Blogging More Powerful Than Twitter

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

I know a lot of people who spend zero time blogging but spend a lot of time on Twitter. Even though I have written many times before about what I think is the poor future of Twitter. I do use Twitter several times everyday. But I do get the impression that Twitter may be setting itself up for a fall.

I think that if you don't blog and just Twitter, and expect to use that for some kind of sales, marketing or promotion, you are kidding yourself. If you don't blog and want to use Twitter just for fun, then that makes sense to me.

I can easily imagine Twitter becoming like Myspace in three years. Does everyone remember when Myspace was the all the rage? I do. I even ran a huge Myspace community page with thousands of  "friends." I haven't touched that Myspace page in over a year. Myspace is a pain.

I'm not the only one who thinks Myspace is dead.

There are several reasons that I think Twitter is heading for uselessness. First, over 60% of all Twitter users quit in the first month. I also get tons of tweets from people nowadays that say, "Want to get thousands of followers on Twitter?" I the click their link and go to their Twitter bio page and see that they have fewer followers than I do. Then, Twitter is down far too often. Follow that with the Twitter censors and manipulates its "Trending" nonsense and you've got a service that, seems to me, is heading for a fall.

The third thing that bothers me about Twitter is that I do know that people are Twittering, but how many are actually reading?

I have written before that, if you are only pushing "Sell! Sell! Sell!" then why would anyone read or even follow you? You must give away great FREE content or no one will bother. I make it a point to give away great free content religiously everyday on my blog....

And that gets me to my point of this particular blog. I have encouraged many people to start blogging. Some do, some don't. The ones who have and have been diligent about it, have reaped rewards and they thank me... The ones who haven't have been taking what I call the "Lazy man's way out" and that was by using Twitter instead of blogging.

Like I said, Twitter is useful, but without a base, without a blog, just writing tweets and directing people to other sites besides your own is not efficient. It's lost productivity.

Well, now, luckily for me, someone has come out with data to support my opinion that Twitter may not be the silver bullet for disseminating information on the Internet that everyone thinks it is.

PR Daily News Feed the newsletter about Public Relations and Marketing in the Age of Social Media writes:

PR’s heavy hitters aren’t embracing Twitter

This one is confounding. Powerful people in PR are, in some cases, absent entirely when it comes to social media. In July, PRWeek released its “Power List” of the industry’s top 25 professionals. Less than half of them have a Twitter account, reports the PR 20/20 Blog. “Of these 12,” writes PR 20/20, “five have never posted a status update; four of those don’t have a photo for their account; three don’t have bios; one protects his tweets; four tweet on occasion, approximately once per week; however, most information shared is self-promotional (personally or for the company).” Clearly the old guard and ways of the older Jedi still persist. Either that or these folks are “too damn busy” for social media. 

Sure Twitter is useful still. But where will it be in three years? The jury is still out. I think that one can easily calculate just how many different people are really sending out Tweets by looking at their Twitter account. Seems to me I keep seeing the same people.... Throw on top of that the 60% who quit after the first month and it makes you wonder about that guy who has 10,000 followers. 10,000 is an impressive number, yes... But have 1/2 those people quit already and never view Twitter?

But with my blog, I know for a fact that 500 ~ 600 or more people are visiting and reading. This is a number that has been increasing by at least 10% a month consistently. They come because they want what I have to offer; Japan and marketing and a place to get creative ideas. And that is, hopefully, interesting and useful content for free. Blogging can't be beat if you want to do sales or marketing.   You can guess that I believe a blog, offering great, free and useful information, updated daily is critical.

Read more about effective blogging daily and better Google rankings here.

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Keywords: blog, blogging, Mike Rogers, Twitter, Marketing Japan, Tweets, PR, marketing, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Myspace, Google