As many solo lawyers know: starting a law firm in this day-in-age means blogging. Solo attorneys are especially cognizant of the need to market themselves and garner search engine attention quickly and efficiently. Doing so means blogging for business.
Law Firm Blogging Options
There isn’t a lot of information on the web comparing the main blogging options. Those that I know of include:
There are other platforms, but I believe these 5 to be among the most used. All of them would work as a blogging option for your law firm. However, from what I have seen, Blogger.com and WordPress.com are the top blogging platform choices for solo attorneys.
Which Blogging Platform is the Best for Starting a Law Firm?
The answer to this question is open to some debate. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to posit that WordPress and Blogger are the two most user-friendly platforms. Both are free (if you want to stick with the basic blogging option) and both offer a great deal of user flexibility in the design and formatting options.
Blogger.com
Blogger is owned and maintained by Google. Being Google, Blogger has excellent support and tutorials. From my experience, it is easy to find answers to questions and concerns.
Google appears to be putting a lot of effort into making Blogger a good, user-friendly platform. The controls and layout choices are clearly explained and logical. When you initially log on the layout of Blogger is obvious and they point you where you need to go. If you have questions, Blogger makes you keenly aware of their ample help tutorials.
The design layout is also well-labeled and easy to understand. Blogger also ties in seamlessly with popular Google tools such as Google Analytics, Webmaster, and Adwords. This is where Blogger really has a leg-up on WordPress. I have found installing all of these desirable Google products difficult for my WordPress blogs. It can be done, but it takes some learning and tinkering. With Blogger, setting up these Google accounts is as easy as a simple click of a button.
Perhaps that is the key feature of Blogger: the ease of use by simple button pushing. You can create a decent-looking blog on Blogger within minutes by follow simple instructions and pushing a few well-placed buttons. For a technophobe, Blogger may be the way to go.
Signing up for Blogger means you need a Google account and I believe there is some tie-in to get you a Gmail account. Once you get signed up, creating a Blogger blog is easy and quick. However, for my money, this is where the superiority of Blogger ends.
The Blogger design layout is minimal. There just aren’t a lot of options to choose from and the options Blogger has look much more like children’s books than professional websites. There are some more professional looking options that are designed by outside vendors, but I haven’t found those options to be nearly as attractive and user-friendly as WordPress.
My end review of Blogger is that it is user-friendly and easy, but it looks unprofessional and lacks the content and layout options of WordPress.
WordPress
I use both Blogger and WordPress platforms, but my main focus has been on WordPress. I actually started with Blogger because it was easy and I found WordPress initial interface to be cumbersome. To be sure, there is a learning curve with WordPress, but it is worth it.
For starters, WordPress’s layout and design options are much more professional looking than Blogger and WordPress. The layout and design options are called “themes” and WordPress has many free themes to choose from. If you don’t like the free themes, you can upgrade to a WordPress created “premium” theme for various costs from $35.00 to $165.00. Or, you can choose from a myriad of professional theme designs.
As I discussed in my prior post on creating a law firm website, there are many law firm website and/or WordPress blog theme options to choose from. Wordpress theme options that I have found and like include:
The cost for StudioPress themes is a one-time fee of $24.95 for one theme or $79.95 for a developers license. The cost for the DIY Themes, Thesis theme is $87.00 for a single use or a one-time fee of $164.00 for a developers license. Finally the cost for a Elegant Theme license is $39.00 a year.
Take my advice, you always want to go with the developers license. If you like the theme you are going to want to use it again and you are going to want to have support for it.
Also, I am not making a plug, necessarily, for any of these themes, this is just what I have used. I have also heard good things about the Thesis theme from DIY Themes from Lawyerist and other lawyer blogs.
Sadly, I have gone through several options and I am still constructing my own website: flanderslawfirm.com. I am currently running a StudioPress theme on my website. I still haven’t come up with my optimal website and I continue to tinker. But, the point is that I can tinker because WordPress and the theme developers I have named allow me to do that.
Domain Names Choices
WordPress and Blogger both allow the user to create a blog domain name for free as long as the moniker “wordpress” or “blogspot” is utilized after the chosen domain name.
For example, I could choose “jlawyerblog” as my chosen domain name. If I use the free WordPress option, my domain name would look like this: “jlawyerblog.wordpress.com”. If I use the free Blogger option, my domain name would look like this: “jlawyerblog.blogspot.com”.
If you don’t like the added tag of “blogspot” or “wordpress” you can upgrade to your own domain name for both Blogger and WordPress as long as you pay for it. Therefore, if I wanted to create my own custom domain name (assuming it was available) I would create the domain name “jlawyerblog.com.” The cost for Blogger for a custom domain name is $10.00 a year. The cost for WordPress is $12.00 a year. Obviously, both are inexpensive. The expense of blogging, which truly is minimal, is if you decide to upgrade to a professional theme design.
Conclusion
For all of the reasons discussed above, I have chosen WordPress as my main blogging option for starting a law firm. The functionality and options are far superior to other Blogging platforms. The WordPress themes are also far superior in layout and design to Blogger. Wordpress and Blogger both have great support, but WordPress’s functionality, options, and professional-look make WordPress my choice for law firm blogging.