Anyone who sits behind a desk for the majority of a workday knows exactly what it feels like at 5 PM (or 6 PM, or 7 PM, or whatever time you finally allow yourself to escape from jail the office and go home). A deep ache in your lower back, a twinge in your hips, a crick in your neck, stiff muscles and a creaky spine … this is the result of too much sitting.

That’s bad enough, but over time these little twinges can grow into something more serious — such as herniated disks in your spine, sciatica, deep vein thrombosis, and more. Fortunately, the cure is pretty simple — just get up and move!

One easy way to keep your muscles limber and warm throughout the day is the ten-minute yoga break. Even if you’ve never taken a yoga class in your life, you can still do these easy asanas (yoga poses). The best part? No special equipment needed — and you can do them right in your office.

Set Your Computer Alarm

Schedule two or three ten-minute breaks, spread at regular intervals throughout the day. You can use your computer’s calendar function for this. Simply set the “reminder” time to 0 minutes.

Not only will this give you an audible and visual reminder of your commitment to get up and move, it will also further reinforce the idea that this is something you need to do — just like a client appointment. And just as important.

Don’t forget to remind staff that you’re not to be interrupted during this time, if you have employees. If you don’t, then at least make a promise to yourself not to answer the phone during this time. Let the calls go to voice mail, and concentrate on yourself.

Be the Mountain …

Mountain Pose is a very simple pose — deceptively simple. It looks like you’re just standing up straight. Ah, but it’s so much more than that! The real work is going on inside your body. Mountain pose is really all about the tiny details, and you might be surprised by the results.

Here are the step by step instructions, from Yoga Journal.com. Start by slipping off your shoes, and then … 

1. Stand with the bases of your big toes touching, heels slightly apart (so that your second toes are parallel). Lift and spread your toes and the balls of your feet, then lay them softly down on the floor. Rock back and forth and side to side. Gradually reduce this swaying to a standstill, with your weight balanced evenly on the feet.
2. Firm your thigh muscles and lift the knee caps, without hardening your lower belly. Lift the inner ankles to strengthen the inner arches, then imagine a line of energy all the way up along your inner thighs to your groins, and from there through the core of your torso, neck, and head, and out through the crown of your head. Turn the upper thighs slightly inward. Lengthen your tailbone toward the floor and lift the pubis toward the navel.
3. Press your shoulder blades into your back, then widen them across and release them down your back. Without pushing your lower front ribs forward, lift the top of your sternum straight toward the ceiling. Widen your collarbones. Hang your arms beside the torso.
4. Balance the crown of your head directly over the center of your pelvis, with the underside of your chin parallel to the floor, throat soft, and the tongue wide and flat on the floor of your mouth. Soften your eyes.
5. Stay here for 1 minute, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Get the Blood Flowing

By performing the first few asanas from the Sun Salutation series and simultaneously concentrating on your breathing, you can give your upper body a good stretch and oxygenate your blood, giving you a little energy boost that lasts longer than a cup of coffee.

1. From Mountain Pose, bring your hands up to your chest as if in prayer, palms touching. Breathe naturally a few times.
2. On an inhale, push your hands together and up over your head, spreading your arms in a slight ‘V’ shape.
3. On the exhale, bring your arms back down and your hands to your chest as if praying again.
4. Repeat five times.

Do Desk Duty

Clear off a spot on the edge of your desk wide enough to rest your lower arms on. Stand in front of that spot, far enough away that if you lean forward your upper body will be at a right angle to your legs, with your head resting on your arms and your arms clasped and resting on the desk.

Bring your hands up to that same prayer position, and breathe in, pushing your arms up overhead as with the previous exercise. Now, exhale, bringing your arms down to the desk. Clasp your elbows with the opposite hand, and rest your head on top of your arms. Your back should be straight and parallel to the floor.

Stay there, breathing deeply for a few moments. Then, try to take the stretch a bit deeper by allowing your chest to gently push through the opening created by your arms. This will stretch out your chest and upper arms. Don’t push it too much — yoga is not about doing something perfectly or competing — not even with yourself.

Push yourself up gently, rolling up vertebrae by vertebrae. Finish with another inhale/exhale combination with the arms overhead, as in the second exercise.

Twist and Shout … OK, Just Twist

Take your seat again, but sit a bit forward on the edge of your chair. Keep your back straight, your neck straight on top of your shoulders, your shoulders relaxed and down, your stomach held in slightly. Now, exhaling, twist to the right, using the back of the chair for leverage.

Release and come back to center, breathing in and out and in again. Then, exhaling, twist the other way.

Repeat five times to each side.

Hands Behind Your Back!

Now, stretch your shoulders, chest, arms, and back by bringing your hands behind your back and clasping them together. Gently pull your hands back away from your body, towards the back of your chair, and breathe in and out several times. Release and shake your arms for a few seconds before moving on.

