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Blawging Isn’t Easy, Eh?
Some time back I subscribed to the Canadian law blogs that Slawyer and Vancouver Law Librarian Steven Matthews so helpfully listed on his VLL site. Of the 60 or so, many have fallen by the wayside. My feed reader let’s me find “dinosaurs” — those blawgs that haven’t kept up with developments in whatever period of time I choose. Here’s my list of those that haven’t had a post within the last 30 days or more:
A few others are on my watch list; for me, it has to be an extraordinarily good blog for me to hang in there and bang on the feed when I only get rewarded every couple of weeks or so. Every day is my preference, but I can take two or three times a week. Less than that and I lose interest.
A high standard indeed! I try not to be hard on myself for not blogging as frequently as I would like, especially since I do it voluntarily in my spare time outside of work. I seem to go through spurts of creating many posts at once, such as when I am live-blogging at a conference or have some spare time to catch up on my own reading and writing.
I wonder how many of these are from the same organizations and have focussed efforts to one blog only? Or have found a new outlet, such as Hull & Hull who are doing a lot of podcasting.
And are you sure you have the most current feed addresses?? Hull & Hull seem to have current blog posts here: http://estatelaw.hullandhull.com/ and appear to be posting daily.
I don’t know, Connie… I suppose it might be too high a standard, but the blog thing is partly about regular publishing. I mean, I stay subscribed to the U of T Law Faculty blog, which seems to manage one post every six or eight weeks; but that’s a dead man walking, pretty much, unless it improves. The rest haven’t posted for well over a couple of months, and some not really ever. Time to clean out the list, I think.
But you’re right about Hull and Hull. They dumped their Feedburner feed and switched to one that comes straight from their blog. But so far as I can tell they never bothered to tell anyone using the old feed.
Once a blog has gone over a month without posts, I suspect something is wrong. The BCLMA KM blog in the list above is an example. I was trying to get my fellow group members to experiment with blogging and the idea really didn’t take off. Could it still be used in the future? Sure, and I hope so. That’s why I haven’t deleted the presence. But you’re very right Simon, blogging isn’t easy.
Blogs are a great balancing act. They take small increments of work to keep current, and can have a huge impact on a firm’s web presence. They can also reflect poorly on those that dive in without thinking and fail keep their content up-to-date. Big rewards, but not without risk.
While blogs and newsletters aren’t the same, one common technique I think could be used more often is an editorial calendar… every other Wed. I link to another blogger, last friday of the month I review new case law, or whatever, but schedules help with any type of publishing. Picking off an easy post once in a while doesn’t hurt either. I think many bloggers put pressure on themselves to always publish a substantial thought or experience. A link or being pointed in a new direction can be just as valuable to readers.
Then what you need to suggest to the folks at UofT is the Cemetery of Dead Blogs run by the American Center for Surreal and Paranoid Life at http://balloonballoon.blogspot.com/index.html
Don’t you think this might just simply be the laws of Darwin at work on the Blog phenomena? Once all the hype settles down the strong will survive and weak will die off. The Blogosphere is quite crowded so separating those that are of little use from those that are is a good thing. As any librarian will tell you, a little weeding is a good thing… come to think of it, a gardener will tell you the same thing.