Of Dodgeball and Blogging

Last night was the first dodgeball game of the season. Three seasons of Vancouver Dodgeball conditioned me for a high-energy time.

This was not that.

Like there, here it is also played in a gym. That is the only similarity.

This particular league very much resembles the dodgeball played in grade school. All the balls are put on the center line, and members from both teams charge and try to get them all.

There’s much standing around.

Players hover near half court, waiting for the other side to start throwing. One person throws, then someone else throws and all of sudden there are a series of one-on-one-battles. Oh, and it’s played the length of the basketball court, so there is ample space and distance.

There is much standing around.

Rules are the same. Hit, you’re out. Catch, the other person is out and a player comes in on your team. You can block with the ball, but if you drop it you’re out. The balls, though, are kick balls. Kick balls are unruly for throwing, and they do sting when you catch them or get hit by them.

There is much standing around.

I believe we lost, 5-4 or 6-3 or something. We put up a good fight for most of it. The other team had a star player who caught everything, though. Afterwards, a couple of my new teammates and myself went to the bar next door for a beer. We started talking, learning where each of us lived, what we did for work and talked some about dodgeball. I did my best to impart the wisdom I had gained from Vancouver Dodgeball, points on strategy, all throwing at the same person at once, watching the corners and generally working as a team.

The conversation switched to communication, social media and blogging. One of my teammates started his work life as a journalist before going back to school for accounting. He talked about being on the sports desk of a small northern Wisconsin town, and how he decided on accounting instead of going to law school. My other teammate is a teacher, who ends up teaching in the area where the accountant grew up so they chatted for a bit. The teacher mentioned a friend of his who wants to get into blogging for his particular business niche, and asked the accountant if he had any idea how one goes about establishing a blog.

He wasn’t sure, as he hadn’t gotten into blogging either but was curious.

I took the opportunity to educate them, and without actually realizing what I was doing as it just seems so obvious to me, I explained how I built Small Firm Innovation into an award-winning blog, how I found contributors and spread the word. I saw who would reshare posts from contributors and reached out to them, I kept tabs on other people writing in the industry, customers who had a good story or a good tip to share.

They were impressed, which before I would have shrugged off as, again, this is just logical, normal, obvious progression for me. If you want to start a blog in a niche and attract readership, you have to share it with people, have them share it and cultivate those relationships. If you produce good content on a topic, people will read it. They may not even know why they’re reading it, but that doesn’t matter. People will read it, and you’ll gradually develop a name for yourself. But I didn’t shrug it off. I thanked them, and said to go ahead and put me in touch with the friend looking to blog.

They also understood that it takes time to cultivate an audience. That fork in the road invariably turned to social media. It was fascinating to hear the social media tales of people outside the legal industry, and how those tales may be woven into the legal industry soon. So fascinating!

All in all, it was a good way to spend a Friday night. The Friday night before I start my new job. The last Friday night of this wonderfully awesome transition.