Twitter Verses Blogging
Twitter Verses Blogging
Twitter Verses Blogging
While I have titled this Twitter verses Blogging, the heart of this debate goes much further than simply comparing Twitter to your blog. I am sure we must all agree that Twitter has become all the rage for a number of reasons, not the least of which are high profile celebrities that are jumping on the bandwagon.
With all the hype and new found stardom of Twitter, there seems to be a large number of people that are forgetting where the true power lies in the use of Twitter. While in some circles there are starting to murmurings of Twitter replacing other websites such as blogs. My first thought was: "In what world is that even possible".
First of all blogs are not going to go anywhere and it is not likely that Twitter will have any impact on the growth of the blogging community. While there are numerous options when it comes to blogging one of the most popular is WordPress and a quick check of the WordPress site will show that there have been in excess of 3.5 million downloads. Keep in mind this does not take into account the numerous sites such as Blogger, BlogSpot, WordPress.com or TypePad that all provide bloggers a means to get started with a new blog within minutes of creating an account.
While blogging is not a new technology, it is still gaining in popularity as witnessed by the large numbers of small businesses, news sites, Radio stations, TV stations, large corporations and let's not forget the non-profits who are adding blogging to their marketing on a daily basis.
What is Twitter after all?
Twitter is a communication tool that when used effectively can be a very powerful channel for making new connections, promotional purposes and driving traffic to your primary website. Often referred to as a micro-blog I would contend that that statement is a bit of a stretch. From my perspective Twitter is a very powerful texting program combined with many of the features you would find in a chat room environment.
While my blog posts tend to run on the long side of what you would typically find in a blog posting, in what world could you ever adequately cover any topic of interest in a Tweet? While I will not claim to be as creative when cramming a thought into 140 characters as many, I will be so bold as to say that if you can get all your thoughts into that 140 character space.... I think I will stop that thought while I have not put my foot in my mouth.
The point is that if you truly want to discuss issues important to the growth of your business, challenges faced when just starting a new business opportunity, the importance of personal development as it applies to your success, etc, etc there is simply no way to cover topics of that level of importance in a Tweet.
Your blog (and/or website) are core to your marketing efforts on the internet. They really are the foundation of your internet presence and all of your other marketing efforts online are in support of that foundation. If you are effectively using the tools available to you, at any given time you will be able to pull the important statics about where your new leads are being generated, what keywords brought them to your site, which social media sites provide a constant stream of traffic to you, which pay per clicks are generating the best quality prospects/leads, just to name a few.
Twitter is simply a piece of a much larger picture that you must keep a handle on if you are truly going to make the most of all that is available to you as a result of the new strategies being created by Web 2.0.
With all the hype of the Twitters of the world it is easy to lose focus of the big picture and before long you will find that you have let your most important online resource suffer due to a lack of attention.
When talking with someone new that is venturing into the world of internet technologies, online marketing and social media, I always try to stress the importance of having a well define marketing plan. I find time and time again that people are jumping into online marketing in hopes of creating a huge online presence without having first put a marketing plan together. In all honesty this is simply a mirror of what happens daily with traditional business. Talk to any number of small business owners and you are likely to find that they have no business plan, no marketing plan and are really flying by the seat of their pants just hoping things work out.
Don't fall into this trap!!
While it is important to put some thought into your marketing plan it does not have to read like an encyclopedia when you are done. As one or two page marketing plan with some simple guidelines will be plenty to get you started and more importantly to keep you focused on the right tasks.
While Twitter has gained huge numbers of followers and is getting a lot of media/internet attention, there is no chance of it replacing anything. If you don't have a blog, start one. For those of you that have already dove into those waters keep it up and don't lose sight your original goals.
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