01 210 8127 or 086 868 45 06
+44 (0) 20 8133 8127
Thank God The Bloggers Are Coming Back From Twitter
Like it? Tell your friends!
Have you noticed the bloggers drifting back from Twitter to their blogs? I started noticing some of the bigger guys getting back in to their blogs in a big way about four or five months ago and I have to say I am delighted. For the last couple of years everybody has had their head turned by Twitter and established bloggers were neglecting their blogs to deliver short bursts of information and avail of the awesome networking opportunites that Twitter offers. Their posts were getting less frequent. The time they were spending on them diminishing. It was as if their thoughts were elsewhere. They were. Twitter.
Twitter The Mistress
Twitter became like a mistress to bloggers around the world. A break from the ordinary after the years of close fidelity of marriage to nothing but their blog. Bloggers all over the world were more than happy to neglect their rock and jump into bed with the hot new kid on the block. The younger model. I think this post by Arrington is the one that sums it up the best and he had the foresight to write this at the height of the furore about twitter.
I always thought it was incredibly foolish for people to spend so much of their time on somebody else’s servers creating content that they have no control of in the future. I know many people argue that you need to be where the conversation is but I am a firm believer in the notion that people should treat their blog as the center of their universe. Always.
Blog Content Still King
The really smart guys like Mashable and Techcrunch just kept on churning out great posts during all the fuss about Twitter (many of them actually about Twitter) and as a result they have grown their blogs massively while others have had their heads turned. The best example I can show to illustrate why blogging will always be more powerful is that I can find awesome articles like this over 3 years later but I struggle to find an insightful tweet from somebody from more than 3 weeks ago. Twitter will probably solve this indexing issue in the long run but all this supposedly great content we have been creating on twitter is just getting swallowed up some great big black hole.
What surprises me the most is that Twitter still gets called a microblogging service?? I mean it is a great communication tool and a great way of finding content but it certainly doesn’t have many people writing great insightful content like you would find on a blog.
Thank God They Are Back
I am not basing my findings on any scientific results or insightful statistics (apart from twitter stats declining) but I just know in my heart that I am seeing more posts, videos and quality photos and they are all getting back to the standard they used to be at. It was almost as if blogging became an afterthought as soon as Twitter came along. I am personally delighted because it means all the guys that I loved reading in the past and whose posts I used to bookmark and take inspiration from are now back and doing what they do best…creating meaningful content that lasts forever. This doesn’t mean that people are giving up twitter, they are still using it but just doing so in moderation. The passionate affair is over and now people are just letting their eyes drift the odd time while concentrating on the main prize, the blog.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Should Twitter forget about features?
- Working At Twitter Looks Like A Lot Of Fun – Video
- Twitter Survey Results – A Closer Look At The Retweet Button
- New Suggested Friends Tool On Twitter Incredibly Useful
- Video – Twitter in super real time
Niall, do SZ get more queries about blogging training or use or about twitter training or use from people who don’t do either?
I don’t think you’re right in this. I think it’s about “time”. It certainly is for me anyways. I have far more time to sit down now and blog than I did even four weeks ago. I think too you’re not seperating the two out enough. Twitter was never about microblogging – it was only what you are up to at that time. The two are not the same. Blogging and tweeting is not the same. No one I read (admittedly few these days) is replacing what they used to put on twitter on their blog.
Blogs come down to two things – quality and consistency. I’d much prefer to see one quality post every couple of days from anyone than mediocre posts that someone is putting up just because.
To the first question I would say both TBH. People who have heard about twitter are also curious about blogs and viceversa. Lately more towards Twitter/Facebook I would say though. Flavour of the month and all
I know twitter was never about microblogging but why call it that then? Or continue to do so?
Lastly you are right, quality wins out no matter what the platform
One question of my own that I always mean to ask is WTF is that on your nose?
That’s blue face paint – a legacy from my time in Barretstown. An interesting conversation piece all by itself.
I dunno why people call Twitter “microblogging”. Wish they wouldn’t. Alternatively I wish it was possible to blog in under 140 characters!
Flavour of the month indeed re Twitter, but I’d be happy to put money on the fact that businesses will ultimately (and cumulatively) end up making more money from Facebook and Twitter than from blogs. Probably by a factor of 5 to 1.
Yeah had an interesting conversation with Peter (http://blog.doneganlandscaping.com/) and he was saying he never got one single sale out of blogging and that it was frustrating. If done well though it can build such good reputation and if I ever was to think of lanscape gardening or a friend asked of a lansdcape gardener I wouldn’t know one single person apart from Peter. Same with the guys at Ice cream Ireland..do you think they sell much more ice cream because they blog? I’m not sure they do but it sure is good for their brand. Facebook is where the big money and business is at especially when they roll micro payments etc in there!
hmmm not sure I 100% agree Darragh that businesses will end up making more money from Facebook and Twitter than from blogs.
I think twitter/facebook et al. helps a business build visibility and trust which may indirectly help them make more money.
But at the moment when you get down to numbers twitter and facebook don’t necessarily convert directly very well.
Customers are far more likely to find and purchase from you if you build a site/blog with valuable content based around well optimised key phrases for the market you are in.
It’s still down to the business to figure out how/if they should blog in the first place – but in terms of traffic generation – the blog/google combination will still beat twitter/facebook any day – if done correctly.
