Pretty blogs don’t bring business development success

Lawyers looking to blog often want to discuss blog design first.

It’s really not much of a discussion, I’m told of the design and features the professional has been thinking about for quite a while. I just let them know that although design is important, it’s not in fist 5 or 6 things to consider when getting ready to blog.

Marketer and author, Seth Godin shared earlier this week that pretty web sites are rarely websites that convert as well as unpretty ones.

If the goal of your site is to position you, tell a story, establish your good taste and make it clear what sort of organization you are, then pretty might be the way to go. And you can measure the effectiveness of the site by how it impresses those you seek to impress, by its long-term impact.

But it’s a mistake to also expect your pretty website to generate cash, to have the maximum percentage of clicks, to have the most efficient possible funnel of attention to action.

There’s always been a conflict between the long-term benefits of beauty in commerce (in architecture, in advertising, in transactions) and the short-term brutality of measurement and direct response.

Now Seth’s comments are directed to websites, not blogs, where influence, reputation, and engagement are the goal, but his comments are a nice reminder that design is not necessarily what’s most important with your blog.

Focusing on design and branding first can cause you to miss the mark on what’s most important.

• What are my business and professional development goals? Be careful what you wish for, blogging (done well) will get you there.
• Could I focus on more of a niche so as to break out of the pack of all the other lawyers who are too afraid to go after a niche?
• How does my blog become an integral part of my professional and business development?
• Do I know how to blog and how it’s different than writing content? If not, how am I going to learn?
• Who do I engage as the influencers of my clients and prospective clients so as to grow my own influence? Do I even know how to engage these influencers through blogging?
• Am I ready to take what will become a growing network of online connections offline into face to face and phone call connections?
• How am I going to measure success? Who do I want to engage? Where do I want to be speaking? In what area of the law do I want to be the lawyer’s lawyer? What clients do I want? (could even be by name)

Design is important, you are a lawyer. You need to carry yourself in a professional fashion, just as you would have a nicely furnished office, dress well and drive a nice car. It’s what we do as lawyers.

Heck, one of the reasons LexBlog exists is because I wanted to bring great design to blogs for lawyers. I wanted lawyers to have blogs with designs that were the equal, if not better, than anything on the net. I wanted a blog’s design to complement the law firm’s brand and website. I wanted users to have a great experience so they would subscribe to the blog and cite and share the blogs’s content. I still want all of these things.

I just want you to focus first on what’s most important. Otherwise you’re at risk of not achieving the tremendous professional and business development growth which bloggers experience.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Q Thomas Bower