Many lawyers blog.  But what about live blogging while at a conference?

One of the most exciting conferences for interactive (technology) as well as film and music is going on right now in Austin:  SXSW .  Social Media Today’s Lee Oden, blogging live from SXSW, posted some great tips for effective live blogging while at SXSW.

Lawyers could apply these same tips while blogging and posting live during legal or industry conferences.

For example, Lee suggests checking out the conference schedule in advance, and planning to arrive at key sessions early (so that you’re seated near a plug.) I’d also suggest examining all concurrent sessions and selecting ones that would be particularly interesting your blog readership.

Lee suggests typing the posts in an application like Notepad and then transferring them to your blog. This works well in case you lose your internet connection during a session.

Promoting your posts immediately is also key, Lee notes, via Facebook, LinkedIn and the like. To take advantage of the “real time” nature of your blogging efforts; you want to get the word out fast.

Live blogging has an excitement and sense of “urgency” that blogging after the fact doesn’t (much like live journalistic coverage is more thrilling than recap reporting). Of course, blogging during conferences is also a great way to reach readers across the globe who couldn’t ravel to attend the conference in person; even if they read your posts the next day rather than in real time, the coverage will still be fresher than the summaries printed in post-conference newsletters months later.