what people can do when they owe the IRS and don’t know their options as well as highlight news from the IRS and popular cases.  That blog has done several things for my business that anyone would desire, here’s my top 5:

1. Prospect Generation: I have recieved many prospective clients from the blog.  This is mainly because of the search-engine friendliness of a blog in general.  I couldn’t help but smile when I showed my boss that I was coming up on the search engine results pages for all of the search terms that he was wanting to come up for on our general firm web site, but he is a little older and didn’t initially beilieve in the power of the blog.  My prospects can really be from around the world (at least around the U.S. because the IRS practice is federal and you don’t have to be in South Carolina to hire us to help with those types of problems).  Once I get the client to call it is my responsibility to convert them from a prospect to a paying client.
2. Held Out as an Expert: I have been quoted on other blogs and sites around the internet regarding tax and other legal issues I discussed on the blog.  This blog has also been picked up my local news outlets for some of my posts that commented on national events and lawsuits.
3. Income Generation: While the blogs do generate prospect calls and actual clients for my law practice I have also sold information products and reports from my blog.  We have also done surveys to try to figure out what people want to know on a certain topic.  I know there are many untapped income generation sources and applications from the blogs.
4. “Cheap” Advertising: Blogging can be done extremely cheap.  You can get a free account at Blogspot or WordPress.com or you can self host your blog to have a little more freedom.   The costs associated with operating a blog are generally minimal.  You need to purchase a domain name (about $10 per year), hosting (which you can get cheap – we use HostGator and it costs about $10 per month).  You can spend some money on a custom blog design or you can use of the zillion free WordPress themes available online.   The power of the blog is in your content and how often you contribute – not like in other types of advertising where people think the more money you throw at the advertising the more money you will make in return.  That is pretty old-school.  Whie it may have worked at one time or another in the past, today (to me at least) it seems to be a bad model.  Especially in times of economic hardship like today.  I work at a firm who likes to advertise in all of the traditional ways like the Yellowpages, local newspaper, classifieds, etc.  But the blog is great becaues after you put in some diligent work to create the content and get a readership, the internet will bless you because it will bring readers to you from search engines, links from other blogs, social media sites like Twitter (follow me, I’m @trippatkins).
5. Defines Your Internet Reputation: What comes up when you type your name into Google?  You may not want to know, but you need to know.  Your customers are going to be googling you to find out more about you.  I do this for everything I do now.  If I am going to a new restaurant or staying at a new hotel I want to find out about it.  I check out information about opposing counsel i my cases that I have.  People are doing the same thing about you and me.  In fact, one of the search terms that leads people to my site most often is Tripp Atkins Attorney.  People want to know more about me before they show up and start telling me about their life.  When I googled my name I found that there is apparently another guy named Tripp Atkins who is included in the Rip Off Report website because he scammed a lot of people.  **That Tripp Atkins is not me!! **  Anyway, that would not be good publicity for me if that were the number one position on Google for my name.  While he still shows up on the front page he is not the number 1, 2, or 3 listing and all of the rest are mine from my various sites to make sure people know that actual Tripp Atkins they are searching for.

Those are just a few of the benefits of blogging.  It is much more than an online diary and a way for the small business person to market their services that is becoming much more effective than traditional advertising methods.