Finally I have managed to Link up with Jonathan Fagan of Ten Percent the reason being I have always been impressed with his dedication to his Legal Recruitment blog and in my opinion is the best use of a blog by a recruitment company by far, and as such I have awarded Jonathan a badge for the best use of a blog for recruitment.

Although I am a regular subscriber to his blog I have to admit I have rarely read his posts, for no other reason than that they are aimed at a very specialist sector, his! Which is why it gets my accreditation. A recent post typifies the quality of his posts  “Should I spend thousands on going through the Legal Practice Course?” and “Alternative jobs for conveyancing lawyers and conveyancers” are good examples on how he helps and informs his candidates.

For me Jonathans’ blog is a way to stand out from the crowd and as I have said before candidates and clients prefer to deal with consultants who understand their market. The blog shows him to be informative, knowledgeable and a professional within his industry, while publicly giving away 10 percent of his profit to charity, what more can one say.

So having ranted on many times about his blog, I thought it was about time I found out whether all the time and effort he has put in has payed off.

So Jonathan, judging by the number of posts I assume you blog is important to you?

Yes it is, as it as helped drive traffic to our website, and also relieve our telephone systems of calls that can be answered by referring people to the blog for information.

What help do you get with writing your posts and when do you write them?

None at all. I usually dictate the blogs into a voice activated olympus dictation machine, and send them to a company called www.uk-transcription.co.uk who transcribe them and return, ready to go onto the blog. I do 3 articles per day during school term times, as I dictate the articles on the way back from dropping my daughter off in the morning, as well as when I go and do career coaching sessions.

Since you have started blogging how much business can you attribute to your blog?

I would say that about 10% of our business comes via the blog.

How many visits do you get to your blog and how many subscribers do you have?

Ive just been onto my Google Analytics site but cannot get any figures off at present – appears to be sulking!

What blogging platform do you use and why?

I use blogspot, as I came to this just knowing that there was something called a blog and that you needed a site to be able to do it! I havent dared move it away, as the blog is high up in some search engines, and I don’t want to lose that status.

What other products/software do you use to help with your blogging?

Olympus dictation machine – it is a DS-2300 and I have been very impressed with it. I also link to the blog from my company website. How much work do you do on SEO? Very little for blogging – more for our company site.

What mistakes have you made?

Using blogspot.com – I think it is very inflexible – eg I still havent worked out how to index my blog entries so that they are searchable.

What has been the best experience from the blog?

Speaking to a senior solicitor who said he had contacted us specifically because of an article I had written some time before in the blog that he had enjoyed reading.

Why do you keep writing?

Because I can see the value of the blog to the search engine rankings of my company and my products, and also because I like giving advice.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Newspapers, trade magazines, my head and from conversations and day to day experiences.

Is there any thing else you would like to mention?

No cant think of anything. Many thanks! Jonathan Fagan

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