Great disconnect : Will your law firm understand it in time?
If you have not seen it, take 10 minutes to watch the video from HOBO's Costas Now where Will Leitch, the founder and editor of the popular sports blog, Deadspin.com, was attacked by Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist.
Bissinger said Will was full of shit, and basically said that blogs were a pile of crap, and that it's a travesty that people today are getting information from blogs as opposed to seasoned journalists. Reminded me of an AmLaw 100 CMO jumping me on blogs. ;)
Seriously though, lawyers and law firm management needs to recognize reality. Younger people, age 40 and below, are not looking to print for news and info - they're looking to the net. And you better understand better than Bissinger that all these blogs are not crap. These blogs are published by some of the most knowledgeable people around - and like it or not, these blogs are read by your target audience.
The average age of newspaper readers is over 50. Ask new lawyers around your office how many subscribe to the local newspaper at home. Let me know if you find anyone who does.
Getting the paper at the bottom of the driveway before a juice and english muffin each morning is as routine as taking a shower for me. But I'm a dying breed.
And those non-subscribers are not missing out on news. They're seeing what to they want to see, and arguably need to see, throughout the day.
Their trusted influencers (friends, bloggers, reporters) turn them onto things they'll find of interest through blogs, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, IM, and all sorts of social media. Better yet for the non-subscribers is that they are seeing the news the day before the people who subscribe to hard copy publications.
Don't get me wrong traditional news is still valuable. Good reporters and columnists continue to be in demand.
But they need to make their content relevant to a growing population getting their news online. Get the content online with a RSS feed. Have an effective Internet presence through blogs, and what are becoming mainstream, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, so that people on these mediums get familiar with you and your content.
Gain the trust of people using social media and those folks will spread word of your content to the masses. There's a stream of comments with links flowing through the Internet each minute of the day in a fashion that most folks cannot fathom. You need to get your content in that flow.
Unfortunately for most law firms, they have no desire to learn social media. Some just flat out say it's all bullshit - like Bissinger. Others give it lip service but don't hire or empower people to harness the powers of social media.
Law firms are filled with some of the brightest people in the country. Law firms try to use their intellectual capital to showcase this talent. But articles in print and archived on websites or email newsletters and alerts aren't going to cut it.
Those mediums are irrelevant to a growing population who get content through social media. Not only are you not connecting with the people under 50 who are leading today's businesses, you're increasing the divide.
Kevin,
A little off topic here, but I would love for your to really take us all through Twitter, step by step. How does it tie in with Blogging and how can it help lawyer marketing?
I think an intro to Twitter for lawyers, legal marketers and law firm business development folks by webinar is in order. I'll pull something together. For you we could do over a beer or coffee in town.
I was very taken with the aftermath conversation on Deadspin. The follow-up posts by Will Leitch really did take the high road, which was interesting in itself, since he was the one accused of being in the gutter of journalistic integrity.
I've been thinking about this exchange for a couple days now, and it really was a sign of a deepening divide. Your post title may be even more telling than you've addressed here, Kevin.
You have a good economic/business reason to continually explain the ROI of blogs to firms. Not every tool or nuance of the social sphere is going to have that advantage. At some point, Firms will have to figure this stuff out for themselves, or face falling behind. And in some cases, spending a year on the ROI equation may be just enough time to miss the boat entirely.
For me this all adds up to firms (& businesses) making faster decisions. Some are going to be up to the task, and some aren't.