Flickr photo by beX out loud
It’s that time of the year when people everywhere reflect on the year that just passed and think about how they can improve their personal and professional life. I’m no different and I’ve used the last few days to think about that. I’ll pass on sharing the personal stuff but I wanted to discuss the one business resolution I’d like to stick to in 2009:
More blogging, less “tweeting”!
In the last three months, I’ve been quite busy as a startup entrepreneur but I’ve also spent an enormous amount of time on Twitter. More than 1500 updates in the last 5 months, about 10 a day, every day! As a consequence, my blogging schedule has fallen from 5 posts a week on average to 2 or 3. I’m not happy about that as I believe blogging defines who you are and what you do in a much more concrete way than conversation tools like Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed. According to Techcrunch, even famous blogger Robert Scoble has started questioning the value of the time he spends on Friendfeed. He wondered out loud if it”was such a smart investment of my time.” As Loic Le Meur said last March in a brilliant post, “My social map is totally decentralized but I want it back on my blog”
I started blogging in September 2006 and it has propelled my career to new heights. It has allowed me to share my thoughts with thousands of people, I’ve been invited to speak at conferences and I’ve given countless media interviews on a variety of local search and social media topics, all because of my blog.
Your blog is your home base. It should be the foundation upon which you build your online presence and your personal brand. Twitter is the devil. It tempts you to use it to share quick thoughts. It’s the easy (lazy?) way. You don’t have to sit down in front of your computer to think about your next blog post (it takes me between 30 and 60 minutes to write one), you just spew out bite-sized lines. It does not mean you should abandon Twitter (or Friendfeed). They’re great conversation vehicles but you end up with very ephemeral results. You don’t leave much behind. Twitter is an information stream, your blog is your personal mindspace. Make sure you use them both, but use them the right way.
Seb Provencher's Blog 
Amen.
I agree with you! I love my twitter but my blog IS home base!
Well said! Thanks for the post.
Well said. And so said, I’m shutting down twitter to go write a blog post. Thanks!
Adam
I agree. Your blog defines your personal brand. Twitter is a conversation at the water cooler. Twitter may be fun and has its purpose. But it does not carry a valuable trace on Google like a post can.
By the way, it is the second comments I signed under my new blog on women, social media and technology. It seems more appropriate to use that one for your content.
You made my day with this post. As a non-techie small business owner trying to get my head around how I’m going to interact in this whole web 2.0 world, hearing someone call Twitter “the devil” is a huge relief.