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Blogging versus Tweeting

If you haven't noticed, I've been a bit inactive on the blog in favor of quick updates via Twitter. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/UtterDomain if that's your bag. I've been thinking a lot about how to improve the returns on my time spent on both this blog and on twitter. What I've found is that there's a lot of room for improvement on my own site and maybe you'll find this helpful, too.

Focus on your website


I fell into Twitter by accident really, with no real plan for how to promote my site, promote my domains or connect what I was tweeting with what I was blogging and vice versa. This is something I'm working on changing. It's not just putting up links to blog posts on twitter and putting twitter messages and follow me buttons on this site (though admittedly that's part of the plan), it's bigger than that. Your social media accounts (facebook, twitter, etc.) are a part of your brand, but your brand is anchored by your site. And so your site should really be the focal point, the aggregator and by extension, the revenue generator. This is important; we'll get back to it shortly.

But focusing on your site doesn't mean rejecting twitter or facebook. In fact, you may very well find that the majority of new content that you are writing is written on other sites first. But you should make a conscious effort to bring that content back to your site, to bring users who first encounter you via your social network back to your site and to have a reason for people to visit your site... often.

Take advantage of the medium


Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Linked In, etc... they each serve a very specific purpose and cater to a specific community. If you produce content that is useful, thought provoking, relevant, non-self serving, helpful and variety of other adjectives... you become a trusted member of those communities and not a spammer just out for self promotion. That level of trust is invaluable because then when you do market yourself, your products and your site, it's taken in context of your contributions to the community and that's much more powerful than just spamming links and reposting the same content over and over.
Let me give you an example: I've been posting interesting upcoming domain drops, links to Bido auctions, available domain names and names I've recently purchased via twitter. There's essentially not a single dollar in revenue I've generated from any of that. But those in the market for names and those who understand that buying names similar to ones that have been purchased are often good investments have started to pay attention. The more valuable the information I provide, the more karma I gain in the community. It's a slow process, but in time that trust and that interest in what I'm posting will lead to profits down the road. You should have plans for how to leverage that karma, but I personally have a little ways to go before I get there.

Connect


Blogs are discovered through a completely different set of promotion methods than tweets. With Blogs you have search engines, RSS readers/aggregators, banners and link exchanges feeding you visitors and the methods of connecting with those visitors are fairly well established. But with Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, there's much more emphasis on explicit connections. But take the time to connect with people. It's not just Following people though either. You've also got to message them. Retweet them. Reply to them and engage them so that they not only follow you but they'll remember you. Make yourself memorable. Make yourself a real person and not just an avatar. The social platforms that have been created and are being created today are great if you take advantage of them to actually connect on a personal level with people. If you just develop massive lists of followers and they don't know you from Adam then the value of that list is significantly diminished (it's not worthless, but it's pretty close to it).

Blog


There's only so much that can be said in a tweet. If you find yourself wanting to post 3 or 4 tweets just to say what you want to say, blog it! Take the time to write something that's more valuable than a 140 character post. Your readers and your followers will appreciate it and you gain even more credibility when you can speak coherently in paragraphs! But it's also the blog that generates your revenue. Sure, you can embed affiliate links in your tweets, but that only goes so far. The more you are seen to be profiting from your followers, the less they will trust your content. That's where your blog comes in. You can more easily profit from the traffic you are generating at your blog because of "passive" revenue such as PPC ads, direct ad sales, etc. The increased exposure to your site also allows you to get more eyeballs on your products and domains that you are selling and that exposure is the key to making big bucks.

So I've got a job ahead of me to really push this site forward. If you have any tips or suggestions for how to take advantage of Twitter, let me know in the comments. I'll be updating this site shortly to improve and promote my twitter feed, and I'm all ears. But if you send me one more tweet about how to get 3000 followers in 7 days I'm going to frickin' unfollow you. I swear! :)

1 comment:

  1. Hey,
    Those are great posts. But I suggest you change the look and feel of your blog. It resembles blogger, thus many including me don't trust much on free blogs. I know your is not blogger URL, but the feeling is strong with your lay out.

    ReplyDelete