Rag Doll

Finish up by scooting to the edge of your chair, separating your legs enough that you can lower your upper body down between your knees, rolling down over the edge of your seat so that your arms and head hang down limply. Focus on stretching out your lower back and feel the stretch in your hips. Stay there for a minute, if you can — don’t forget to breathe fully! — and then roll up very slowly. (Going slowly should alleviate sudden dizziness to blood rushing from your head. But if you begin to feel dizzy, simply bring your legs back together, bend over your knees, and rest your head on your hands, propped up on your knees.)

Strike a Pose and Stay Healthy

Yoga has several benefits, including a lower heart rate, increased ability to concentrate, easier movements, lower stress levels and improved digestion. Take a few minutes a couple of times a day to practice these poses and see how much better you feel at the end of the workday. Combined with good hygiene, proper nutrition, and adequate sleep, practicing yoga regularly might even keep you healthy this cold and flu season.

At the very least, you’ll experience greater productivity when your back isn’t aching from too much sitting. So strike a pose!

As part of our new expanded focus for service professionals of all flavors — not just lawyers (although we’ll never forget our first audience!) — we’re going to be presenting more articles and posts from awesome people all over the ‘net. Our first of these articles comes from the gorgeous and immensely talented Christine Kane, and concerns a topic that is near and dear to my inner Scarlett O’Hara (y’know, “I’ll think about that tomorrow!”): how to knock off the procrastinating and get stuff D-O-N-E. Enjoy!

To Do List

9 Simple Solutions for Procastinators

By Christine Kane

Irony: As I started to write this article, I thought, “I’ll just go play one Sudoku game first.” I caught myself in the act and marched to my laptop.

People who say that procrastination is about laziness are probably the same people who think that anorexia is about not eating enough.

Procrastination isn’t about laziness. It’s about fear. It’s about perfectionism. It’s about overwhelm. We all experience it, and there are some tricks to help you get moving again.

Here are 9 ways to break the procrastination habit:

1 – When you get an idea, do some little thing to begin.

When I read Stephen King’s book On Writing, I noticed something. I noticed that when Stephen King gets an idea, he writes it. Immediately and imperfectly.

Most people get an idea. Then they sit there. They wonder if it’s a good idea. Then, they wonder if it’s a good idea some more.

Got an idea? Begin it now!

2 – All hail small chunks of time!

Lots of us complain about having no time. My guess is that we all have lots of time. It just doesn’t happen to be all at once.

Are you waiting for many hours of spare time to begin your idea, your project, or your taxes? Stop waiting! Learn to use the spare half hour that comes up here and there. (I gave myself 45 minutes to write this article just to take my own advice.)

3 – Agree to do it badly.

Set a goal to do it badly. Set a goal to show up. Let go of doing it ALL, or doing it WELL.

Some of my coaching clients’ biggest victories have a lot more to do with getting over perfectionism and fear, than they do about getting it all done perfectly.

4 – Commit aloud.

Call a friend and say something like this: “I’m going to spend the next half hour working on my Law School Essay.” Then go do it.

Call the friend after the half hour and make her congratulate you. Repeat daily.

5 – Define quantities.

Nebulous goals make for nebulous results. “I’m gonna get my office organized” is a lot like saying, “We oughtta do something about Global Warming.”

Most procrastinators have a hard time defining quantities. We think everything needs to be done NOW.

When are you going to do it? For how long? Which part of your office? The file cabinet? Or your desk?

Define the goal and acknowledge its completion.

6 – Install this System Upgrade into your Mental Hard Drive: Less is More.

Have fewer goals. Have no more than three priorities for a week.

Why?

Because you’re not lazy. You’re just trying to do too much.

Find out what it feels like to accomplish one thing instead of not quite getting to everything. Wow – what a difference this makes!

7 – Do it first.

My first coach made me write songs first thing in the morning. He told me to schedule the 2-hour chunk as my first activity upon waking.

Why?

“Because you’re telling the universe that this is your priority. And then the universe lines up everything to align with your priority.”

Action grounds your priorities. It makes them real. It also makes your day easier because you’re not wasting energy thinking about this thing you’re supposed to be doing.

8 – Avoid nose-bleed activities.

Email, voicemail, web stats – any activity that bleeds itself into your whole day becomes a non-activity. It becomes a nose-bleed. When you do it all the time, you never complete it. You just let it slowly drain the very life force from you. Define times for these activities. Then, turn off your email, your cell phone, your web stats, until that time comes.

9 – Don’t ask how you “feel” about doing the activity.

Have you ever committed to getting fit? And then when the alarm goes off, you lie in bed thinking, “Do I really feel like going to the gym?” (Like you even have to ask!)

Change this pattern. Make your decision the night before. Commit to getting up and going right to the gym, the computer, the blank canvas. Don’t have coffee and sigh and think, “I’ll probably feel more like it at lunch time.” You won’t!

If it’s a priority, don’t waste time asking yourself how you feel about doing it. Feelings are an easy out.

—————————

There. I did it. I wrote this article. And now, I don’t even want to play Sudoku! How about that?

Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 4,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at www.christinekane.com.

See Christine’s blog – Be Creative. Be Conscious. Be Courageous – at ChristineKane.com/blog.

