August marks the anniversary of when I started blogging. Two years have zipped by since I put fingers to keyboard and, if I may, whilst on holiday and trying not to think about work, I’d like to take a look back and get all personal.
Necessity is said to be the mother of invention and so it was in my case. I was writing a weekly newspaper article on law for the now defunct “Docklands” and wondering how to make better use of them. After all, once a newspaper has been thrown away that material is lost. Archant, the publishers had a website which published the articles online, but I wanted to take more control. Initially, I thought about putting up a website but that wasn’t really what I wanted. I didn’t have much technical knowledge or have much idea about social media at all. Looking back I can’t recall how I hit upon writing a blog: it just seemed to happen. I started experimenting with Blogger and quickly realised I didn’t like its lack of flexibility or its look. I signed up to WordPress.com and found it much better – a much greater choice of themes and add-ons, although still quite limited particularly as you can’t use Google Analytics with it. That was a major disadvantage and led me to move to WordPress.org and a self-hosted solution about a year ago. I should have done it much sooner: self-hosting gives far more flexibility because you can use a huge variety of plug-ins to add extra functionality. I’m not a programmer and nor do I have much technical understanding of what goes on “under the bonnet”, but I do enjoy tinkering around with plug-ins and widgets. Blogging has certainly increased what IT knowledge I did have enormously.
I also wanted to raise my own profile and generate another source of work for Dale Langley & Co. Rather naively I thought that once I started blogging the clients would just roll in. Two years on I know that was unrealistic, the web doesn’t work like that. I have taken on some very good work via people reading this blog and I receive regular enquiries about advice, all of which I am delighted to receive. There is though a fundamental mismatch between promoting professional services on-line which are then delivered in the “old-fashioned” way i.e. by a lawyer charging by the hour, and the need for new ways of accessing legal information. It’s not just about providing advice for free, but providing it at times and in ways that people want. Anyway, I digress. I wanted to raise and extend my own profile and this I think I have achieved. Thanks to blogging I’ve made contact with some great people also involved in social media – lawyers, consultants as well as clients. I’ve particularly enjoyed being involved in the UK Lawyers Network, which led to the UK BlawgRoundUp (#4 due out at Halloween hosted by @in_house_lawyer).
Another example of my naivety was in thinking that people would flock to the blog and leave lots of comments. Again, it doesn’t seem to happen like that although I’ve been quite pleased with the level of comments and feedback that I have received. Commenting on other blogs is something I don’t do enough of, mainly because of time constraints and I guess that is true for a lot of other bloggers juggling work and family life. I must do better! I tend to write or read (other) blogs when on the train, or late at night. One of the major impacts that social media has had upon my daily routine is that I now virtually watch no television nor read newspapers. The former doesn’t bother me much, but the latter does as I have been in the habit (encouraged by my parents early on in life of the importance of reading a quality daily paper). I worry that I am less well informed now about current affairs than I was before I started blogging, which is bizarre given how much news is available on-line. This is one reason why I find Twitter such a useful tool – the really important news stories or the ones that interest me anyway, tend to get picked up by my network and I read about it in 140 characters or fewer.
Although I am an enthusiastic adopter of social media, I remain sceptical about it to a degree. It’s a powerful tool to be used in promoting a business, person or cause. In most cases it isn’t an end in its own right – it’s just a very powerful method for keeping in touch and, social media buzzword coming up, “engaging” with others. It isn’t a method for making money in its own right unless you are telling other people how to make money from social media – those are the only people making money. In my case I have been asked to give lectures, for which I have been paid, and have taken on new clients, who have paid professional fees to my firm, but blogging, as such, hasn’t made me money. I would think that is true for the majority of bloggers. Agree?
My biggest frustration with blogging is that the less time I spend on a piece the more attention and RTs it seems to get on Twitter! Very odd, especially when we’re always told ”Content is King”: how can you plan to produce the best content you possibly can when blogs rushed off almost on a whim do better?
The other big frustration is not having enough time to blog and my aim (as ever) is to write more frequently. I admire John Bolch who gave up practising law to write full time. That’s a brave decision and not one to be taken lightly. That is an increasingly attractive option for me, but Mrs Jobsworth might take some persuading.
Ultimately though, I think the best response to the question “Why I blog” is a simple one: because I enjoy it and wish I’d started years before. I hope you enjoy reading it as well. I’m always thinking of ways to improve this blog and I would very much welcome your views on what I am doing right, what I am doing less well or just plain wrong and what I can do to make it better.
Thank you for reading!
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