Table For Two, Please: Blogging As An Intimate Conversation

I didn’t come up with the concept – that was the cluetrain manifesto – but as Liz Strauss’s guest blogger “Vern The Idea Dude” points out at her Successful Blog, blogs are “catalysts for engagement.” And that engagement begins with a very personal connection between blogger and reader, just like a table set for two.

It might seem odd at first to think of blogging in this way. After all, you’ve been conditioned to seek massive amounts of traffic – lots of traffic. Many readers, all eyes on your page – it’s an image that leads dangerously to another image, of you at the lectern in the biggest lecture hall imaginable. And it’s an image that’s anathema to your success, because it’s impersonal, detached, the very opposite of immediate and compelling. And that’s what you want your blog posts to provoke in your readers – a sense of immediacy and a provocation to act.

That’s not just true at personal blogs, or true for big Internet dudes like Seth Godin – in fact, it’s especially true for you, the inspired solo lawyer whose blawg is the foundation of his or her marketing plan.

How do we as lawyers start that intimate conversation with our potential clients? Like any good conversationalist, we start it by first being interested in what the other person is interested in. Think about it. In every single self-help book aimed at helping people overcome their fear of small talk or networking events, there will appear some variation on the following advice: “Show interest in the other person and their ideas/interests/problems/lives.”

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who are you speaking to?
• What does that person need?
• Why is that need paramount in that person’s life, above all others?
• What do you have that can help meet that need?

Forget questions of why you’re the best person for the job – forget trying to sell the prospect on your services. Those things don’t come across well in an intimate conversation, do they? Focus on your reader – your dinner partner, if you will. The rest will come.

The Inspired Solo

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