Digressing, as I sometimes do, into the world of the blawgospheric marketing gurus, I belatedly picked up on Kevin’s provocative post that size doesn’t matter. Ah, how many fellows have said that to themselves and believed it in their desperation. How many Hummers have been sold?
Kevin’s size issues are somewhat different. They have to do with size of audience relative to the success of a blog.
Scoble’s spot on this morning that building a big blog audience is not what matters in blogging. Robert was referencing what advertisers care about, but the same applies equally to you lawyers trying to achieve blog success.
Well, not exactly. The point was that size alone is insufficient to achieve success. Scoble’s point was that a big audience, but the wrong audience, will fail to achieve success in generating advertising revenues. But does that translate to targeting the “right”, but small audience?
This position is part of the LexBlog thrust that blogging is the marketing future for lawyers, and that any blogger can have a successful blog by posting once a week in a half hour. And it dices and slices. I admire Kevin’s zeal, but this can produce a very messy blawgosphere, filled with pretend blogs and will scare people away and denigrate the value of the blawgosphere as a whole for the rest of us. If you are a newbie to the blawgosphere and find that blawg after blawg is some tired, moribund self-promotional site, what are the chances you are going to exert even greater effort to find your way through the maze of self-hyping blawgs until you reach the substance?
The point is that the marketing blawgosphere, artfully designed to pop up first on google and, if all goes well for Kevin, far outnumbering the substantive blawgosphere, will result in the blawgosphere collapsing under its own dead weight. The marketing blawgs will strangle the real blawgs, and whatever future the blawgosphere may have otherwise held will never come to fruition.
Now I have no issue with LexBlog promoting hardcore blawging by its new members. Bless them for finding the joys of entering the conversation with interesting comments and fascinating news. But the part of the deal that says, “you too can be a blawger in only a half hour a week!” doesn’t thrill me. It’s not true. It won’t happen. And most importantly, it will not pay off.
I’ve spent a little time cruising around the blawgosphere. I’ve seen some people start up a blawg, go like gangbusters for a few weeks and then peter out. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but it took time to produce content that anyone wanted to read. When you produce garbage content, readers go away. If you intend to impress potential clients, garbage content does just the opposite. You may be a great lawyer, but if your efforts are reflected in some crap that you threw onto your blawg because you felt you had to do something, then potential clients will see it, recognize it for crap, and go elsewhere.
So how do you know if you’re producing crap? Size, baby. If you provide something of substance, people will come. You will gain an audience. Your audience will grow, and people will take note of you. And if you start a blog, post some stuff and nobody comes, then there’s a lesson there too.
So if you believe that being able to draw the picture on the back of a matchbook will make you a famous artist, then buy into the story that size doesn’t matter. But by clogging up the blawgosphere with junk that will drive away new readers who believe that they can find something worth the time to read, you’re ruining it for the rest of us. Don’t do it.
Update: Some worthwhile thoughts on what “size” means from gapingvoid.
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>>But the part of the deal that says, “you too can be a blawger in only a half hour a week!” doesn’t thrill me. It’s not true. It won’t happen. And most importantly, it will not pay off.<< Tell this to a family lawyer who generates 2 to 3 new cases a week from his blog by spending less than an hour a week. It was him who told me 15 to 30 minutes a post and a post once a week. He’s paying the mortage and he’s producing more helpful content for people dealing with divorce and related issues in his state than any other lawyer. His blog is paying off for him and there are other lawyers like him. Don’t get me wrong. Blogging more can increase the size of an audience and increase a lawyers ROI from blogging. But this story that it takes huge amounts of time to be a success (measured by enhanced reputation and increase in business) does not stand up to what’s taking place.
Like the woman in the TV commercial who lost 79 pounds in two weeks? If this is true, and I’ll accept the premise because I know you to be an honorable man, are you suggesting that anyone who posts once a week should expect 2-3 new cases a week? And if he’s producing more helpful content in an hour “in his state” than any other lawyer, that sounds like faint praise indeed.
You effort to compare an hour a week with “huge amounts of time” is hyperbolic. It doesn’t take “huge” (how many “huges” in an hour?) amount, but it does take time and effort to produce content and build up interest. And for your one divorce lawyer, how many abandoned blogs are there already clogging up the pipes? Be fair, since we both know that most will fail or tire of it and never achieve the benefit they seek. And that okay, because if your 1 divorce lawyer has a second start a blog in his town with LexBlog, then he loses half his business. If 3 new Lexblogs come online, then one of them (and likely more) won’t see a nickel from his hour of effort. And the blawgosphere will be the worse for the clutter.
Why is it not in your interest to promote harder working, more substantive blogging? We all benefit from a vibrant blawgosphere, bringing more readers and ideas into the mix. No one (except the provider of the turnkey blog service) benefits from dead weight and garbage blogs. Come on, Kevin, I know this is your gig, but you know it comes at a price to the rest of us. Promote good blawging, not quick and dirty blogging.