Suitcase With Travel Stickers

After a trip around the world billing/bandwidth dispute (the wages of popularity — good problems to have, but problems nonetheless) and a chaotic two months in the life of the head Muse (that’d be me — and if you want the details, check out my personal blog here), the Inspired Solo is back online.

Yay! Much fanfare! Rejoicing! Feasting ensues!

And to make it up to you all, TIS is going to be metaphorically throwing the Mardi Gras beads of valuable content at you Inspired Solos and Solos-To-Be over the upcoming few weeks. We’re talking ebooks — some of ‘em free, people! We all like free, right? — tons of posts, video, podcasts, links, links, links — a veritable smorgasbord of feasty inspired goodness for all.

OK, enough feasting. Back to work!

Welcome to the 227th edition of Blawg Review, your movable feast on the internet for all things blawggy. That’s blog + law = blawg, for those of you purists whose blood boils at the sound of made-up words, and the adjectival form thereof would be, natch, blawggy.

I’m Sheryl Sisk Schelin, and I have the honor of hosting Blawg Review this week for the … what, fourth? Fifth? … whatever, it’s been a fair number of go-rounds with dear anonymous Ed. (I was supposed to have done this a few weeks back but due to some miscommunication, that … uhm … didn’t happen. By the way: Mr. Greenfield? There are no gurus here. I just checked — I even looked under the bed and in the closet and in the pseudo-garden out back — desperately in need of some hedge clipping, but no gurus.)

As with my last BR, I am once again eschewing the problematic notion of “themes.” The problem with themed blawg reviews is mainly one of oneupsmanship — somebody gets clever with the Shakespeare, then the next guy has to go all Dante on you, and the next thing you know, we’re struggling to get through an irreverently witty translation of Innocent the III’s De miseria conditionis humanae and, really, who needs that? Right. We just want the good stuff from the blawgs.

So that’s my “theme” — such as it is: a simple message from The Inspired Solo to tap your inspiration when you really need it, and don’t let the pressure to be creative, funny, clever, or — well, hell, anything, really — distract you from your true goal. That’s real inspiration.

My purpose this week is to show how blawgs can be used in smart ways to achieve more than just the occasional platform for venting or getting back at your opponent from last week’s oral arguments. If you want to call that a theme, well, you go right ahead, with my blessings.

NB: I might as well admit it now. I really tried to get my dog Rosemary to do this again for me but she said, “Lady, you haven’t clipped my claws in how long now? How the hell do you expect me to work that keyboard? And by the way, I’m out of the chewy nummies. Thanks.” I next turned to the two felines, first to the oldest — aka “Salem, the Devil Cat” who merely hypnotized me with red glowing eyeballs of doom until I backed off slowly — and then to the new one, T-Jeff (named for Thomas Jefferson, who for reasons past understanding is apparently my daughter’s second-favorite president. She was going to name him Obama but felt that was disrespectful, since she’d be cleaning out the litter box and all.) But T-Jeff just looked at me blandly and started chewing a button off my shirt. So, no go.

You’re stuck with the human.

The Blawg Review — Genius of Blawgs Edition

Richard Johnston is apparently a master of understatement, as evidenced by the title of his blog The Problem is ERISA. He submits a post titled “Discretion and Its Many Abuses – Part I”.

Forward Movement presents “Green Building Provisions in Waxman-Markey”. Waxman-Markey, if you’re unaware, is pending legislation aimed at combating greehouse gas emissions and generally addressing many of the ways we humans have totally screwed our environment. You can view more information on the bill at the Energy & Commerce Committee website. The post is guest-written by Richard Kuhn, who does a credible job outlining the various provisions of the legislation’s two current versions as they pertain to bringing private buildings into green compliance.

I confess: I wasn’t going to include A New Dawn for Michigan Car Accident Victims? posted at Michigan Auto Lawyers Blog. It’s about a fairly state-specific issue, and … well, it’s about car accidents, which never really floated my boat. But then I took another look, and decided to include it. Why? Because it’s good. And because being primarily a blog coach for lawyers these days, I do like how it demonstrates one of my favorite things about blogs in general: namely, that you can use your blawg for more than just getting a few more phone calls from potential clients. A well-written, well-argued blog post can help foster real honest-to-goodness change, and that’s a powerful thing. So, kudos, Steven.

Jeff Gordon and The Licensing Handbook Blog present “More On Trust”. As Jeff explains: “Trust is important when creating deals. But you can’t contract for it. This post is a discussion on things that cause me bias and, by extension, a lack of trust… and how to resolve it for success.” What I like about this one is that it demonstrates another beautiful part of blawgs (true also of blogs of all stripes and flavors, really). Note how Jeff began with an earlier post, which was responded to by D.C. Toedt, and then Jeff added additional thoughts. We can all jump in with the comments, of course. And that, dear readers, is what we blog instructors & coaches mean when we say “the blog is a conversation.”

