I am seeing a rash of “advice†on how to “think up†blog posts. No doubt this is a result of the Twitter popularity. I hate gimmicks. Much of the advice given about “increasing your blog output†is irritating to me. Why? Because the point of a blog is to speak your mind. I see so many twitter posts that make some comment, but there is no blog or background to let the reader in on what lies behind that comment. Here is a good and natural reason to “start a blogâ€: out of one’s Twitter usage.
For me, and many other veteran bloggers, it was blogs (and their RSS feeds) first. Twitter brought to the masses a way to post quick updates, and even news happening in front of or discovered by the tweeter. So blogs for me was a big reason to jump into Twitter in a big way. It has definitely DECREASED my checking in on RSS feeds. It’s like an RSS feed moderated by the authors of the RSS feed content.
Ironically, the article that started me on this little rant was one that was tweeted by title “How to think of Blog Posts†, but the author (one of my favorites in the world of Social Media, Chris Brogan) actually did something with that similar to what I would say, In a nutshell, put down your thoughts and your reactions. Other blogs (and now tweets, often pointing to blogs) and articles on the Web provide me with much of my blog fodder. That’s why I am so interested in “Blog This†plugins for browsers that allow me to highlight something I want to quote and open it in a quote style for my blog, provide the link to the source, and also auto title the post based on the original title. I now have a WordPress plugin that turns around and posts a twitter update like this : “New blog post: Title of Post (url of post shortened by bit.ly)â€â€¦â€¦there was a plugin that promised that it would post comments back to the blog from any retweets of that blog post, but that plugin failed to work, but I love that idea. Anything which helps me weave a more robust, listening, engaged presence is something in which I’m very much interested.
