Legal Ghostblogger

Arianna Huffington Reveals the Secret of Successful Blogging to Daily Show's Jon Stewart

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Arianna Huffington

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"Isn't that just a waste of people's time?"  -Jon Stewart (to blogging evangelist Arianna Huffington)

 

Blogging is anything but a waste of time, especially if you blog about your passion, says Arianna Huffington, who appeared on the Daily Show December 3rd to talk about her new book The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.  (Although Huffington only actually authored the introduction to the book, the bulk of it is by other Huffington Post writers.) "Blog your passion," Huffington responded to Stewart when he asked one of the ways that bloggers can get their blogs noticed, "blog your obvious passion and blog your secret passion." 

 

The whole interview is entertaining and enlightening (thank you to my brother Kevin for bringing it to my attention), with Stewart playing doubting Thomas to Huffington's sincere belief in the power of the passionate poster. But the money moment of the entire show was when Huffington seemingly accidentally verbalized perhaps the best definition of blogs I've come across:

 

"Blogging is not about perfection. Blogging is about intimacy, immediacy, transparency, and sharing your thoughts the way you would with a friend."

 

And that is it, my friends.  That is the power of the blog in a world that has gotten too good at polls, focus groups, and target marketing. A blog is where you go beyond all that and build authentic relationships.

 

Although... Jon Stewart did ask about people whose main contributions are comments such as "I think he's a dick for saying something I disagree with."  Oh there's plenty of those out there too, Jon, plenty of those out there too.

Bribery or Philanthropy? Social Media Gets Involved in Education

This is a blog for professionals, so I feel fairly safe in guessing that 99% of my readers know what it's like to have student loans hanging over your head.  Whether you're still paying off your own student loans, or you're now saving for your own kid's college education, we always seem to be giving up part of our paycheck for education.

Which is why I wish I'd had Michael Kopko's entrepreneurial stroke of genius first.  A student at Columbia Business School, Kopko had the creativity to apply the cutting-edge concepts of social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn to the time-honored tradition of bribing kids to get good grades. His website is GradeFund.com, and it allows students to set up profiles (just as they would on the social media sites) and then invite friends and family to sponsor their education by pledging various amounts of money for marks of achievement.  Money for grades—what could be more simple?

The beauty of it (especially to a literature snob such as me) is that you can actually choose to pledge your $20 for any A (or B, or C) or you can specify that you'd like to sponsor good grades only in your favorite subject.  So I, for example, could decide that I really don't care what my nephew gets in his Health class, but that I'll give him $100 if he gets an A in British Literature. Oh the power!

Parents have been doing this for years, now aunts and uncles get to be in on the fun.  Although I should mention that if you don't have any nieces or nephews, sons or daughters, but want to be a patron of education anyway, you can still become a sponsor on GradeFund.  This could be the perfect way for lawyers who don't have quite enough to start "The John Smith Law Scholarship" at their alma mater to encourage and contribute to the next generation law students.

Personally, I plan to use it to build an army of Shakespeare nerds.

Legal Drama-Rama

Who needs daytime soaps when we have blogging lawyers?

As a blogger by trade (but more importantly as a writer by trade) I have a high respect for those who write informative and high-quality blog posts. I look forward to those blogs as places to learn, share knowledge, participate in a community, maybe make some friends, and generally have an enriching experience.  This is especially true when I visit blogs written by professionals.  Just as I wouldn’t want to see my doctor or lawyer shouting obscenities on the sidewalk, I don’t want to see that person regressing into childlike behavior in the blogosphere either.

Unfortunately (as evidenced by the comment to which I have linked above) this happens all too often.

If your website is the face you show to the world then your blog is your voice.  As such, I would go so far as to suggest that your blog is even more important than your website.  Your pretty face may cause the guys stop and stare, but if your mouth is spewing trash you can bet they won’t take you home to meet the family.  What clients want from their lawyer is not a hot one-night-stand; they want an intelligent class-act.

As a professional writing a blog, whether you like it or not, people are coming to you for education and guidance.  Your visitors are making themselves vulnerable by admitting that they may have something to learn from you, a gap in their own knowledge.  To throw that back in their faces with vitriolic rants and name-calling is worse than immature and disrespectful, it’s pernicious.

Whether your blog is attached to your firm’s website or not, anything you publish online—anything—will reflect what kind of person (or lawyer) you are to your colleagues and potential clients. In person, you represent your firm whether you’re in the office or at the grocery store; the same is true of your online presence. 

Make it count.