Legally UnBound gets the Golden Oldie award for managing to work in a classic Welcome Back Kotter episode into a thoughtful post titled “Welcome Back Kotter & The Deterioration of Debate”. Here’s another example of a great use of a blog: video (note the way-appreciated transcript at the end, a nod to the reality that not everyone has a soundcard in the computer at work) which was carefully selected to augment the point of a serious subject — the lack of real debate process in legal proceedings — in a humorous way which nevertheless adds to, instead of detracting from, the underlying point.

Lots of blawgs were talking about Lockerbie, Scotland this week — namely, Scotland’s decision to grant the Lockerbie bomber’s request for compassionate release due to his terminal illness. Opinio Juris writes approvingly about Ruth Wedgwood’s opinions. The IntLawGrrls write approvingly about compassion. And Charon QC? Apparently likes his motorbike. Meanwhile, Cathy Gellis attempts to explain “why (many) Americans are upset” about this release at her blog Statements of Interest. Finally, Jonathan Mitchell wonders about“That letter from the FBI to the Justice Secretary: is it real?” posted at Jonathan Mitchell QC.

Apparently, there was a huge dustup in the blawgosphere this week about anonymity, and I missed it completely. So I’m going to allow Colin Samuels, the contributor of this gem, to explain it all for us — but first, the requisite links:

• Althouse: “The model insisted on outing the blogger who called her a skank“
• California Defamation Law Blog: “The Tale of a Model, a Blogger, and Internet Anonymity“
• Peter Vogel: “The Skank Blogger Intends to Sue Google for $15m for Disclosing Her Identity“
• Kashmir Hill: “What Are the Rights of the ‘Skanks in NYC’ Blogger?“
• Concurring Opinions: “Can You Be Sued For Unmasking an Anonymous Blogger?” and “Cyber Gender Harassment: Skanks of NYC“
• Above the Law: “Talking About Skanks with Daniel Solove“

I’d also add this post from Slaw’s Angela Swan, decrying the use of anonymity on the web in general — although I disagree completely with her thoughts, I certainly do understand the frustrations underlying them. Additionally, I highly recommend Adam Thierer’s thoughts at Technology Liberation Front on “Randy Cohen’s Guideline for Anonymous Blogging.”

If I ever see the word “skank” on a legal blog again after this week, it’ll be too soon. The “Skanks in NYC” case was a big topic of discussion this week. Ann Althouse was critical of the low threshhold the judge used in ordering Google to identify the anonymous blogger: “The key is for courts to have a high standard in determining whether there really is defamation before they order that the name be revealed. Otherwise, someone who hasnot actually suffered a legally remediable injury can use a lawsuit for the wrong purpose: to inflict the injury of making a pseudonymous writer’s name public.” Adrianos Fachetti was critical of the unmasked blogger, not for blogging anonymously but for blaming everyone else for her predicament: “it really irks me when people don’t take responsibility for their actions. It also saddens me when someone gets burned because they believed that anonymous speech was absolutely protected under the First Amendment, regardless of the type of speech.” Peter Vogel offered a good rundown on the facts of the case and the ruling. Kashmir Hill had a good early post concerning the rights of the formerly-anonymous blogger and succinctly explained the import of the decision: “I think the lesson is: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it on the Internet unless you’re okay with the fact that you might one day get outed.” Dan Solove weighed-in on the case and the blogger’s potential causes of action. Then, like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, two great tastes came together when Hill interviewed Solove about the case. Danielle Citron considered the gender issues raised by the dust-up, including speculation that the attention to the case was rooted in part in “leering interest in a “battle” between two beautiful women”.

Also up in the blawgosphere this week (and also pointed out by Sir Colin), a certain article appearing in the WSJ was discussed, picked apart, and so forth by some very able blawggers this week. The article’s point — that the billable hour model is dead, or at least on life support, or at the very least a lot sicker than it ever was — ain’t necessarily news to any of us, I hope, but it’s still worth a conversation or two:

• Ideoblog’s Larry Ribstein sees the end of more than just a profit center for BigLaw.
• Elie Mystal at Above the Law says “Well, maybe, but what’s going to replace it?” and has some interesting thoughts thereon.
• Client Revolution’s Jay Shepherd has been a long-time fan of value-based billing and writes here of his experience with it.
• Randy McClanahan is on board, and has some really interesting suggestions for in-house GCs on how to implement more balanced and creative billing methods for their companies.
• Colin thinks Bruce MacEwen “has perhaps the most extraordinary perspective on billing this week — he explains that the billable hour debate is not about billables at all, but is instead about the lack of trust between clients and their counsel.” But I’m not so sure that’s extraordinary. Seems like the quite logical beginning of the discussion to me.

One last Colin Contribution:

Robert Ambrogi noted an unscientific study which found that half of all new legal blogs fail within one year and many fail much more quickly than that. More than a few bloggers have stood the test of time, though. Three recently published books and discussed them or topics relating to them this week. John Bolch published “Do Your Own Divorce“, a volume Christian Metcalfe called “Kramer v. Kramer – but with property and less tears”. Adrian Dayton detailed how microblogging on Twitter netted him a book deal for “Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition” and helpfully explained how followers on Twitter may be classified, from bots to friends, and how the key to building a client base from Twitter is to engage with others rather than simply following or being followed.

