Whether you are a neophyte marketing assistant or heading the marketing department at one of our nation's largest law firms, you can always learn more about your craft. And - surprise! - there are a lot of great resources online that will broaden your marketing horizons.
The following is a list of ten Internet resources that provide helpful newsletters or content about marketing. For those of you who are devoted readers of FindLaw's Lawyer Marketing News email newsletter, much of this list will sound familiar (although a few links formerly in the top ten have dropped out of the rankings and been replaced by more worthy sites). Granted, the majority of these links are not legally-focused resources. But no man - or profession - is an island!
1. FindLaw Lawyer Marketing at marketing.findlaw.com. Of course I had to put this #1. Hundreds of legal marketing articles, reference materials, products, and so on. This section of FindLaw will soon undergo a major overhaul, so be on the look out for lots of new content and features! And here's a secret: you can also access this site by going to www.findlaw.com/lawyer-marketing/.
2. Law Marketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com. Larry Bodine does a great job of keeping up with the ongoing changes in the world of legal marketing. I subscribe to his newsletter, if only to hear about what's happening with his son (is he in college yet?).
3. Westlaw at www.westlaw.com. You use Westlaw for your legal research, but have you ever thought of using it for market research? Type in a search on Westlaw News for "lawyer marketing" or "law firm marketing" and you'll usually find ten to twenty articles from the last 30 days.
4. Google News (beta) at news.google.com. Like Westlaw News, a great place to research your competitors or catch up the latest in marketing news. Westlaw has an advantage over Google in that it covers a lot more sources (and a lot more legal sources, in particular). But Google does a good job of scouring daily newspapers and the occasional webzine. Plus, Google is free, which never hurts.
5. ClickZ at www.clickZ.com. Part of the Internet.com family of sites, ClickZ offers half a dozen newsletters from the top minds in Internet marketing, like Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch (see below for more information on Danny Sullivan). My advice though is to choose your ClickZ subscriptions wisely. There is a lot of good information available here, but there is also a lot of, well, mindless drivel. Read the columnists for a few weeks before signing up for their columns.
6. MarketingSherpa at www.marketingsherpa.com. Don't let the crazy name fool you, this is an excellent resource. They publish two or three case studies each week that detail a real-life online success/failure story. The only downside here is that they tend to push their products relentlessly, which gets a little annoying after awhile (if you watch ESPN, think "The Junction Boys", and you'll understand what I mean).
7. MarketingProfs at www.marketingprofs.com. Lots of interesting articles, updated pretty frequently. They claim to have writing from marketing professors, but it looks like the majority of stories are from marketing professionals.
8. MediaPost at www.mediapost.com. This site focuses on online and offline media buying. If you're interested in following the latest advancements in online advertising, this is a good place to check out.
9. Traffick at www.traffick.com. An incredibly rich resource chock-full of links, articles, and FAQs about search engines and portals. Traffick offers a free newsletter and several subscription-only newsletters.
10. SearchEngineWatch at www.searchenginewatch.com. This is the "granddaddy of them all" when it comes to information about search engine optimization (SEO). Led by Danny Sullivan, this is a great place to learn new techniques to improve your search engine ranking, or to catch up on the latest news in the SEO industry. You can sign up for a free newsletter or pay for the expanded version. Either is worthwhile! By the way, to give you an idea of how great this site is, in 2000 they inducted FindLaw into the Search Engine Watch Hall of Fame!