Essence of blogging
My friend and seasoned blogger, Euan Semple (@euan) has yet another excellent post on the essence of blogging in Blogging and the Budda.
In order to blog you have to become more aware. Aware of yourself, your surroundings, and your impact on them. You think about what you have noticed and what it means. You then write about this, refining your thoughts, putting them into words, shaping them. You then publish these words on your blog which hopefully reaches into the minds of your readers in a very direct and immediate way. It feels like a more intimate connection than say writing an article or a book. It’s like synapses firing outside your skull as well as inside it, extending your neural network to the rest of humanity.
Breaking Euan’s comments down lawyers can see what blogging really is.
- You have to become more aware. More important than content is being aware of what is being said around you. What is being written by other bloggers and reporters? What are you reading that is being delivered via your news aggregator or Twitter? What are the developments in the law and current affairs? What are your clients and prospective clients asking?
- Think about what you have noticed and what it means. Think about what you have read and heard in this regard. What are you learning?
- Write about this stuff, refining your thoughts. Blogging at its best is sharing what you have read, what you have learned from it and what it means to you and/or your audience.
- Reach readers in a direct and immediate way. Writing in this fashion — in an immediate, real, authentic and vulnerable way reaches readers in a much different way than an article. You reach them immediately. No editors, gatekeepers or delay. Readers may respond immediately via comments or social media. You are learning from this engagement.
- More intimate connection with readers than writing an article. You build trust and connections.
- Readers who have been reading your blog will come up to you like they have known you for years, yet the two of you have never met.
True blogging is so different than writing an article, sharing legal summaries or penning an email newsletter. Blogging as a learning and engagement medium can only be appreciated by lawyers by blogging in the way Eaun describes it.
Talk to lawyers who have achieved this level of blogging. They’ll tell of this experience being like no other form of writing or marketing.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Let Ideas Compete