That’s it for this week’s edition! Remember: Blawg Review has information about next week’s host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 22: Lecture and Task

In today’s installment of the Build a Better Business Blog series, we’re going to be looking at one of the richest sources of blogging tips: successful blogs in your practice area and profession. Why make your own mistakes when you can learn from the leaders?

Shortcuts Are Great: Learning From the Successful Blogs in Your Area

I’m a big believer in shortcuts. If there’s a way to get from A to D that doesn’t require stops at B and C, folks, I’m all for it. I don’t see this as cheating. It’s simply making use of the resources at hand, and learning from those who’ve been there, done that (successfully or not), and worn out the t-shirt.

Blogs that are similar to yours in terms of your profession and your practice area are a terrific resource for picking up hints and suggestions for your own blog, whether the blogs you’re looking at are succesful or not. From the blogs with traffic zooming through the virtual roof, you learn what to do. From the blogs that are sputtering along nearly on empty, you learn what not to do.

Take a moment today and research those blogs. Start with simple Google searches for your keywords (but leave out geographic restrictions in order to obtain the broadest possible results). If you know of a blog directory that’s restricted to your profession, examine it (lawyers, go to the ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory and scan the list of subjects — but be warned, some blogs may be listed in one subject while they could also have been listed in another, so cast your net wide).

Learning From the Masters and the Beginners

When you identify a blog that looks like it might be on target, open it in a new tab in your internet browser. Don’t review them just yet — just keep opening new tabs, until you have a goodly selection of ten or so blogs (hopefully, you can identify that many — if you can’t, then you know you’ve got a good shot at cornering the market!).

Now, take a look at each one. Judging popularity is a bit tricky but you can do it simply with a few easy, free tools:

• Look at the number of comments.
• Examine the frequency of posting.
• Go to Alexa and plug in the URL of the blog to see its rank.
• Check out the PageRank on the blog itself.
• Do a Google search for keywords on the blog and see where it ranks in the Google results.

For each blog, ask yourself “What is this blogger doing right? What can I learn from her? Of those things that she’s doing and I’m not, what makes sense for my own blog?”

That last question is paramount. You don’t necessarily want to take actions randomly simply because they worked on one blog. You don’t know the whole backstory — it could be that this particular feature you’re thinking about changing doesn’t really bring in the numbers (something the blogger would know from her own Analytics but isn’t readily apparent to you). It could be that what makes sense for one blog doesn’t really translate so well to your blog.

The trick is to keep an open mind — try things out — but then test them and judge the results. If they’re working, keep them. If not, consider getting rid of them.

What specifically are we looking at, when we talk about “trying new things”? Well, the options are endless, really. Analyzing a blog is a bit of an art, but here are some of the things I look at when I do a blog review:

• How quickly and clearly the blog “announces” itself
• Activity level
• Layout
• Color scheme
• Readability
• Headlines
• Whether the sidebar is clean or cluttered
• Whether and to what extent any particular feature “adds value” to the reader
• The quality of the posts themselves

That’s just a partial list, of course, but it’s enough to get started.

So take a few moments to start this project today. You might be surprised to find out just how well you’re really doing compared to your competitors, and you may learn something to boot. Win-win!

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 21: Lecture & Task

Today’s topic in the Build a Better Business Blog series: creating evergreen backup posts. Read on for the whys and hows.

Murphy’s Law of Blogging: Whatever Can Keep You From Posting, Will Keep You From Posting

Rule #1 of starting a business blog is, of course, to post often and well — daily if possible. And generally we all start off strong — we launch our blogs with (preferably) five to ten posts already up, giving our new readers something to explore on the site beyond the general “Hi, this is the first post!” introduction. We keep it up for a week, or maybe two.

Then, as it will do, life intervenes.

It’s unavoidable, and it’s nothing to get jacked up about. Your business is not blogging — blogging is helping your business. The business is the main thing, and even it comes after your health and your family. So, my first principle of dealing with the inevitable “no time to blog” blues is simply this:

Rule #1: Stop pressuring yourself.

It doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t create more hours in the day. And it doesn’t magically make the posts appear on your blog.

Stuff happens: we get sick, despite our excellent self-care. We have problems that need to be addressed, in business and in our family life. We get sideswiped by evil opponents who file eighty-page motions at 4:40 PM on a Friday afternoon. We know this will happen, so just accept it, and figure it into the cost of your doing business — your time and aggravation costs, that is.

Rule #2: Adopt a blogging schedule you can live with.

From the outset, you should adopt a schedule of posting that fits your life and business. If that’s three times a week, so be it. If it’s once a week, OK – but it better be good stuff, and probably a bit longer than the average blog post length of 500 or so words. If you decide to do all your blog work on one day, and schedule them to “drip publish” throughout the week, great. If you’d rather blog daily but give it just thirty minute or so, fabulous. Whatever works best for your — that’s your schedule.

