I am still thinking about blogging today. Recently the Harvard Business Review posted a blog titled: The Moment Social Media Became Serious Business I was fascinated reading what Harold Adams Innis said about the reduction in the cost of communication in 1951, long before anyone was blogging. What he said applies to blogging today.
- Redistributing knowledge and, in doing so, shifting power
- Making it easier for “amateurs” to compete with “professionals,” because access to knowledge substitutes for mastery of complexity
- Allowing individuals and minorities to voice ideas
- Reducing the advantages of speed that formerly accrued because some had knowledge before others
- Reducing the advantages of size that are based on the ability to afford high costs.
Because blogging costs so little, smaller law firms and younger lawyers have a chance to compete against bigger law firms and more senior lawyers. Borrowing a Seth Godin book title, the problem is, the more lawyers and law firms blogging, the less blogging by lawyers is a Purple Cow.
So, if you are blogging, you better find a way to make your blog unique and valuable to your target market because your clients and potential clients are being inundated with indistinguishable client alerts and blogs written by lawyers. Want some tips? Take a look at 45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog. That post may give you some good ideas.
What can you do to make your blog be unique and interesting? One way to stand out is to tell stories. Your readers will more likely read a story than some dull summary of the law.
How to do it? Here is a blog Storytelling in Blog Posts: How to Add Sparkle and Delight Readers. I like the three parts of a story:
- a beginning sketching the problem
- a middle part showing how the problem was solved
- a final part explaining how the hero lived happily ever after
As many of you know, I wrote a column for Roads and Bridges magazine for 25 years. I followed the three parts of a story approach in most of my columns. Every quarter I wrote a survey was taken of what was most read in the magazine and almost every quarter my column was most read. Readers liked reading stories about other contractors.
Is your blog a “purple cow”? If not, try writing a story and see if that attracts more readers.