Twitter vs Blogs

A little while ago I posted on Twitter how bad I felt at my lack of blog activity.  I got a nice, sympathetic, response with a number of people saying they are having trouble finding the time to blog in recent weeks/months.  Mostly I think I'm blogging less as I'm more busy in other areas; focus on our guides, UK Recruiter Plus and other calls on my time (despite now having a team here my workload seems to have increased).  However, I do wonder if I blog less as I tweet more. 
 
Today I posted this on Twitter: is it just me? Whilst at my desk I'd much rather read an interview with someone than listen to an audio or watch a video.  It was prompted by seeing a link to a video interview between Mike Taylor and James Caan.  Previously I might have written a blog about the place of videos in learning and development for recruiters.  It might have included my thoughts on video CVs and I know I'd have felt I ought to dig out some stats on preferences for video vs audio vs written.  That would have taken me a good half hour to write (and then another 10 minutes to find an appropriate photo!).  It took me about 20 seconds to post it on Twitter.
 
If I'd have written this as a blog post I might have got a few comments.  My Twitter post got 6 immediate responses and a re-tweet (if you don't know what that is you ought to take a look at our Twitter guide!).  The problem is that it's not easy for me to now share those comments with you without cutting and pasting them here:
 
BraeScotland No I am the same .. I switch all the sounds off from all the office computers .. drives me mad!
Mr_Linkedin I would always vote for the video personally, followed by the audio - unless its something you have written of course Louise!
BillBoorman Thats your learning style. Good marketing delivers the same message written, audio, visual and demonstrated. One option e ...
grahambunting It's perhaps an indication that you have a preference for communication through the visual channel :-) I enjoy listening
SussexMatt I think it depends on the speaker but generally I'd rather read then watch/ listen, maybe we are just old media
WendyJacob In my lunchbreak at work yes - at home no.
 
(the issue of comments is something that Jason Alba recently mentioned in a blog post too)
 
The other problem is that of coverage and longevity.  I have 542 Twitter followers; I'm guessing the only people who will EVER see that tweet are those who were online in the 30 minutes or so following my post.  The blog gets around 4,000 unique visits a month.  Posts from it are picked up in Google searches and sometimes re-posted or linked to elsewhere. 
 
Finally, of course, no matter how succinct I am sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.  I couldn't have managed a mini-slating of The Apprentice in less than the 980 characters I used.
 
For me the answer is going to be to continue to Tweet and Blog.  Although the only way to achieve the second goal may be to physically lock myself to my desk 4x a week for 30 minutes!

PS, you can follow me on Twitter here
 

 

Comments

[Stephen]

Yep I couldn't agree with you more, life is getting madder.

Its almost a case of the in box just getting fuller and fuller and the only way to deal with it is drop it in the bin and start again.

Do you realise we hardly chatted at the UKrecruiter event last week, so I never had a chance to say to you how good it was.

Thank heavens we can tweet each other LOL

[Ross]

I find the majority of the time, having an interview as an article, rather than a video is more convenient.

You can read through the article at your own pace and not have to start/stop each time, especially if its a long video.

Also, an article is usually a lot better for getting noticed in the search engines ;)

[International Career Blogger]

Twitter has definitely changed the game of blogging. But doing both can always serve your purpose no matter what.

An interview article is also more convenient for me especially sitting in an office with desktops without speakers. And you can easily quote the person for your future reference with an interview article.

[Azazel]

I would say that it is much more important to treat them as two distinct tools. They are both different and convey different messages to potentially different audiences.

For example, Twitter is probably an important marketing tool for your blog, driving traffic for people that might miss it on a web search (but for whom finding a 'recruiter' on Twitter is easy)