Your email outbox is full of blog posts

As a lawyer you struggle to find the time to blog. Ironically, you’re creating blog posts throughout a typical work day.

They’re in your email outbox. The emails just need to be worked into blog posts.

Web strategist Andy Crestodina (@crestodina) had a nice piece in the Huffington Post last week on business blogs failing because of no time.

What you’re really saying, per Crestodina, is:

I don’t have time to blog …because I’m too busy writing 1000 words a day in email, answering important questions for my customers and prospects.

Sure, as a lawyer you are doing a lot of work that does not involve answering questions. You’re drafting documents, in court, in meetings, and much more. But during the course of the day, or at least the week, you are answering questions in emails.

Look at how questions answered in emails are uniquely suited for blog posts.

Key for a blog post is relevant content for your audience, written in an engaging fashion and in a conversational tone. You get all three in an email.

In addition, emails flow with your thinking. You crank them out quickly. You’re not sitting there with a blank screen thinking how to key up this post you have in mind. Should I outline my post? What goes first? What next? Should I think up the perfect title first? Do I add a snappy conclusion? You have none of that with an email.

Here are a number of ways to leverage emails for blog posts, a few of which I pulled from Crestodina.

• Blind copy yourself on emails you think would make for good posts and file them in an email folder marked “blog.”
• Pull an email from the folder when you have 20 or 30 minutes. Craft a title, sanitize the copy for names and confidences, clean up the text, put in links, bullet items and headers as appropriate and add an image.
• Listen for the questions that have been asked more than once. Rather than emailing the answer in entirety, do a post with your answer, and send a link with an email to your client or prospective client who asked the question. The plus here is that they see your blog and view it as sign of your authority. In the case of a client, you’ve also saved some time on their bill.
• If you have an administrative assistant or someone in marketing who can help you, blind copy them on emails you think would make a good post. Ask them to sanitize the copy, proof it, add the links and images. You do the final edits before the post goes live.
• If you send an email with a stronger, yet professional, opinion that can be perfect for a post. Law blog posts too often lack passion.
• Keep a legal pad next to your phone and jot down each question people ask you. The answers are likely going into an email at some point. If not, answering questions are perfect for blog posts.

As Crestodina says, you’re already doing a lot of blogging, you just didn’t realize it.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Maureen McLaughlin