I am a big fan of Twitter. It is a great way to develop online relationships and engage in interesting conversations (albeit in 140 character bursts).
Twitter can be beneficial on a personal and professional level for individuals and can be a great way for businesses to engage with their customers.
Twitter is also a great resource for blog ideas but it is far too easy to get stuck within Twitter trying to shoehorn a blog post into the microblogging format.
All in all Twitter is a great resource for individuals and businesses but I have found that it is indirectly killing my blog.
Twittah the blog killah
Aaron Wall wrote about how Twitter is hurting blogs and bloggers recently.
carrotcreative's photosWhile that is in an issue that many blogs may be experiencing the problem about which I am concerned is a different one.
You see before I became addicted to Twitter I would express my thoughts and opinions on my blog.
If a topic piqued my interest I would take the time to sit down and write about it.
While I don't have many readers I do have a few and if the topic was interesting enough it would result in some discussion.
Now with Twitter I can just post my thoughts and have an engaging conversation with all of my followers. I can have discussions in real time with a wider range of people.
It is quicker and much easier than taking the time to write a blog post. That's one of the reasons that my blog has become so sparse lately after I rebuilt it.
Twitter is killing my blog and I am letting it happen; is it happening to you too?
Find Time for Twitter and your blog
Between real SEO work and family stuff finding time to blog can be difficult.
Instead of writing a blog post I can express my thoughts in Twitter quickly and without a lot of preparation. I would be willing to bet that there are a few of you out there who are in the same situation.
Twitter allows for immediate feedback but the conversations can sometimes lack depth. That is what a blog is for.
Twitter conversations are limited by the 140 character limit and tweeting 5 times in a row to express your point and it stifles the conversation.
Set some time aside to write on your blog and devote the time necessary for an in-depth analysis of the subject matter.
If you are like me you have spent considerable time, energy, and even money on your blog. Dont let Twitter, or any other social media platform, kill it.
Use Twitter and the other microblogging platforms as they were intended but make sure to spend time with your blog when you need to go deeper.
Mark Pilatowski has been involved in search engine marketing with an emphasis on SEO for the past 9 years. Follow him at Twitter and check out the piloSEO blog.
I suspect that, deep down, even we Twitter addicts know that there are diminishing returns. Spending 30 minutes/day on Twitter is good for relationships, networking, and can even drive business. Spending 3 hours/day adds 10-20% return to that 30 minutes, while cutting into our other efforts and probably irritating our clients (and families).
On the other hand, sometimes I’ve found Twitter cathartic in a way that improves the quality of my blogging. If I have a short, “what if” sort of idea, I may express it on Twitter now instead of throwing up an ill-conceived blog post. I’m blogging less frequently, but I think the post quality is actually higher. As much as we are going overboard on Twitter, there’s not enough to say in the world of SEO that each of us needs to blog 5 times/week.
So far, Twitter for me is a blogging tool, but not a replacement. I can’t write the same content on Twitter as I do on blogs. I can see (depending on your niche) how Twitter can be a distraction or even replacement though.
I sometimes take tweets over a day and merge them as an outline into a more meaningful and coherent blog post. Sometimes, I’ll take pieces of my blog post and microblog them with links back to my blog post.
It’s just a matter of repurposing your content, as appropriate, for different media. 😉
– Daiv http://Twitter.com/DaivRawks
It’s all a matter of time management and combining resources.
I look at Twitter as the teaser – the “Coming Up At 6.00” news trailer, with my blog as the prime-time 6.00 News.
Works so far 🙂
Having this same thought in my head right now. I’ve been converting my website to wordpress for months now and adding a blog was part of the reason to make the switch. Now I just blurt stuff out to Twitter and don’t follow the thoughts or any follow up research to create interesting reads. Additionally, I find I’m reading more blogs and web articles than ever before due the vast amount of links I read about each day. All that reading cuts into my writing time too.
Going to take your advice and make it a point to get some blogging out there as well.
A blog can have many uses, but I’ve always used mine primarily as a knowledge-management tool. It helps me keep ideas – both my own and the GOOD ones (LOL) organized.
I use Twitter a fair bit, but because I’ve got this blog for this particular reason, Twitter can’t kill it. As a matter of fact, I turn your problem on its head: Twitter is an excellent source of non-Twitter things to blog about. I get an idea from there nearly every day; that ensures that I’ll suffer no more “blogger’s block.” 🙂
Totally agree – what I also find that is even though I link my current blog post on both facebook and twitter, instead of people commenting on the blog – which we hope for – the feedback and comments are on the Twitter/Facebook.
Twitter killed the radio star, my blog, my life and well… now I’m in the tweets begging for money so I can Twitter my life away… again 😉
Great post.
I am finding the same thing since I joined Twitter! I think my next act is to found a 12 step program, because it definitely is addicting. But, I have found that it definitely has made me cut back on my blogging and article writing. Like you said, I think it is that instant gratification you get when you tweet!
I’ve always found Twitter thoughts and blog posts to be entirely mutually exclusive, though I do understand how Tweeting can bleed out blog ideas.
Has Twitter increased your blog traffic too?
Great post, great comments.
Just today, I was kicking myself for not showing my blogs the love they deserve, but now I know that I’m not alone.
Twitter can be such a waste of time, but it can also be pretty valuable. When I first got started on it I was so hooked, but over the last year I have slowly been able to ween my way down to just a few tweets ago.
Baby steps my friend 🙂
I have good experience with Twitter. Most of my blog traffic comes from Twitter. So for me Twitter is very useful instead of harming my blog
I agree that Twitter has it’s uses, but it’s always seemed to promote short attention spans. Attention spans are short enough so I tend to keep my Twitter usage rather low.
I´m also using Twitter regularly trying to submit valuable links and resources others maybe find useful.Some people use Twitter as a marketing tool only which I think is the wrong way to do it.It´s all about participating.
well… there are lots of people who prefer twitter over the blog beacsue its easy and displays the results in few minutes… maybe this is basic reason
I spend a lot of time on twitter and I’ve been using it for about 8 months. I got serious about it this year because now I know the real influenced people can do a lot for my blog promotion.
I spend a lot of time to interact and I think I’ll get the return in the long run.
The microblogs are real blogs. Are the logs of our lives. The blogs became sites of traditional journalism and opinion.
If I feel like I am going to run out of space on Twitter I usually take things to my blog. At the end of the day you can’t start discussing a serious subject in 140 character chunks.