Twitter or Blog Thinking May Have You Missing Out

Twitter is the 21^st century micro-blogging sensation taking the social world by storm. People are literally creating open source diaries of their lives as it happens. Much of it is pretty much trivial. So much so, more people are missing out on the the power of this online application then are tapping into it's possibilities. To that end the useless debate of tweeting vs blogging now rages on. I have a reason for use of the word "useless."

Micro-blogging simplistically
The concept was relished by the younger generation as a quick way to create on the spot meet ups for groups small and large. The idea is cost and time effective. Business and Internet Marketing got a hold of this concept and began to mold it for their own purposes. With Twitter the world literally became an open book in 140 characters or less.

Blogging basics
The interesting thing about blogging is that it was around long before people knew what to call it. I was blogging in the mid-ninties for my first website for the company Ranir Entertainment. We were just beginning to gain control of what a web page could be. Almost daily I would share with the world about my company and the entertainment characters I promoted. I should also note at this time the Nostradamus type of predictions that the web would be the death of reading began to spawn. My site won quite a few awards back then for design and content. All I was doing was giving news about myself. Blogging grew into news or words about every and anything. We all became internet Andy Rooney (of 60 Minutes TV show fame) wannabes. Now the whole world is a-blogging. A blog is whatever you deem it to be. Many daily tales of what my cat did today still prevail.

Blogging for fun pleasure and business
On the flip side the blogs about your pet are well challenged in number by the blogs meant to compliment or generate business. They are fun to write and fun to read. The doomsayers of reading while not right should have been more open in their perspective. Reading on a computer screen is tedious. To adjust the surfer began to scan and not full read. The idea was to save those eyes for the more important stuff. (Hmm I wonder what that could have been?) Believe it or not this opened the door for a concept like micro-blogging.

From tweet nothings to...
"The first tweets were for twits" is a saying I've heard a lot of. Twitter was for kids just like Trix. Then adults transcended the silly rabbit mode and made Twitter socio-productive. Having joined near it's inception at the beginning no one I knew wanted anything to do with it. Now I have visions of members of the U.S. Senate bickering over who is going to make John McCain "cut that out" and get with the real world. And yes people began to predict just as with podcasting and vlogs (video blogs) Twitter was going to wipe the power of blogging off the net.

You've got it all wrong Nostradamusites
Twitter just like podcasts and vlogs or all other video for that matter isn't a blog replacement. Twitter is a blog enhancement. When used properly tweets can bring traffic increase. The first to promote this idea had visions of massive traffic deluges. Not so but not so discouraging either. With WordPress you can now post and tweet alerting your followers. This assists in not just building traffic but holding on to return traffic. A point most people seem to forget is the quest to create traffic influx is as important as getting that traffic to come back. Twitter is the prefect tool for the job.

Twittering the dead horse
I blog this. I podcast this. I even videocast this. Still there are Twitter Twits who don't get it. Yeah, promote your link to your blog, article or whatever by tweet. Just don't or if you are stop drawing traffic to want amounts to a jumplink. I hate it. I asked my neighbor her opinion and she said, "I hate it." I emailed a few dozen people on the subject getting all but one response of "I hate it." The one person said, "I do it but my traffic is down." Hi you Silver, moron, no one likes to have to through a middle man. Web 2.0 is about speed not about mindless stop overs to a blog I will now never want to see again. As a matter of fact there are blogs that are 80% or more jumplinks and little to no actual content. Yes my blogs do contain posts from RSS feeds tied to my other content but I don't promote those via anything. I promote them at that blog only and it is far from the only content. All my blogs have full blog post and or video and audio. Tweeting jumplinks are the equal to internet kiss of death.

Twitter plus Blog equals...
Great exposure and a great acknowledgment to your fan base. It says I did this for you. It works as long as it is not a constant ploy to sell all the time. That concept is getting beaten to the ground and stomped on. I have received so many direct message tweets complimenting content tweets you would not believe. I post content with a reason and message that isn't about the sell. People appreciate that. 80% of the people I follow don't get that. The turnover of followers who fall by the wayside because they don't get it could be up to a third of all I do follow and follow me. Yet my number of followers remains very constant. Up to recently I didn't promote myself on Twitter. People are always catching on by themselves. All my blogs have benefited. I just began to discover people who stopped following my tweets have remained followers of my podcasts, blogs and videos. That is all the social proof I need that it is not Twitter Vs Blog. It is Twitter plus the blog. And all my traffic is seeing the quantum leap I was looking for by adding Twitter to the mix.

Is Twitter just a fad?
At the time of writing this article Google has Twitter in it's crosshairs. Talks of acquiring the microblogging service mean one thing. The Google strategic geniuses believe Twitter is a not only the real deal. It is a longterm asset. Generally, if Google wants to own it and can't they probably will be on board creating the level competitor or enter a collaborative deal. No matter the outcome this will lead to greater jumps in advancements in the service itself. Either way Google just validated Twitter is the real deal.