‘Quick and dirty blogging?’ Sounds like you are joining the blog police.
The family lawyer helped thousands of people with his blogging. As a result Kansans (including those serving in Iraq) were able to locate a lawyer who was able to handle a no-fault divorce at a price they could afford. But for his blogging, these folks may never have found a caring and reasonably priced lawyer.
If you wish to call that ‘Quick and Dirty Blogging’ I don’t give a dam. The result was people were served – both consumers and a lawyer will going to go to bat for these folks.
As far as our LexBlog clients dropping by the wayside and not benefiting from blogging. Not true. We run a subscription based business and have a 95% re-up rate over 4 years.
Yes, there’s a lot of room between a half a hour a week and huge amounts of time. But you’re doing a terrible disservice to say to lawyers thinking of blogging that it’s very time consuming, you’re unlikely to benefit, and you’re likely to give up. Maybe that’s the case for lawyers who have not a clue what they are doing with blogging, but I’m not working with those folks.
I’ll admit the lawyers I work with are more likely to succeed than most. The first thing discussed when a lawyer contacts me is what their goals are and whether we feel they can achieve those goals from blogging. As the company has matured, we’ve become much better in ID’ing lawyers for whom blogging will work.
And you can tell we only spend 15 or 30 minutes blogging a week Scott as we sit here blogging away on News Year Day. At least it’s only noon here on the West Coast and I’ll have a cocktail in hand at a party in a couple hours. 😉
And God I hate to tell you that the party is at a lawyer client’s house who has only posted twice to his 3 year old blog in the last year. I wouldn’t call what he’s doing as blogging but his search engine performance for IP Litigation gets him a good case or two a month.
Happy New Year Scott.
The quick and dirty tickled me too. I don’t blog for business, but a lot of what I do is “quick and dirty”. Sometimes I don’t have the time. If I have the time, I don’t have the inclination.
I also think there’s a difference in perspective. How do fellow bloggers look at a blog where there’s one or two posts a week and how do potential clients look at that? I bet they’re different.
Sorry about not responding sooner, but I’m a few hours ahead of you on the east coast, so I started a bit earlier. 2 posts in 3 years gets him a good case or two a month? Kevin, I’m trying, but I’m having a really hard time seeing this. Just like the Kansas divorce lawyer who has helped “thousands” etc. How would he know this? Does he receive thousands of email about how much his once a week post did for them?
I am really having difficulty seeing how this is happening. Is there only 1 divorce lawyer in all of Kansas? In fact, I just checked the LexBlog roll and see that you have two Kansas divorce lawyers listed. The first one last posted on October 25th and the second one (from Missouri but who also practices in Kansas) last posted on December 11th and November 27th before that. Neither posts weekly, and one doesn’t even post monthly.
Are these the guys you’re talking about? Are you telling me that the guy who last posted in October has an audience for his blog? I am sorry, but I just can’t buy this story.
Happy New Year Kevin.
But then it’s not a blog, it’s just a website. And there’s no audience, just a potential client searching the web who stumbles on it.
And your quick and dirty is better than most people’s 32 drafts, 6 hours-in-the-making, edited to within an inch of its life, post.
Happy New Year Gid.
At some point a blog can become a website, but as long as there is some new content regularly appearing, it will remain a blog. A website is static, a blog is dynamic.
You may disagree about how frequently one needs post in order to build an audience, but the evidence is out there. With 10-15 posts a week, I still can’t crack 600 visits a day, whereas someone like Jamie Spencer had 30,000 in his first few months and the dude doesn’t post more than once every three weeks!
Oh, Happy New Year to you too 😀
Settle down there, ol’ buckaroo. You know I love Jamie, but do you go there every day? I check Jamie every couple of weeks because I know he doesn’t post regularly. A lot of this changes when there are more blogs to see, and there isn’t enough time to see them, so you have to pick and choose. You’re going to look for the ones that have something to say, and have something new, because nobody is going back every day to a blog that only posts once every month or so.
There is a point to this (focus, bro). This is about the “selling” of blogs as turnkey operations for the purpose of generating business by saying that in one hour a week, you too can be a successful blogger. This may well be sufficient for a pretend blog, which is really a static website with an occasional new post every month or two, but this is not a blog.
For those of us, including you, who put some time and effort into our blawgs, turning the blogosphere into a pure marketing “opportunity” denigrates our efforts to make it substantive. If people believe that the only purpose fo blawgs is self-promotion (i.e., semi-dynamic website) and that there’s no “real” blawgosphere with ongoing debate, substantive content, etc., then there’s no reason to ever look at another blog unless you’re searching for a lawyer to hire. My point is that this is not what the blawgosphere is, nor what I want it to be. To this end, I am against the marketing of the blawgosphere to attorneys as a “one hour a week” marketing opportunity rather than the blawgosphere that you, Bennett, Pattis, Young Shawn, Malum, Me and others, know. One view makes the blawgosphere thrive. The other smothers it in junk and makes it worthless.