1. Rich’s Nuts & Bolts Blog Tips Set Up Blog Platform Self hosted: Wordpress: Great starting blog platform. Inexpensive. Need some technical knowledge to set up. Professional Law Blog Design Firms: LexBlog. Expensive ($2,500 start up plus $2500/year). Lose some control. Great exposure/SEO. They deal with tech issues.

5. Rich’s Nuts & Bolts Blog Tips Set Up (Cont.) Get a unique URL like www.massrealestatelawblog.com, instead of incorporating blog into your website. Better for search engine optimization (SEO). Link blog to your website. Header Art: If Do It Yourself, invest in some nice looking header art, or hire a blog designer. Better looking, better designed blogs attract more readers and traffic. Have About Me and About the Firm pages. Contact form: readers can contact you directly and you can avoid tricky ethical/solicitation issues. Key for business generation. Disclaimer: blog constitutes “advertising” under SJC Rules, but make it small and unobtrusive.

6. Rich’s Nuts & Bolts Blog Tips Widgets and Plugins RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed. A must! Google Feedburner is a good choice. Share Button. Email Subscription. Google Feedburner offers free service. Can track subscribers. Twitter and Facebook integration.

7. Rich’s Nuts & Bolts Blog Tips Statistics Establish Wordpress/Blogger statistics or Google Analytics account to track visitor counts, search queries and referral sources

11. Keep blog posts short (300-500 words) and sweet.

12. Use image art in the blog post. Be careful about copyright issues, though.

13. Organize blog posts by using headers and bullet points

14. Use top keywords for the post at least 3-4 times in the body of the post.

15. “Top 5 or 10 lists”

16. Use creative titles which also incorporate the most important keywords. Ex. “There’s Nothing Standard About the Massachusetts Standard Purchase and Sale Agreement”.

17. Use tags liberally. They are an important tool for search engine optimization (SEO)

18. Allow, but moderate, comments

19. Start commenting on other law blogs. It will drive traffic back to your blog