Niche thyself : Key to legal blog success
I talk to 3 or 4 lawyers a day about legal blogs. Most are scared to death of blogging on too focused of a topic. The fear is that by blogging on a niche, nobody will contact them on any other sort of work. Not true.
Guy Kawasaki is right on the money in the Art of the Start when he says 'Niche thyself.'
Here's a summary of 'Niche Thyself' I lifted from Scott Allen, the entrepreneur guide at About.com.
Ideally, you create something that is both of high value to customers and that few others are doing. If you consider uniqueness and value creation as the two parameters, you have four quadrants:
- High value, low uniqueness - You compete on price.
- Low value, high uniqueness - This is what he refers to as the "stupid" quadrant. It doesn't matter if you have no competition if no one wants to buy your product.
- Low value, low uniqueness - The "dotcom" quadrant. At one point, someone said, "We're going to change how people buy dog food. We're going to sell it online. We'll cut out the middleman and people will be able to buy it cheaper." But they forgot one thing: dog food is heavy. The money saved was offset by high shipping costs. The crazy thing is not that a company didn't realize this, but that at one point, 16 companies were selling dog food online. Of course, most of them are no longer in business - no great surprise.
- High value, high uniqueness - This is where you make money, margins and meaning.
High value, high uniqueness is where you achieve blog success as a lawyer - defined as further enhancing your reputation as a reliable and trusted authority and growing your business.
A niche means everything. Without a niche, you're just a lawyer with a voice. And if you haven't noticed, most people do not like lawyers and they dislike the ones who who use their voice regularly even more.
However, when lawyers who are reliable and trusted authorities on a niche have something to say, people listen. Better yet, they cite what the lawyer blogged in their own blog, a news piece (reporters), or an email.
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