Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times and formerly with CNN and MSN’s Slate Magazine, wrote a piece for this morning’s Los Angeles Times entitled Let’s Face It, Blogs Are Better.
Turns out he was voicing an opinion that despite his best efforts was not getting picked up by the mainstream media. So he sent it to a few high profile bloggers. The result Kinsley says was “unnerving.” His view and reasoned support for it from other columnists spread like wildfire. “Within hours, there were discussions going on in a dozen blogs, all hyperlinking to one another like rabbits.”
Though written from a columnist’s perspective, the way your word – expertise in the case of lawyer – spreads via blogs is something all marketing folks should understand.
Kinsley writes:
What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback, but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to The Times editorial page. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement ? mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession ? with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.
Why the difference from print per Kinsley?
- Lots of space. I’ll be hard-put, next week, even to summarize my own argument, let alone discuss those of others, in the space available to a columnist. Letters get even less space, if they are published at all.
Certainty that what you write will get posted is surely another factor.
- Ease. You can send your views electronically to a blog in less time than it takes to find a stamp, let alone type a letter.
- Web enables people scattered around the globe, who share an interest in a topic to find one another and enjoy a gabfest. Webheads like to call this phenomenon “community.”
Forget the online world, get busy spreading the word through key influencers who publish blogs. The expertise of your lawyers will become well known.