Blogging as a medium is constantly evolving. Once upon a time, people chose to write media rich content, unrestricted by character limits. Nowadays, the trend seems to be in capturing an idea as neatly and succinctly as possible at the moment inspiration strikes. Both platforms have their own sets of pros and cons, and reach different kinds of audiences. The question now is: which one should you invest most of your online time and energy on?
In the beginning, blogs were shockingly informal. The concept was built on the simple idea of people sharing descriptive journals of their daily activities. Over time, this has changed. Blogging is now a formalized medium, one that has developed rigid standards for those who are serious about it. It’s good for deeper thoughts and bigger ideas. Blogging services like WordPress don’t even let you post without entering something in the subject line. You have to choose a category for your post to fall into, lest the search engines miss it when they make their sweep. In this kind of environment, structure and composition reign supreme.
The wake of this created the thing now currently known as microblogging. Twitter receives 8 billion page views a day, and for good reason. There’s something very free about the ability to post a thought right as it happens, without the need to expand it. It offers information in real-time, making the audience much easier to engage. You can carry a live conversation on Twitter, a la instant messaging client.
Let’s face it; creating a full-fledged blog post masterpiece takes time and energy that some writers aren’t really up for on some days. On the other hand, microblogging is very “here tomorrow, gone today” – a brilliant tweet is only going to get ten minutes of fame, no more and no less, before it gets buried under the feed. Doing both is still the best way to go about your blogging business.
Of course, you could hybrid. Places like Tumblr allow you to still create posts where you can ramble along gleefully, as well as simply just share a photo or a quote that particularly appeals to you. Tweets are cute, but there really is just so much you can do within the given limit. They don’t particularly require substance, or enough meat to tell a good story.
It might look like the train for blogging has come and gone, what with the rise of citizen journalism by way of status updates, and how Twitter has been and is being used as a tool for change. It has made a name for itself by being instrumental in highly significant events, like the raid on Osama bin Laden, or the revolts across the Middle East. Still, microblogging has a long way to go in terms of audience impact. The power of a well-thought out idea still reigns prominent, and blogs have the ability to convey a deeper meaning than a quote taken out of context.
Blogging and microblogging serve different purposes: microblogging is great for getting and transmitting news updates, on top of it being a great social activity to build and get to know your audience on a personal level. Fully functioning blogs allows you to expand on your thoughts, develop and publish your ideas comprehensively, and get the word out without being restricted to 140 characters. Both mediums offer unique paybacks, and you’re missing out if you only stick to one or the other.
So how do you prefer to blog, cuzzins? Feel free to share your opinion with us by leaving a comment in the section below.
Later,
Andy “Just Bloggin’” Jenkins
