Is the old-fashioned blog being killed by other publishing platforms?

No says tech strategist and writer, Alexandra Samuel (@awsamuel) in a piece in the Harvard Business Review.

Sites such as LinkedIn and Medium which allow for publishing have a place, but the blog remains alive and well.

Paraphrasing Samuel:

1. If you’re an established blogger—even one with a modest following—there’s no reason to throw away any readership you’ve built up by abandoning your own site in favor of LinkedIn. Far better to post on your own site, and then cross-post to LinkedIn (for professional content) or Medium (for personal thought pieces) to extend your audience.
2. If you are blogging to showcase your expertise, professional work, business or consultancy, a blog attracts attention and valuable traffic—particularly if you use it in conjunction with LinkedIn. Occasional posts that reflect your interests or expertise act as proof points for the implicit or explicit claims you make on your website; even occasional stories are a nice way of offering a wider range of content and letting colleagues or clients see the person behind the résumé. Selecting highlights to share on LinkedIn can bring readers back to your site for additional insights; when they get to your blog, they’ll see the services you offer and more about you.
3. A blog allows you to shape the context and curation of your posts in a way you simply can’t achieve on LinkedIn. A blog enables you to archive your posts by category allowing ease of  browsing for your readers. Category pages rank well on Google search. A blog will also allow search of all content and tagging of posts.

In addition to LinkedIn and Medium, lawyers have Casetext, where they may post insight to annotate cases, codes and regulations. Lawyers also have opportunities to write articles for Above the Law, Forbes, Bloomberg and the like.

But in addition to Samuel’s points, here’s five more reasons why the blog is not dead:

1. If you are really looking to establish yourself as an authority and a ‘go to’ lawyer in a niche, you need to have your own blog. Writing an article on someone else’s site or social network, though generating some attention is not seen by your audience as writing the book to on the subject, as is the case with your own blog.
2. Other platforms limit strategic blogging. Guest interviews, guest posts and highlighting referral sources and influencers is virtually impossible without a blog.
3. Blog posts coming from an independent publication stand to get shared socially more than pieces publshed to other platforms. My blog posts draw a lot of likes and comments on LinkedIn and Facebook. My posts are liberallly shared, favorited and retweeted on Twitter.
4. Other publishing platforms stand to get very crowded. People increasingly post to grab eyeballs as opposed to establlish authority. You have no control of the neigborhood.
5. Where does your content go when you post elsewhere than your blog. Your blog after a few years becomes not only a leading publication on a niche, but your legacy – your work as a lawyer.

Sure, if you want to get a bit of feeel for what publishing online is like, post a piece or two on one of the publishing platforms. But if want to establish yourself as an authority, the good old-fashioned blog remains the answer.

Image courtesy of Flickr by MyEyeSees