I read a provocative post from the Blog Bloke a while ago that I’d like to comment on. The post is entitled, “8 Twitter tips to promote your blog.” In it, the author responds to the argument that Twitter and other social media are replacing blogs and that we should drive traffic to Twitter instead of to our blogs and ecommerce websites.
He points out the many flaws with that idea in his blog entry. I would like to focus on two of his most persuasive points.
The first point is, as the Blog Bloke puts it, “If you are a marketer trying to make money, you will want your Twitter followers to visit your blog and click on your ads.”
To quote Lex Luthor, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Companies often post links to deals and special offers on their Twitter accounts, but those links always go to one of their corporate websites or landing pages. Nothing is bought or sold on Twitter, itself. Social media is an excellent part of Internet marketing, but it is not a replacement for the many other available tools, such as paid search, SEO and blogging.
The second important point is, “Ultimately, your blog is where you want the action to be. You want your readers to follow you over to your real blog on your own domain and a site that belongs to YOU.”
As I’ve discussed before, Twitter and other social-media sites do not technically help with SEO. The only way they do is if other Twitter users find links to your blog and link to them on their own blogs. Twitter and Facebook have no-follow tags, which tell search engines to pay no attention to them, but most blogs welcome search engines to pay attention to their links and include them in their ranking algorithms. You can read more about this in my eHarbor Blog entry, “Experts are wrong: Twitter and Facebook help SEO.”
What an interesting discussion. I’ve had a lot of fun writing about this topic. What are your thoughts on this important ecommerce topic?
This blog entry is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post, “Social media can’t replace blogs.” The comic of the history of blogging is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of stefan2904.
This is all very true. Twitter cannot replace an actual website. Twitter is a fine tool to drive traffic to a website if you can get enough followers, however I need my website to generate real excitement for my product.
Excellent comment, Jeff. Twitter is all about driving people to the place we want them to be. We don’t want to keep customers on a site other than our own. Communication is great, but sales keep companies in business.
Glad that you like my post and thanks for the mention. “Provacative” is what the Blog Bloke is all about. Never follow the crowd and Blog on!
Thank you very much for noticing, Blog Bloke. I always strive to give credit where credit is due. Thank you for your awesome blog post in the first place. I chose my description of your blog entry carefully because it definitely is provocative.
Thanks for the advice, and have a great day.
“I always strive to give credit where credit is due.”
I wish more bloggers (especially a-listers) blogged that way. Keep up the great work Rob.