Law Library Blog Survey: Unsuccessfulness

Yesterday, in continuation of sharing the preliminary results of the law library blog survey, I posted some of the responses that I received from bloggers on ways in which they felt their blogs where successful.

Therefore, today’s responses are to the question, “Please share ways in which your blog has NOT been successful.” Selected responses include:

- Readership not as high as hoped – 13 people noted this. Specific Comments: “Generally we have failed to make [blog name omitted] a compelling ‘must’ read”

- Failure by some contributors to post to group blog – 6 people noted this. Specific Comments: “Not everyone we've invited to participate does. Sometimes people forget to post to the blog instead of sending email (one purpose is to reduce mass emailings).”

- Struggle to post new content (too time consuming; student contributors not supported by faculty) – 3 people noted this. Specific Comments: “Blog has been hard to maintain in the face of other work needs”

- Technology problems (firewalls block access, launch date delayed; software limited number of authors) – 3 people noted this.

- Don’t receive comments as often as hoped – 2 people noted this.

- Struggle to make blog unique – 2 people noted this. Specific Comments: “We are drowning in a sea of sameness - so many. . . blogs - how to do it better?”

- Lack of support from parent institution – 1 person noted this.

- Lack of notice outside law librarian community – 1 person noted this.

And this comment was too good not to share in its entirety – plus I wasn’t too sure how to categorize it!

“No groundswell of people commenting on my items or clicking like mad on my AdSense ad or emailing me with job offers and Tonight Show guest shots. No federal appointment or state cabinet positions offered. No gorgeous love interests located. No free money being mailed in or donated, nor any large advertiser bidding up the space or domain name for purchase. No one announced that I have been added to their will. Other than that it is terrifically successful.”

I found it interesting that, by far, the response most mentioned was that readership was not as high as hoped. Responses to another survey question revealed that efforts to publicize blogs varied widely. Some bloggers took great pains to market their blogs while others indicated that they did little or nothing. Look for more analysis on this in my upcoming article for Law Library Journal.