Rule #3 (And Today’s Topic): Plan for the Inevitable With Evergreen Drafts

Evergreen drafts are simply blog drafts that aren’t tied to a timely event — that you can post anytime and they’ll still be just as interesting as if you posted them today. That’s why I call them “evergreen.” They have no sell-by date.

How many should you have? I suggest five to ten. The more the better, frankly, as time has a way of launching sneak attacks that we never see coming. The more evergreen drafts you have at your disposal, the more you can relax and not worry about keeping your blog going.

Start by brainstorming a topic list. Look at holes in your archives and in your categories. What have you yet to address? Think of basics — foundational pieces of information that your readers would appreciate having that aren’t necessarily the most important facts or processes they should be aware of, but topics that nonetheless help fill the gaps in your readers’ knowledge base.

Once you have a workable list of five to ten topics, take a few minutes extra whenever you blog (be it daily or all in one day) to begin fleshing these drafts out. Keep them in a text file initially, but then you can move them over to your WordPress dashboard as drafts once they’re completed.

Then, the next time your case jumps up eighty spaces on the docket, all you have to do is log on, pick a few drafts, and schedule them to drip publish over the course of the week or whatever time period you anticipate being out of pocket.

There Are Other Ways ….

There are many other ways to beat the “no time to blog” blues, and we’ll look at those in future posts. But for now, alleviate your anxiety level by focusing on creating these backup posts that you can publish with little editing or fanfare, at a moment’s notice.

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 20: Lecture and Task

For the 20th day in our month-long “Build a Better Business Blog” endeavor, we’ll be looking through old posts and creating new links to other pages in our blogs.

Internal Links Help the Reader — That’s a Good Thing

The “Inspired Solo” philosophy of SEO, if there is such a thing, is simple: offer awesome value, help the reader, and forge relationships with others. Today’s task works primarily on the first two elements — offering awesome value and helping the reader.

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, chances are you’ve amassed an archive of older posts that’s fairly substantial. Chances are also pretty good that you’ve touched on the same topic in related ways at least two or three times in different posts.

Today’s task is about linking those blog posts that are related together. The idea is to go back through your archives, identifying posts that are related by subject matter. Then, cross-link them within the blog post.

Here’s an example: Let’s say I’ve got a family law blog. Early on, I wrote about the laws in South Carolina that provide grounds for divorce. A few months ago, I wrote in more depth about one of those grounds — adultery. For today’s task, I’d go back to blog post #1 — the one about the general grounds for divorce — and add something like the following:

For more information on adultery as a grounds for divorce in South Carolina, see “Adultery and Its Aftermath on Divorcing Couples and Their Children.”

Of course, that title — “Adultery and Its Aftermath on Divorcing Couples and Their Children” — would be the anchor text for a link to that post.

Then I’d hop over to blog post #2, “Adultery and Its Aftermath.” There, I’d add something like the following:

For more information about adultery and other grounds for divorce in South Carolina, see my earlier post “Divorce Law 101: South Carolina and Grounds for Divorce.”

Again, the article title would be the anchor text for the link back to that earlier post.

See? Easy! Well, OK, easy in theory. It can take awhile to go through your whole archives sorting these posts out. To make it easier, you might want to try listing only the posts in a certain category, or use your tags function to search through your archives.

Task #20: Create Internal Links Within Your Archives

So, today’s task is just that: sort through your archives and find at least two groups of posts (with 2 or more posts in each group) that are interrelated. Create your crosslinks, using good SEO practice (i.e., anchor text should be the title, or if your title doesn’t have keywords in it — which it should — use the keywords instead).

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 19: Task and Lecture

Today, in the Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog series, we’re taking a look at forums and message boards, and how they can help drive your traffic.

It’s All About Value Given

To drive traffic to your blog, you need a combination of things working in concert: links coming in from reliable, relevant outside sites; fabulous content on your site; and that mythical intangible quality called “buzz.”

Buzz is driven partially by reputation and partially by the quality you put out in the world, in whatever medium. Of course, the beauty is that the quality then drives the reputation (hopefully upwards to a more positive one). Ergo, “getting your name out there” isn’t enough — you’ve got to get it out there and associate it with quality and valuable insight.

In short: you need to show the world you know what the heck you’re talking about.

Forums and Message Boards Are Excellent Places to Prove Your Worth

The web abounds with message boards and forums where people (your targeted clients) gather to discuss their problems. Why aren’t you there with them?

Please understand: I’m not talking about spamming a board. Nothing will drive your reputation south more quickly than joining a board or website with the intent to send out message after message reading essentially as an advertisement for your office, nothing more.

I’m talking about getting in the conversation — talking to people via messages and posts — answering their questions. Yes, I’m talking about giving the milk away for free.

Not all of it, mind you. You’re not going to go out there and give your potential clients the means and methods to do for themselves what you can do for them. (Actually, there are times when it’s worth your while to do exactly that — I would just do it in email rather than a public forum. But more on that in some other post.)

