A few days ago I wrote an article “Twittering Vs. Blogging: Is Twitter a Blog Replacement or an Enhancement for Blogs?” I made the case that Twitter can be an effective marketing tool for leveraging your followers – NOT as a blog replacement.
So when I came across the title of a Twit Tip it immediately caught my eye. The title was “Using your Blog to Promote Twitter” and before I even read the post I knew right away that the writer had got it wrong.
Basically the author said that we should be adding a “Twitter Roll” to our blogs:
“The advantage of a twitter roll is not only to keep tabs on your preferred twitters; it’s to let readers know who they are as well, and promotes Twitter.
Granted, he also mentions that followers might accidentally stumble upon our blog, but he says this more as an afterthought and the main crux of his post is that we should be driving traffic over to Twitter.
Hmm, I really don’t see it that way and these are my reasons:
- First of all, more blogs today are getting rid of blogrolls. They are considered old school and going the way of the dinosaur.
- Twitter is designed for short, burst announcements to communicate with your followers, grab their attention and to build relationships. But it is NOT a replacement for blogs.
- Your blog is your most important tool in your Web 2.0 arsenal. You should think of it as being concentric to your overall social media marketing strategy (Twitter or any other Social Networking site) for leveraging your followers over to your blog.
- Heck, Twitter (like all social networking sites) doesn’t even offer you a top-level domain. Might as well just stay on Blogspot — right? (NOT).
- Twitter is quickly becoming a search engine in its own right for finding more fodder to write on your BLOG.
- If you are a marketer trying to make money you will want your Twitter followers to visit your blog and click on your ads.
- Like I said before, as a communication tool Twitter is still rudimentary and needs a lot of work. It is more efficient to conduct a discussion on your blog comments section than it is to follow a conversation on Twitter. (Especially with all of the third party plugins and scripts that are now available).
- Ultimately your blog is where you want the action to be. You want your readers to follow you over to your real blog on your own domain and a site that belongs to YOU.
We should be leveraging Twitter to drive traffic over to our blogs – not the other way around. The bottom line is I see this as a flow-chart with all of your social networking sites pointing back to your blog like the illustration below.
It’s a Blog Bloke Web 2.0 World after all isn’t it? 😉
But seriously, there will always be some back-flow but it’s important that we understand the hierarchy and keep our perspective on this.
What do you think?
