As a Lawyer-Blogger, What's the Purpose of Your Blog?

There's an interesting discussion happening on one of my legal listservs about using ghost writers for your blog. Grant Griffiths is reproducing some of the discussion on his Home Office Lawyer blog in a post entitled, "Should I Use a Ghost Writer for My Blog?". Grant's blogs are extremely successful, and his post gives some of his strategies for successful blogging.

Of course, as with any tool or activity you use to build your practice, you need to consider the purpose of that tool or activity. What, specifically, are you trying to achieve? What do you want your blog to be and do for your practice?

Some believe that blogging is a discussion, and that its purpose is not only to bring traffic to your website or blog, but to become a part of a community that's talking about a particular topic, issue, practice area, etc. Proponents of this view believe that blogging involves not only creating posts for your own blogs, but linking to others, gathering information by using RSS feeds, commenting on others' blogs, emailing individual bloggers, etc. These blogs are usually heavy on commentary and have their own 'voice' or personality. These bloggers believe that engaging in discussion at this level isn't possible if you're using a ghost writer.

By contrast, others believe their blogs provide information and create traffic using keywords in blog posts but don't need individual commentary. They may use their blogs strictly as a vehicle to collect information on a particular issue or area of the law - an aggregator of sorts - requiring little or no personality or 'voice' (at least for some posts). These bloggers believe that using a ghost writer to spark ideas, to provide 'filler' content, to boost the frequency of posts, or even to provide all of the content for their blogs is just a smart way to leverage.

What do you think? If you have a blog or are considering starting one, what's its purpose?

Comments

[Neil J. Squillante]

Many people don't write well. These folks would be well-advised to outsource the writing much as celebrities do when they write a book. And some people don't have time to work with a writer or would do more harm than good if they did.

So in many situations it makes sense to outsource -- especially larger companies, which often ind it difficult to to write about anything other than their own products or respond to criticism in a genuine rather than artificial manner.

The best blogs don't limit themselves editorially. That's the real secret to building an audience -- must-read content published daily. Who writes it is largely irrelevant unless they're a celebrity or well-known expert.