How Microblogging Can Help You

By Randy R on November 2, 2007 in Blogs

Microblogging allows you to develop skills that will make you a superior blogger. It’s also a lot of fun. What more could you ask for?

Services like Twitter and Tumblr have a number of distinct benefits for bloggers, and in this post, I want to explain how you get the most out of these services.

If used correctly, these tips will have you making every word count, getting to know your readers, revolutionizing the art of link sharing and writing fearlessly.

Practice the art of economical expression

Microblogging is all about brevity. Twitter restricts each tweet to 140 characters, and while there’s no limit on Tumblr, it’s against the spirit of the service to be too verbose. As bloggers, we’re often told to omit unnecessary words, and to leave out the parts that people skip. Microblogging is the perfect medium to help you hone this useful skill.

Keep your finger on the pulse

Twitter, especially, is useful for this. It’s become something of a social bookmarking service, with users sharing links to interesting articles or breaking news. It’s a useful place not only to find great links but to gauge what people are speaking about at the moment: all great fodder for blog posts.

Develop the skill of writing now, worrying later

Microblogging is casual. It’s not your magnum opus, so typos and errors in expression don’t matter. It’s the perfect platform to practice free-writing without constantly stopping to critique your words, or as Daniel puts it, to write like there’s no tomorrow, then edit.

Allow readers to get to know you better

Microblogging is a personal platform. Tumblr asks you to share links, images and quotes that capture your interest, even if they’re not at all related to the things you blog about. Twitter asks you to tell readers what you’re doing, and doing so can give them a little window into the person behind the blog. Personal connections are always stronger than informational ones.

You can also use a service like Twitter to socialize with readers and network with other bloggers.

Exercise your off-topic impulses

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had an impulse to blog something, only to find it probably wasn’t at all suited to the target audience of my blog. The link ends up buried in my bookmarks, having not received the attention it deserved.

Microblogging grants you to express this impulse without muddying the focus of your primary blog.

Share links with readers

How about a new way to handle the old blogging standard: link posts? Zen Habits handles its links with a dedicated Tumblr account that provides a regularly updated stream of relevant content from other sites. There’s nothing to stop you creating a Twitter account for your site, also, as Mashable has done.

When you update links via microblogging it becomes a lot easier to manage a higher volume of links. When someone pitches a link at you, why not add it to your site’s Tumblr account?\n

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