Twitter Less, Blog More!

Given the religious following that Twitter is gaining these days, I am sure that this will be a polemic topic.

Still here it goes: Twitter less and blog more!.

Now let me draw my argument.

I do think that Twitter is a very useful online application, for several purposes. It allows people that work from home or alone in front of a computer all day to socialize. It allows bloggers and website owners to interact with their readers on another level. It should even allow one to make new friends and to get in touch with people that would be unreachable otherwise.

The problem I am seeing lately, though, is that many people are giving Twitter priority even when they have something interesting, useful or funny to say; or when they have some resources to share. In those situations, I think it would be a better idea to develop your thoughts and ideas a bit further, and post it on your blog instead.

Why? Because your blog is your property. It should be the single most important location for you on the Internet. It should be the place where people go to when they think about you. Your blog, not Twitter (unless you only Twitter obviously).

Even if you don’t like to think in abstract terms, there are material reasons to opt to blog something instead of Twittering it. In the long run every backlink and every visitor count. Guess what, every time you Twitter instead of blogging something interesting you are risking to lose visitors and backlinks.

This very post illustrates the case. My initial though was to Twitter about this. Since we have the limit of 140 characters over there, it would be something like “Hey guys, have you ever thought that perhaps instead of Twittering you should be blogging?”

Instead of doing that, though, I decided to develop my thoughts further and create a post with it.

Now think about two people starting today on the online world. One adopts the strategy I am describing here. The other goes religiously with Twitter, blogging once in a while. After one year, I suspect that the former would have a popular blog, while the latter would have a popular Twitter account.

Which one would you rather have?