I haven’t always been kind to the ABA Journal. I’ve written mean words about some of its initiatives, and been particularly leery of its annual beauty pageant. Eventually, I tired of mentioning it, and didn’t. And yet, it’s back again.
On the one hand, it’s unfortunate in that it has brought out some of the most unsavory conduct ever seen in the blawgosphere. Otherwise legitimate blawgers have shown the glaring hole in their self-esteem that can only be filled by votes for greatness. It’s not enough that people “out there” actually spend some time reading what they write, but that they need the glory of being recognized, or worse still, winning. Validation is sad. The need for validation is ugly.
The nomination and selection process for the beauty pageant has always been suspect. While the powers behind the throne has tried to tune the process sufficiently to avoid the most flagrant abuses, it’s hardly much of a problem to find somebody to nominate you. And while the actual selection process is cloaked in mystique behind the massive mahogany doors of the ABA Journal Editorial suite, it bears noting that these aren’t necessarily lawyers honoring peers, but writers filling a list.
The point of this beauty pageant isn’t to make raise consciousness about blawgs, or even to honor anybody, but to get backlinks to the ABA Journal. How else would anybody know (or care) if it exists, given its cursory articles coming a day or two after everyone else in the blawgosphere has already written something about the subject in substantially greater depth. It’s not easy being relevant in these go-go days of split-second information and gnat-challenged attention.
Oh nuts, here I am again going on and on in the negative about it again. If there was a curmudgeon category (or, as some suggest, Miss Anthrope), I would be a shoo-in.
There is, as there often is, another side to this silliness. New names arise in the blawgosphere all the time, and there’s long been a sense that breaking into the mix is hard, maybe even impossible, now that blawgs have been around a while and firmly established themselves. The old guys have readers. The new guys hope for crumbs, a chance to show they’ve got something worth sharing.
Granted, most don’t have much to offer, usually because they’ve been lied to at the inception and consequently molded their blawg to meet their marketer’s schemes. It’s not that the lawyers are morons or incapable of holding a worthwhile conversation, but that they entered into it with the wrong attitude, being told that if they aren’t using social media to sell themselves (cheap), they’re wasting their time.
But a few, the rare birds who can put together that combination of substance and readability, often laced with humor and charm, To their surprise, they may find that the old guys welcome them, warmly, to the blawgosphere. Contrary to the marketing horde, the vitality and fun of the blawgosphere comes from the interaction, whether it’s blowing kisses or trading barbs, it makes us all more alive and vital to engage with each other.
Neither the marketing sorts nor the Happysphere want anything to do with others in the blawgosphere. For the former, they would die before including a link that might send a potential client to a competitor. For the latter, they fear their odd ideations won’t hold up to scrutiny by their peers, and are either too fragile or “special” to take the chance. Either way, they contribute nothing. Nothing to thought. Nothing to vitality. Nothing to the blawgosphere.
What this beauty pageant does, much as I hate to admit anything good about it, is raise consciousness about new blawgs, some of which are exceptionally good and worthy of lawyers’ time and attention. It’s a chance for a blawg to get onto the radar, to make a wave and let the blawgosphere know it’s here. And if you give the Blawg 100 a little extra credit, making the cut says a blawg has “arrived.” For the new blawger who is trying to break in, this heightened profile can be huge, and the quality of their content inures to everyone’s benefit.
When the omnipotent hand of the ABA Journal points at you, people notice. So what if it desperately needs a manicure? It’s the ABA, dammit, and it’s the grandest Dame we’ve got. (Notice how I’ve feminized the ABA Journal? How’s that for gender neutral?) As much as I’ve taken the time from my busy day in the past to let the ABA Journal know her baby is ugly, the inclusion of so many new blawgs on the list, some of which are terrific, is itself a worthwhile contribution to the blawgosphere, enough so as to warrant sending a few hits her way.
Now that I’ve been all mushy and nice here, maybe I’ll win something this year? Nah.