Instead, you’re going to offer your assistance at the giant virtual cocktail party that is the Internet. You’re going to answer questions that are asked, to which you know the answer. You’re going to be cautious about how you do this. You’re going to let them know your limitations (licensing, for instance). You’re going to give them links and other resources they can look at for further information.

You’re not going to spend more than an hour on this per week. Like Twitter, forums can be a huge time suck. You need to keep your schedule’s needs firmly in mind. Pick and choose the questions you can answer easily, quickly, and accurately. Sympathize with the rest.

One final word: Be compassionate. Be respectful. I’ve seen lots of lawyers, not to pick on them necessarily, who treat “Ask a Lawyer” questioners as morons, frankly. I have to wonder — is this a good marketing technique for them? Do they get clients that way? What kind of clients? I’d be concerned. Maybe your mileage differs.

The Task: Find Two or Three Forums/Message Boards Frequented By Your Targeted Clients

Search Google for your own keywords and keywords related to your profession to find a few good forums and message boards that are good gathering spots for your targeted clients. Take a few minutes to review the activity on the boards — you want something that’s not so big your messages get lost in the shuffle, but something that’s active too. Look specifically at the date of the last messages in the forums and boards. If it was a year ago, move on. Yesterday — sign up!

Pay STRICT attention to the rules of the board. Every board that I’ve ever seen will have them, and they’ll govern how and for what offenses you can be kicked off the board. Make sure you abide by those rules. Frequently, rules will govern the use of signatures for your messages. Within those rules, take advantage of signature blocks. If the rules allow a link to your blog, put it in there — then, everytime you post, the readers of that forum will have that link right there, ready to click.

Keep the guidelines I’ve offered above firmly in mind. Using boards and forums can be an excellent source of business and blog traffic, but it can just as easily backfire if your fellow board members sense you as just another opportunistic lawyer/broker/whatever out to make a buck. Make it clear — by your words and your actions — that you’re there to help, and you’ll do fine.

NB: This is the 18th installment in The Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog in One Month series. Designed to help solo lawyers and other professionals boost their blog’s performance, the series consists of a daily lecture and task (or tasks) that focus on one “blog improvement project” at a time. Each post in the series is tagged with “[BBBB1]“. You can start the program at any time. Catch up with other BBBB1 posts here.

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 18: Lecture and Task

Today’s installment in the Build a Better Business Blog series is all about Google alerts: what they are, why they’re important, how to create and manage them.

What Are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are simply emails that you ask Google to send to you with a list of all news items or blog entries/website changes (or both) that match certain search terms you provide. You tell Google what you want it to look for and send you, where you want the alerts to be delivered (i.e., your email address) and how often you want them to be sent (once a day or “as it happens”).

Google then takes those terms and keeps tabs on all changes to the pages it searches for those terms for you. When a blog item is posted, for instance, that contains your search terms, Google packages it up along with all other blog or news items with those terms mentioned, and mails it off to you with links, titles to the pages, the name of the site, and a brief excerpt.

How Can Google Alerts Help Business Bloggers?

Using Google Alerts keeps you several steps ahead of the game by letting you know what people are writing about your profession, your business, your competitors, and you in a quite timely fashion.

The value of this information is obvious: if you know someone’s got a problem with your business, for instance, you can act quickly to correct it. If a well-known blogger posts a question that you can answer (because it concerns your profession), you can be one of the first to respond with the answer. If your competitor makes a major gaffe — or achieves a major success — you can read about it quickly and decide whether there’s an opportunity there, either for your business or for you to learn something.

Additionally, Google Alerts can help you find new topics to blog about within your blog’s focus area. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve created a blog post based on one of my Google Alerts for my Tramadol Diaries blog. All news items and blog posts about fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other relevant keywords come into my email inbox throughout the day, and I can use those alerts to create new blog posts, thus staying ahead of the curve of public interest.

How to Create Google Alerts For Your Business and Your Blog

First things first: if you don’t have a free Google account yet, you should set one up. Your Gmail account will do fine (and if you don’t have one of those yet, I can only strongly encourage you to nab one now — it will make managing life, not just your Google Alerts, so much easier).

Now, go to the Google Alerts page and you’ll see this:

Screenshot: Google Alerts

Simply type keywords into the “Search Terms” box — just as if you were searching for these keyword terms on Google. Select “Comprehensive” (which will get you results from other blogs as well as news sites), and then choose “as it happens” or “once a day.” (Which you choose is a matter of preference. I typically select “once a day” for most of my terms except for my name and my business name; items mentioning either are of sufficient importance to me that I want to know about them as soon as possible.) Then type in your email address in the “Deliver to” box, and click “create alert.”

Repeat as often as necessary for each of your search terms. I would not recommend having just one alert for all your terms, as the results could be overly long and hard to scan. One alert per search term or related terms works best for me. For example, I have one alert that searches for "sheryl sisk schelin" OR "sherrie sisk" OR "sheryl schelin" and another that looks for "inspired solo".

What Should You Search For on Google Alerts?

