Dave Fleet republished with permission Doc Kane’s curious take on why he thinks more businesses are getting into Twitter than blogs which boils down to blogging taking more time and effort:

Unlike many other forms of new technology, one does not need to be a tech whiz to get up and running on Twitter - and this is a huge advantage over blogging.

Huge advantage? I wonder about that. It takes much less time to craft 140 character maximum updates than write a blog post, no argument there, but what about the other time Twitter takes that blogging doesn’t? The time to track, follow and reply to updates from others you follow? The time to find new and add new followers or remove those who are disruptive?

I think Twitter is a bit overstated in terms of long term business value. It’s a lot more useful than I originally thought and have since taken that criticism back, but it’s not something that every business or even most businesses that require an online presence absolutely must be involved with to help their business grow and succeed.

And, despite my affection for them, blogs aren’t absolutely required either.

Twitter as the relationship builder for, well, Twitterers

Sure, Twitter is great for building relationships with those who are into Twitter. But is that demographic vital to your business? I can safely say I’ve never had one client mention Twitter to me – ever – in our offline business. We have done business with plenty of young, old and middle-aged folks. I mentioned Twitter to a salesman trying to pitch yellow page ads to me and you’d have thought I was an alien.

Reality check.

Twitter is a massive river, flowing fast, free and wild and untamed at times. An online comparison I’ve made several times is a gigantic IRC chatroom with comments aplenty. Some of this activity river is caught by Google, but quite a bit isn’t. If you want to get something out there very fast, Twitter works great. If you want to follow along with feedback on a topic or event in real time, especially if folks are using hashtags like #topic_keyword to group, Twitter is a functional tool.

But Twitter sucks when it comes to the past.

Yeah, you can search through past tweets, but if they are stale beyond a few days or weeks, or in some busy twitterers case a few hours, it isn’t as useful. You can retweet and try and start up an old discussion, but that doesn’t work too well. And what about search engines? Something every business should care about because if people can’t find your business and you, how are you going to do business?

I started a blog for the reboot of our insurance business, but haven’t gotten setup with Twitter yet. Am I doing things backwards? I don’t think so. I wanted to make sure our new website got ranked in the search engines ASAP. Commenting on and/or through Twitter might make that happen if somebody blogged one of my Tweets, but it would be faster to just setup a blog and write an introduction post.

Here’s the funny thing: I didn’t even get my first blog post written and Google had already indexed the blog. The blog isn’t even linked off the home page of the site yet (bad, I know, but I’m not happy with the design yet, long story). Wonder if I had setup a Twitter account and made a few tweets referencing the site and see if the tweets got into Google faster?

Here’s a humorous aside. I showed my first offline business blog post from Saturday to a couple different friends. One loved my introductory blog post entitled, Saturday Morning Insurance Fever and another remarked that it was “too personal.” Since we are in a small town and our insurance agency has a personal feel, I’m ok with things being a little more personal in tone. I think the blog format, even for a business, works better in a less polished, but still professional tone. I’m hoping to post more informational pieces related to the insurance world going forward, but when you start a blog out and realize that some people reading might not know what a blog even is, it makes you go hmm. I need to show this first post and the blog in general to some clients and get their feedback. It’s on the to-do list, believe me.

Back to Twitter. The same friend who gave me the feedback on my first blog post that it was too personal has been using Twitter for his new online business Merchant’s Mirror (MM). He seems really excited about how Twitter is working for him. Allowing him to communicate with people in real time. I’m not completely certain how great it has been for generating business for MM so far.

My friend, Ben, is also blogging through his business site. I checked how many updates the Merchant’s Mirror blog has had since the year started? Three. Decided to check Google and see if I could find his “Merchant’s  Mirror goes live!” post. Indeed, it was the second result. Interesting that the tag for ‘live’ was ahead of the actual permalink page. Next I went to see what I could find in Google for the MM Twitter account. A search through Google for ‘twitter merchants mirror’ leads to Ben’s personal twitter account, not the business twitter account which is, appropriately located at twitter.com/merchantsmirror 

I was impressed to see that this account had 157 followers already. Well done, Ben. But I think my search engine point is made by trying to find merchant mirror tweets versus blog posts. One is easy to find, the other is not. This is what leads me to Twitter and blogs being two entirely different tools for a business owner. I think if a business can do both, it should. Not every business must have a blog, but those who would like to share information with their clients in a pull instead of push environment as well as help improve the online visibility of the business website blogs are powerful and useful.

Business blogs must be updated on a schedule

But blogs are far from perfect. I think a blog that is seldom updated does very little to help the business. In fact, if the blog gathers too much dust — it’s been too long without an update or updates seem to come with no pattern or reliability — then it could give the impression that nothing is happening at the business. Ouch, that’s the opposite of helpful.

So once you decide to start a blog for your business, then make it part of the workflow to keep it updated. I think it’s even more important for a business blog to be updated than a non-business blog. I don’t mean posting nonsense just so you can say hey, the blog is updated, but if there isn’t activity in your business that you can write about, then it’s not living, it’s dying. If you haven’t got the writing chops then designate blog updates to a trusted employee or partner. Make that individual your reporter and have them send the copy through you before hitting the publish button for the final ok. Make it a priority.

Too much hassle? Then don’t do a blog at all. It’s not the end of the world having an online business presence without a blog. Not having a business Twitter account isn’t either.

Ben’s MM blog is on the edge of not being updated enough to be as useful as it could be to the business. I wonder if a client and/or prospective client with a busy life and business subscribe to something that isn’t updated on a schedule or routine? My feedback for my friend’s business blog is simple: update on a schedule. If the schedule is once every two weeks or once a month, that’s cool, but there should be a minimum amount of updates on a schedule for a business blog.

I’m going to try and have a minimum of once per week updates to our business blog. I have a bunch of different post ideas in my head and need to put them down digitally. If I can update a couple times a week that would be awesome, but my goal will be once a week updates on average.

Effort is everywhere in business

Now getting back to Doc Kane’s comment that blogs require effort. Of course they do. Running a successful business requires lots of effort. Running a successful marketing campaign requires effort. Heck, running a successful business Twitter account requires effort. I’m sure the MM twitter account didn’t get 157 followers with no effort. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything in business that doesn’t require effort. You have to work it.

I plan to get on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn with our business, but am taking it slower. First, I’m starting with a blog and making sure I can schedule regular updates. I’m doing this blog for tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m worried about today too, and I think Twitter would be a handy tool for dealing with today.

For those businesses who don’t have a blog or use Twitter

Before publishing I asked another friend who is in the printing business how things were going. While some of their competitors are laying people off their business is up 30% and they are having a great year. They don’t use Twitter and they don’t have a business blog.

Twitter or blog absolutely required for business? No. Might one or both be helpful for some businesses? Yes. It’s up to you to decide in your own business how well these tools might fit. Be careful about jumping in just to say you have one because it might be better staying on the sidelines.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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