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I’m not sure this is true. We’ve found that abajournal.com refers a handful of traffic, at best, during the Blawg 100 competition. If that is typical, then it’s either because most people who visit the Blawg 100 already think Lawyerist isn’t worth reading, or it’s because the Blawg 100 actually doesn’t do much to raise a blog’s profile.
It could be argued that if the right people care about the Blawg 100 (i.e., other prominent law bloggers), then they will pay more attention to Blawg 100 members, which would raise a blog’s profile by making that blog more written-about by other bloggers.
I’m not sure Lawyerist is a valid testbed for that theory, but that would suggest that a blog’s traffic would increases substantially (or at least noticeably) after being included in the Blawg 100. We haven’t noticed any such bump in years past.
So while it may still be significant that a blog makes the Blawg 100, I’m not sure it will do anything to boost the profile of the blogs so honored.
I just can’t do it, Sam. It’s just too easy, and it’s beneath my dignity. Nope, I can’t.
Well, okay, if you insist. It’s number 1. There, you happy now?
I am. But I’d also be curious to know if you (and other blogs) get different results. I’d certainly never claim that Lawyerist is a representative sample.
To a new blawg, a bump that might be too small for a monster like the Lawyerist to notice might be quite a positive step forward. It certainly can’t hurt.
If only there was some new blog on the list we could look at to see if it got a bump in traffic…
It’s too early to tell, but so far it’s looking like not much of a bump, roughly 5% of the size of a non-sequitur link from ATL. However, it could turn out that it’s not so much a bump as a slow trickle. If it continues to generate the same traffic for 1-3 months, that’s a rather significant amount. Plus, hopefully some of those referral numbers will return as direct traffic later.
I could see it being more important for a very tiny site, but how many of those are there on the list? Most are pretty well established, large or mid-sized pages.
By the way, did you notice that both of our sites were referred to as “influential?” My condolences.
You have a blog? How nice for you.
As for the obvious overuse of “influential,” the ABA Journal is not a well-funded organization, and can only afford a handful of adjectives. Notably, they happen to have purchased “humorous,” and chose not to use it for either of us.
Last year, we were new. The amount of new traffic from the ABA Blawg 100 site to our blog was large. For a month or so. Then it stopped pretty much entirely. Over the year, as we continued to blog regularly, we are now back up to where we were during the Blawg 100 fever last year.
This year. It’s very odd. We are in Blawg 100 for the second year as non-lawyers writing for lawyers and interested others. But yesterday and today our traffic is actually down. 🙂 Go figure. We have no illusions we will actually ‘win’ in our category. We are a boutique firm with a total of two people. We pull in others as needed for large projects. We do all our own blogging and social media. We have no research assistants or ‘Twitter people’. It’s all us. Because we think that it’s important to be who we are and not have others tweet or write things that do not reflect who we are. Or worse yet, say things that are antithetical to who we are!
So do we like the Blawg 100 designation? Yes we do. Do we like that validation? Yes we do. Do we feel ashamed of that liking? Nope. Not even a little. Do we think their baby is ugly? No sir, we don’t. We just LOVE that cute little thing.
What we’ve learned in the last almost three years of blogging is that it’s a lot of work but it also sharpens us. It makes us think faster. We have more loose associations (a psychologist term) that turn out to be very valuable in our work. And we read more widely and more broadly than we would if we didn’t blog.
So we are not new. But we are sort of new. And we sometimes trade sleep to keep up our blog posts. And this year, while we are glad to have that baby visit again, it isn’t bringing the traffic boost (so far) that it did in our debut.
Who knows why? Maybe everyone is on vacation and they’ll be back on Monday…..
I have tens of thousands of people working worldwide produce my blawg posts and support my vast SJ t-shirt empire.
I suspected as much. Although I have also suspected you are likely a bit hypomanic.
Nah. I just go to sleep early.
Wait – you haven’t yet won your category? After campaigning for everyone else? We will have to fix that.
I’m not loved. Plus, I’m a people pleaser. It’s just how I am.