Tbh I have abandoned my blog for a while too but have started getting back into it again. The blog is more for me personally in that it makes me cook something new every week whereas Facebook I have found fantastic for the business whereas the blog is going nearly 3 years now and I have got very little benefit out of it for the shop. I still spend a lot more time with Facebook and will continue to do so. Is Ice Cream Ireland on Facebook?
Lorraine if it helps at all I use you as an example every single time I talk to people about small businesses and how they should use social media. I first got in to your page when I say Paul Oconnels big head in one of your photos and I was interested to see him on my Facebook stream. It just feels like it is a fun place to hang around and the staff all love working there from the pictures. That is the impression I get. The big problem is that the closest I have ever been to Limerick was shannon airport and I am not planning on being there any time soon. Would be super interested to hear if you think you get more people physically coming and ordering lunch because of facebook alone and just how much time you dedicate to social media and if you think the retrun is worth it? I know people like Tommy and John Collison are always raving about what you do so I guess you have people marketing your business for you online that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Colm I think it depends on the business and how you use facebook. Twitter tbh I find a waste of time business wise as the majority of my customers are on facebook. Twitter is great for meeting other “foodie friends” but not for engaging with customers who buy my food everyday but that’s just the business that I’m in. Obviously all my customers are local whereas Ice Cream Ireland is nationwide so Twitter and blog is probably better for him maybe? Facebook was the best thing we ever did and we’re only on it since May!
great to hear Facebook has been great for you. I just made another comment which kind of hit on your same point – the bigger and broader your target audience is, then perhaps the more important a blog becomes in building trust. It’s very interesting to see how Irish businesses start to successfully use blogging and social networks and move beyond the initial trial and error phase to actually providing value to end users online in a way that integrates with their business.
Colm – I agree with you but you know yourself what a draw on time and commitment and resource doing a blog properly is. I think only the really committed will last it, while all the others spend their money on Facebook, on SEO and on PR. I do think the best possible search results will be the biggest thing to happen online in the next year or so and it’ll be interesting to see what companies use to get themselves to that end.
Very very few blogs have ever made me trust a company more or buy from them. It normally just cements my relationship with them after having had a pleasant experience already.
Darragh – if you’re referring to those “corporate blog” type setups – I’m a 100% with you there. Most of those should never have been started in the first place – they’re updated infrequently with brutal content which most likely does a disservice to the business. A lot of Irish businesses probably fall into this category and for those – Facebook is definitely a better medium. And that’s probably more a reflection of the fact that Facebook makes it easier to build relationships with real people with less effort than blogging.
But for those businesses looking to scale globally or who are pureplay web offerings (I’m thinking 37 Signals, Mint.com, even Twitter/Facebook themselves in the early days) their own blogs and the blogosphere in general were the lifeblood of how these buys built trust with their target audience. I don’t think they would ever have gained the momentum they did via Social networks alone.
I guess it very much depends on the type of business you’re in!
Haha, firstly – love the analogy of Twitter being the mistress, the ‘little bit on the side’.
I think that the reason that Peter and others would sell better on Twitter than on blogs is because it’s short and snappy. I for one am sick to death of analogies but if we imagine blogs to be newspapers and Twitter to be a street market. It’s more frenzied, interactive and on-the-moment, which leads to more iTunes Store-style impulse buys: in a recent survey, of the 34% of people who’d bought music on their iPhone, 72% said they’d bought impulsively.
Personally, I find that Twitter helps blogs, but one can totally succeed without it. Also, I don’t think that you do ‘one or the other’. I tweet, then put the phone away – and that’s that. Blogs require a lot more thought purely because they’re bigger.
Finally, I think you blog and tweet different things, furthering their independence from each other.
Thanks Niall, that’s nice to hear:) You hit the nail on the head there, you would never be near Limerick and unfortunately the majority of the country wouldn’t be near it either so it’s up to me to get our name out there. Everyone goes to Cork and Galway over this side, the national newspapers never review anything down here so we never get anything from the mainstream media even though we run a very good business, small as it may be(it’s tiny), it does a roaring trade even now. We have really held our own in the recession but I put that down to Facebook as we have gained a huge amount of new customers. It’s really hard to quantify it but a lot of people have introduced themselves and tell me how much they love the page etc and the “happy freebie friday” thing worked really well except it was a struggle to get people to post a photo but they were all talking about it. It’s funny I’ve been contacted a lot lately aswell from local media companies, Food & Wine mag, Indo etc all as a result of facebook whereas I got nothing from the blog and I even won 2 years back.
Timewise I pop in and out a few times during the day but I don’t have an Iphone so if I’m not at the computer I’m away from it so I’m going to keep it that way.
got this link today http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2009%2F11%2F12%2Fbusiness%2Fsmallbusiness%2F12guide.html%3Fpagewanted%3D1%26_r%3D2%26em&h=bbeb6a9a5add071b9228ca8565f310ab
ciao!
p.s. I just bribe the Collisons with food, easy;)
I enjoy reading Mashable the only issue I have (and its not really an issue) is that they publish sooo many post a day that I can’t get to them all. Twitter has become a spammers wasteland and the only way to really get a message out to the world is getting back to the basics. Blogger are returning back to their roots.