Publish your law blog for social and mobile, not for your blog site

When publishing a blog you need to consider how people are consuming your content. Today, content moves socially and it’s viewed on mobile devices.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have browsers built into their mobile apps or provide for the seamless display of a browser as a window in their app. That’s where your blog content is being consumed, commented upon, and further shared. Or at least it should be.

Your blog is not a destination site or resource that you should expect people to return to. There are few, if any, destination sites today. Even the New York Times has seen its traffic to its home page drop by 50% in the last year.

Social media is the destination. People rely on people they trust, often influencers (bloggers, authors, reporters, niche leaders), for news, information, and commentary. Your blog content moves, or at least it should, by virtue of others sharing your blog across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Start viewing your blog content on an iPhone on Twitter’s and Facebook’s app. How does it look? Is it easy to read? Is it is easy to comment on or share?

Do not focus on your law firm’s brand, logo, colors, lawyer bios and pictures of lawyers. Focus first on simplicity and ease of consumption on mobile in social apps. If your content is valuable and insightful, I’ll figure out who you are no problem. I’ll start to follow you and share what you have to say. I’ll trust you enough to give you a call when I I think you can help.

Do not make the mistake of thinking the world consumes content like the lawyers at your firm do. Publish for today and the future. Publish with empathy for your audience. After all it’s this audience, by sharing, who will become a large part of the distribution channel for your blog.

Your visual brand, including colors and feel, can still be woven into simplistic and mobile design by good designers and developers.

Just publish with a focus on your audience and how they consume first. You’ll be well ahead of the game.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Sean MacEntee