It depends on your blog topic, your business and its nature, and your interests, of course, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Your name, and all variations thereof
• Your business’s name and all variations thereof
• Your blog name and all variations thereof
• Keywords related to the services you provide
• The name of your competitor(s) and major variations thereof
• Any pending legislation that might impact your business or practice area
• The name of any licensing or regulatory body that impacts your business or practice area

Take this list solely as a starting point! Add whatever search terms you think would be helpful to your marketing and blogging efforts.

Managing Your Google Alerts

Once these alerts start rolling in, you’ll need some system in place to manage them so that they don’t clutter your inbox and so that you can call them back up when needed. This is where Gmail is particularly useful.

Create a series of labels for incoming alerts based on the alert itself. For instance, you can assign @alerts-name to the alerts on your name and variations of your name or @alerts-bizname for alerts on your business’s name. Create one label for each alert. Tip: use the “@” symbol to make sure your label names will remain at the top of your list of alerts.

Now, create filters to assign these labels automatically to the incoming messages. Whether you have these filters send the mail direct to the archives (skipping the inbox) is up to you. I prefer to have my alerts remain in my inbox so I can review them. Then I can simply select them and archive them together by clicking on the label name in the left-hand side of my Gmail account page. The best way to assign these labels via filtering is to use the from:(googlealerts-noreply@google.com) function in conjunction with the subject line (which will be your alert search terms).

That’s it! Now, you can use these alerts to help you create future blog posts, keep tabs on your business reputation and your competitors, and keep up on all events and pending legislation or other possible changes that might affect your profession!

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 17: Lecture

Today’s topic is all about blog fodder: the raw material we use to create those brilliant blog posts. We’ll explore why it’s important to have a resource file for future posts, how to collate and store all that information, and how to use those ideas later as creative prompts.

Blog Fodder: Where Does It Come From?

Probably the biggest question or pushback I get from nonbloggers (besides the “I don’t have time to blog!” complaint) is “Where on earth do you come up with ideas for all those posts?”

It’s sort of amusing to someone who’s been blogging awhile, because we all know the truth: there’s no excuse for a blogger to ever run out of blogging ideas! Sure we may struggle with the right way to frame a particular topic, or have difficulty expressing ideas in just the right way, but the basic ideas themselves — well, they’re everywhere. That’s what this topic is all about.

I call it “blog fodder” — the raw material we use to create blog posts. Fodder is the seed of the idea of the post — not your theme, not your title, not your subject, not even your main point. It’s just the starting point — the page that makes you go “hmm, that’s interesting” — the quote that starts the gears whirring in your brain.

The biggest problem with blog fodder is not “where do I find it?” but “how on earth do I collect and store all of that in a way that makes sense and that I can actually work with?!”

Storing and Tagging Blog Fodder For Future Use

There are probably as many methods for storing and working with blog fodder as there are bloggers. Some paper addicts I know actually create a blog book — a physical printed notebook or binder with notes for future posts, lists of topics, printouts from other blog posts on other sites that they want to comment on later, an editorial calendar.

If the printed page holds more appeal for you, then by all means, choose this method. Select an easy-to-open three-ring binder, and create sections — one for ideas, one for your editorial blog calendar, and one for drafts in progress. Keep fresh paper in the binder so you can add to it when the mood strikes. Then, when you see a blog post, news item, or other website page that triggers your creative juices, print it out and place it in the binder.

I prefer the digital approach myself, and here your options are almost endless. I’ve already written about two tools I have a lot of experience with — Rusty Budget and Evernote. Frankly, I’ve started relying more and more on Evernote, and less on Rusty Budget, as Evernote will also collect URLs, and has a handy one-click button that transfers selected text to the Evernote interface, where I can then manipulate it to my heart’s desire with tags, formatting, and additional notes or text.

You can also use the ubiquitous and elegantly simple text document. Plain text is really quite an amazing tool for bloggers, when you stop to think about it. The format strips away all codes that are potentially incompatible with your blogging software, and the resulting file takes up very little space on your hard drive. I compose all my blog posts in text files these days, which is also great because I have an as-I-go real-time archive of all my blog posts. And of course, every Mac and PC has a text editor built in — TextEdit for Macs, Notepad for PCs.

There are all kinds of special editors and notetaking software you could also use: One Note, Notebook, Scrivener, MarsEdit … they’re definitely worth a try. But to keep it simple, all things considered, I highly encourage you to give Evernote a try. It’s free, it syncs up both with the cloud and with other computers on which your account is set up and the software installed, and it’s quite robust. The tagging feature lets you keep all your blog fodder in one notebook, and your tags can sort things out by your blog categories, as well as any other criteria you wish to add.

Task for Day 17: Hunt For Blog Fodder, and Store It Well

Today, we’re going to be squirrels hunting for nuts, only our nuts are the individual little pieces of blog fodder that will serve as the creative genesis of future blog posts. Select one of the methods above — or create your own, or try something else (do share with us in the comments, though!) — and sort all your “nuts” accordingly. Aim for at least 20 pieces of blog fodder to give yourself a variety to choose from — sometimes, the “muse” doesn’t really gel with a particular topic, and you just really want to write about something else, so it’s good to have choices.