Blogging for SEO or meaning?

One would hope that blogging, something that cost American, Avijit Roy, his life last Thursday, would mean something more to the American lawyer than SEO and a means to get traffic to a law firm website.

Roy (@avijit_roy_mm), gave his life for something he believed in. Roy, accompanied by his wife, was hacked to death on the streets of Bangladesh by extremists who resented his writings critical of religious dogma in Roy’s native country.

Extremists threatened to kill Roy if he came home from the United States to visit. As reported by CNN’s Ben Brumfield (@benbcnn), Roy defied the threats and departed his home in suburban Atlanta for Dhaka, where he appeared at a speaking engagement about one of his latest books. It was walking from a book fair that Roy and his wife were attacked by knives and machettes. Roy was killed and his wife bloodied and missing a finger.

Who was Avijit Roy? From Brumfield:

Software was his career, but writing and blogging were his calling. And he did not speak alone. Roy founded the religion critical blog Mukto Mona, which served multiple writers.

He called it “an Internet congregation of freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists and humanists mainly of Bengali and South Asian descent who are scattered across the globe.”

Its mission was to promote science, secular philosophy, democracy and religious tolerance in articles by academics and activists.

Its headers contain quotes by famous scientists, including one attributed to Albert Einstein condemning the doctrine of heaven and hell as a means of enforcing ethics:

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.”

A reisident of Alpharetta, Roy was not unlike some other Americans.

• He was a fan of Bill Maher’s harsh reproach of Islam
• He was a science geek who admired Charles Darwin, evolutionary psychology and astrophysics.
• He was a fan of “Cosmos,” the TV series explaining the science behind the origin of the universe, and of the geek sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

Roy just wanted to return home, beliefs in hand.

Wow, the power of blogging. One American, blogging with meaning, from an an Atlanta suburb reaching people across the world — and eliciting a response like this. As awful as it turned out to be.

Blogging is so, so powerful, even in the hands of you as a lawyer just doing your job.

• Enables people to see your passion, care and expertise.
• Enables prospective clients to have an intimate level of trust in you before they ever meet you.
• Enables you to express your insight, as a columnist/commentator, in a real and meaningful way.
• Enables you to advance the law and shape societal issues.
• Enables you to read from and network with others as a means of never ending learning.
• Enables you to build relationships and a lifelong word of mouth reputation.

Wow, what an outcome.

• People are enabled to pick a lawyer in an informed fashion.
• Lawyers getting better and better.
• Lawyers giving of themselves to help others, whether they be consumers or large businesses.
• Lawyers who give of themselves being hired and rewarded, as opposed to those lawyers with the biggest marketing/advertising war chest.
• Lawyers improving the sorry image of our profession.

So powerful, yet so sad when I hear of lawyers and legal marketers focusing on blogging as means to garner SEO and the like.

Why focus on blogging, something so powerful in the hands of a lawyer, as the tactic to get people in front of your bio, firm profile and phone number? Shouldn’t blogging mean something more to you as a lawyer?

Lawyers who may blog are certainly not putting their lives at risk like Roy did. But Roy is a reminder of how powerful a blog is in the hands of a good lawyer.

A reminder, at least for me, not to waste the gift we’ve been handed.