Martin Schwimmer is a powerful example of someone leveraging his blog to grow his business.
Schwimmer is an independent lawyer who represents owners of some of the most famous trademarks in the world. He was formerly a partner at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu. Managing Intellectual Property magazine selected Schwimmer as one of the best trademark lawyers in the United States.
Schwimmer started his blog (SchwimmerLegal.com/blog) in May 2002. He spends about 30 to 60 minutes per day maintaining it, posting and commenting on news in the intellectual property area. However, the marginal cost of that time is low, because he is leveraging his preparation time. He needs to keep apprised of news in his industry just to do his job well; he simply is blogging what he reads.
His blog has created three networks for him:
- Search engine users. Clients have approached him solely as a result of his search engine placement, which is created largely by the blog. He has the highest-ranking search engine position for a law firm when the search term is “trademark”, which is due solely to the blog.
- Fellow bloggers in his space. The blog keeps him in contact with other bloggers in his sector. Some referrals have come out of that.
- Certain clients, colleagues, and practitioners have become regular readers.
Schwimmer has now built a three-person law firm specializing in intellectual property, and he says that at least 20% of his practice is directly related to clients who came via his blog.
