The Truth About Social Media
I‘m an apologist/advocate for blogs. Always have been and always will be. I guess you can also say that I‘m hardcore (and unapologetic .. no pun intended).
Lately I‘ve been reading a lot of posts who‘s advice can apply as much to social networks as it does to blogging. In fact most of the social media “tips” that I‘ve been reading are taken directly from their blog predecessor. So much so that the blurring of the lines between Social Networking and Blogging are making them synonymous.
Taking that thought even further I suppose you could argue social networks are the natural evolution of blogs. (I define Social Media as including blogs and social networks). But that is not what this post is about. I‘ll save that for another rant.
What I am talking about is what separates real blogs from the Twitters and Facebooks et al, and why Blogs still matter and deserve our attention. Let me explain.
Blogs allow us to:
- Speak our mind .. without limitations we can say what we want and as much as we want because it is our site. We are not limited to a specific number of characters like Twitter does or forced to fall in line with a draconian TOS (like Facebook’s Terms of Service for example).
- SEO .. with our own blog and domain name we keep all of the Google cred for ourselves instead of handing over pagerank to the social network.
- Control .. with a blog of our own we can control our data and destiny. Unlike Facebook for example we own our content.
- Privacy .. we can tell the search engines to only index certain content or to not index it at all. We can allow only certain members to access our content or keep it completely private.
- Richer content … blogs allow us to use multiple file formats such as MP3, Video, Images and much more.
- Blogs are for writers .. social networks are for commenters. Nuff said.
- Real communities .. people who subscribe to our blog and comment are more loyal than followers on a social network because they are making an investure in supporting our work.
- Real conversations .. not just one or two-liner blips. Blogs enable us to articulate and explore our ideas and link to perspectives from other sources.
- Real relationships .. because of the nature of blogs, they attract readers with similar values and interests. Whereas social networks are temporary hangouts until the next big thing comes along.
- Blogs are a labor of love .. when you invest time and effort into creating a blog you have a sense of reward and pride in ownership that no Facebook account can ever give you.
- Blogs are a window into our soul .. readers can get a real sense of who we are and what makes us tick because blogs allow us to share more of our self.
- Blogs mean business .. no matter how much Facebook or Twitter may try to add business capabilities they will never come close to what a blog can accomplish because the platform is limited, closed and proprietary.
- Blogs are a technically mature product .. having been around for the better part of a decade there are a staggering number of apps, addons, plugins and built-in programming capabilities that you will not find in social networks.
- Blogs are our online home .. it is our body of work, a resume, our brand. Blogs define us, who we are and what we represent.
- Anything that social networks can do .. blogs can do better.
Ok, so I‘m biased. Did I forget anything? Blog on!
