Why Twitter Is Overrated

Some people are saying that Twitter and other social networking outlets are making blogging obsolete for promotion. Ben at Instigator Blog has a good post explaining why you shouldn't believe the hype.  Here are his key takeaways:

1. When you discover someone’s blog (via a link, referral, etc.) it’s not uncommon to look through a few posts, or even dig into the archives. The same cannot be said for Twitter. On Twitter you may look at a few tweets, but you can’t really build up enough of a profile of someone from that. So you make a much faster “follow or don’t follow” decision. With a blog, you dig deeper. Most of the time when someone follows me on Twitter, the first thing I do upon viewing their Twitter profile is check out their blog. That’s where the “meat” is…
2. Blogs still generate more meaningful commentary from your audience. Sure, a bunch of people might re-Tweet something, but that’s not the same as having 10 or 20 or 30 or more people comment on a post.
3. Blog posts are eternal whereas Tweets are forgotten. Although most old blog posts really don’t drive a lot of new traffic, they’re still more accessible and meaningful to search engines, and will pick up more traffic than old Tweets. Do you even remember what you posted on Twitter or FriendFeed last week? Probably not. Do you remember what you blogged about? A blog is truly an archive of your life, experiences, thoughts, opinions, etc. Twitter is like someone with no long-term memory.
4. Twitter is now used quite actively to drive people somewhere - to get them to click through to somewhere. Brands do it. Marketers do it. Everyone does it. Blogs are destination sites.
5. As fun as it is to post something pithy and quick on Twitter, blogging is still a better medium for expressing yourself, for weaving in more thought, multiple ideas, other people’s input and commentary. Blogging is strategic. Twitter is strategic too, but less so

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