COMMENTS
Excellent point! Twitter refined the blogosphere by providing an alternate avenue for what was once an obstruction.
I think when cable TV first came on the scene as an alternative to the ABC/NBC/CBS triumvirate, there were (false) alarms about television getting killed.
Aside from whether you agree with Bruce that there's 57 Channels And Nothin' On, or enjoy Fear Factor's buffalo testicle eating contest, more content is generally a good thing: the long tail gives us more choice, and good stuff often does bubble up to the top.
Great article. Twitter has "trained" us to focus and say only what needs to be said in our blogs. We must always, always,always be thinking more about our ideal clients and how they will be receiving our information. We must get over ourselves and accept that blogs are written to be read.
Twitter has helped me promote my blog immensely. I try to announce my blog posts one every week so that I don't give the 'neighbours' aggro so to speak. What I do is, is type in my link and msg, and then quickly search similar interes in google real time, then those people check out my blog.
Other times Twitter is like facebook in that you can talk to people online a bit more. (If you stop to slow down, you might have some real good contacts no just people who click on your page one off). But I try not to look at my blog counter everyday either. just try to incorporate all this technology with a walk in the park, it seems so many people are in a rush to add more people that is counter productive and superficial.
I 100% agree and argued the same point on Joe's blog. Twitter kills the crap blog posts and allows only the best ideas to be expounded upon. It saves me a lot of time imo.
Pretty sure @stuartfoster said it best, "Twitter kills the crap blog posts and allows only the best ideas to be expounded upon."
That being said, I do agree with some of Joseph's points. It's a tough balance. I'm planning on launching a personal blog on July 1 (*gasp* who in their right mind would start a blog when there is twitter?). Crazy, huh?
On another note...How about this for using several of the channels:
1. I was alerted about this post via an
email (I subscribed to the Hubspot blog).
2. I read this
blog post, but was "distracted" due to my MDD (Media Deficit Disorder) by Rick's link to Joseph's Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog post.
3. After reading the MP Daily Fix post, I
tweeted about it: http://idek.net/FG6 (using a
url shortner created by Adam Covati - @covati, co-worker and good friend).
4. Next, I returned to Rick's post.
5. Finally, I
commented.
Pretty standard stuff in 2009, wouldn't you agree?
DJ Waldow
@djwaldow ---
Hey Hubspot, no Gravtars? Please? I like to see people.
Twitter has definitely streamlined the way we look at blogs. As Stuart pointed out - Twitter points out the best of the best, it serves as a guide for what we should be reading, what we can learn from, and fuels our own ideas into full-fledged articles. Twitter has improved blogging efficiency by leaps and bounds.
DJ, I agree, Stuart's comment is right on the money.
And nice run down of the connections and to publishing points related to this piece -- but you missed my tweet about it: http://twitter.com/rickburnes/status/2192441937:)
Ilya, I agree that more content is generally better -- and another reason Twitter is a complement to blogs is that it helps filter the huge volume of blog content.
@Rick
Touche! Truth be told, I saw the email from Hubspot before your tweet...
dj
*What about those Gravtars on the Hubspot blog?!
@dj I'm adding putting a link to your comments about the Gravatars in the product backlog. It's on the list, but not a squeaky wheels, so not getting grease.
I read more blogs now than ever because so many great articles that are interesting to me are directed to me via Twitter. I couldn't possibly follow all the blogs about marketing but the key bits of info I seek is brought to me by those I follow. It's like a more focused RSS feed. Twitter is the headline, the blog is the story.
Twitter is not killing blogs, its actually empowering them. We agree with Hubspot completely on this. Content remains the source of traffic, twitter and other social mediums just help us get there. Or you can say help promote the good pages on the internet. We see on twitter all day long, that people are all the time twitting about their web pages mainly blogs.
Twitter can not kill/replace blogging as there is not enough valuable content and not near as accessable in Google.
Yeah, I agreed with you. Twitter helps your blog or sites to become better. Twitter will hate you if you won't abide with their rules. :-)
Does anyone of you here get targeted traffic or good conversion from twitter?
Twitter has aided us in quickly finding other seo's and great information and advice.
To me this is just an aid on to our blogs.
Thanks for the insightful post, Rick.
I notice a lot of comments about Twitter offering a promotional vehicle for blog posts - this is a great benefit of blogging and tweeting in tandem.
However, I think an even larger benefit of bloggers tweeting is that is adds another layer of authenticity, and an opportunity to build relationships. In addition to reading blog posts by people you want to learn from, you can get to know them a bit better (and find out who they learn from) by following and interacting on Twitter.
Laurel, I think you're absolutely right. Twitter is a great way to get to know the bloggers you follow, and thus have better context about the things they write.
Yah I do think so. Most of the daily articles I'm reading online (nearly 90%) comes from Twitter and rest from Google search or from my friends and co-workers
I see how many occasional bloggers find the quick-and-dirty approach to sending messages via Twitter as tempting now as they found the quick-and-dirty approach to building web pages with blog software in 2004.
It's mostly about getting your message out with the least amount of effort, and I suppose that it depends on your message whether you find Twitter more useful than blogging or vice versa.
Twitter is great for the writer. It's a very different thing for the reader. As easy as it is for the writer to publish any random thoughts, as frustrating can it be for the reader to make sense of these fragments. Twitter's tweets often appear nonsensical or cryptic unless you know the writer really well and can thus understand all the allusions and inside jokes that tweets are usually full of. I find that blogs, with their self-contained entries are much more inclusive.
Twitter is definitely over-hyped at the moment, advertised as the solution to everything just as blogs were hyped in 2004 and wikis in 2006. All the fuss will probably calm down and Twitter will find its niche just as blogs have already found theirs.