Blogging for Your Law Practice Is a Business, Not an Art

There is a bit of misguided mythology out there about the nature of blogging. It seems that a fair number of netizens still operate under the notion of blogging as some romantic voyage into inner expression. There may have been a time when that was the predominant paradigm. Not anymore.

That is, not if you're trying to run a business. Today, blogging is as much a business as it is an art. If anything, it's more a business than an art. Simply knowing this will help you survive long enough for your law firm blog to become relevant.

Tips for Blogging for Your Law Practice

Jonathan Gebauer at The Social Ms notes that some of the most relevant bloggers in history have tasted the sting of failure. Not too many people know that blogger Jeff Bullas of Uber was the captain of a failing business and that he was $50,000 under water. When he started blogging, his fortunes turned for the better...

Jon Loomer is another good example. After being let go from his job in 2011, he worked to make his blogging hobby something a little more concrete. Now he's arguably one of the most famous FB bloggers in the world.

As a lawyer, you should have very specific objectives for your blog: getting traffic to your site, showing that you're up-to-date and knowledgeable, becoming a expert in a specific practice area, etc. Although it's a new form, successful blogging requires the oldest secrets in the book:

• Discipline: This is arguably the most important factor. If you cannot summon the will to stick to a schedule, then you're most likely going to fail. Bloggers expect regular publications and will hold your lack of consistency against you unless your material is just that good. And if you're just starting out, they'll have nothing else to judge you by. Strive to maintain discipline and observe a schedule diligently.
• Organization: Organization is closely tied together with discipline. You may end up writing on a wide variety of sub-topics, but all your content should be relevant to your readers. The marriage of the discipline and organization will convince you that blogging is more technique and science than art. Organization will sometimes require you to create topics just so you can maintain your publications, but hey -- that's the nature of business.
• Entrepreneurship: You probably already have this or you wouldn't even be reading this post. Entrepreneurship is about wanting to stretch an idea into something useful for other people -- so it creates a market. Today, simply being is a marketable asset. The blog is your opportunity to show potential clients and the legal community what you have to offer.

Blogging in this way doesn't mean that you have to eschew all creativity in order to blog and be profitable, but it's really hard to be purely artistic and achieve your objectives.

Related Resources:

• Top 100 Law and Lawyer Blogs (Criminal Justice Degrees Guide)
• 11 Ways to Improve Your Firm's Internal Collections Practices (FindLaw's Strategist)
• How to Find Job Security as a Solo Attorney (FindLaw's Strategist)
• The End of "Too Big to Fail" Bailouts? Can It Be? Nah, It Can't. (FindLaw's Strategist)