What can law blogging achieve?

Rupert White writes a thoughtful piece on law blogging in the Law Gazette article Logging on to blogging. Having interviewed several leading UK law bloggers, he finds a “deeply personal approach” to what blogging can achieve as a business and marketing tool.

Seeing blogs as [a route to market] is … to misread their value in a way that will lead to failure. Blogs should be sources of valuable and interesting content first, which in turn makes them good advertising.

His conclusions, in short, are that law bloggers should be aiming to build a relationship with their audience, demonstrating competence and personality: that will raise profile and win business.