Internet Marketing: Twitter Isn't Killing Blogs, It's Making Them Better

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Twitter Isn't Killing Blogs, It's Making Them Better

Yesterday Joseph Jaffe, a marketer I look up to, proclaimed that blogging is dying. Twitter is killing it, he said.

Joseph is a leader in the social media movement. He's helped many well-know brands navigate the new landscape. But I think he's wrong here.

Twitter is not killing blogs, it's making them better.

Joseph's point is that Twitter's 140-character limit is reducing our ability to do thoughtful long-form thinking. "There has been a marked shift from blogging to "micro"-blogging and I wonder what we're sacrificing in the process," he wrote.

First, let's look at the numbers. Technorati's most recent State of the Blogosphere reported that the company has indexed 133 million blog records since 2002. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports 32 million Twitter accounts (half of which are inactive). Twitter's acceleration is obvious in the Google Trends graph below (blue is Google searches on "blogs"; red is Google searches on "Twitter."

So Twitter is seeing explosive growth, maybe even catching up with and cutting into blogging's dominance. Like Joseph, I see this anecdotally in the pace of posting on many of the blogs I read. People are balancing their blogging with Twitter.

But there's something else happening. While many of the blogs without business models, published in the middle of the night by bloggers in pajamas, are slowing their pace of publishing, many smart businesses are starting blogs with very clear business goals. These are businesses like Modative, Reynolds Golf Academy and Cilk Arts that have figured out that blogging is a critical piece of inbound marketing. It helps them rank higher in search engines, drive more traffic to their site and, ultimately, generate more leads and sales.

Sure, it would be easier for these business to spew 140-character missives on Twitter, but they understand that Tweets don't rank well in search engines, and thus don't generate the leads and sales that blogs posts do.

For readers and businesses, this change is a good thing. It means we're getting fewer of the windy tirades that originally gave blogs a bad name, and more high-quality content that's produced for a very specific reason -- to provide useful information to customers. It also makes it easier for quality businesses to rise above their competition.

Bottom line? Yes, Twitter is growing, but it's not going to kill blogs. Blogs are too important to businesses.