You need a blog to be taken seriously, per technical evangelist and author, Robert Scoble, opining on why Michael Arrington started a new blog upon his departure from TechCrunch.
Though there are people who have achieved such stature in life that people will listen to them anywhere whether on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, or in news reports (think Scoble or Arrington), you, as a lawyer, need a blog to be taken seriously on the Internet.
Here’s why you cannot go without a blog per Scoble, and I agree with him.
- It makes building a brand more difficult. You don’t have a real domain. You can’t put whatever damn branding you want on your page here. There’s no individuality. Just fit in with everyone else.
- If you want to be a thought leader you want your thoughts to stand alone without the common folks posting their thoughts all over your great thinking. That’s possible on a blog, but not here where your great thinking will disappear within a few minutes, to be drowned out by all the other interesting things being posted here.
- The media takes “blogger” more seriously, and thinks “social media participant” is some sort of strange disease. Since Arrington wants to be taken seriously by folks like Charlie Rose, it makes sense that he would want to be seen as a blogger.
I left out Scoble’s point about needing a blog to make money from publishing as lawyers already have a business model associated with blogging. Build relationships, grow your network, and enhance your reputation as a result of blogging, and you bring in new work.
Scoble is making Google+ his primary publishing house. He then links back and forth to share his content elsewhere. But he acknowledges he is testing the waters as a technologist and seeing if Google+ can bring real media disruption to blogs and other online news reporting.
Scoble’s approach won’t work for you as a lawyer.
If you’re a lawyer, a doctor, a scientist, an accountant or other professional services provider, it’s going to be virtually impossible to be taken seriously in social media and in other use of the the Internet without a blog for the above reasons
Google+, Twitter, and Facebook is not sufficient alone for you and other professionals. Could Google+ become the publishing house of record for professionals? Anything is possible, I don’t see it as likely.