As blogging was becoming a household term; microblogs like Twitter were making their way onto our mobile devices. Other microblogs such as Jaiku, Identi.ca, Plurk, and several others tried their hand but didn’t gain the traction necessary to demand sustained user attention.
Along with these services, picture blogs like TwitPic and Tumblr quickly gained ground. People were used to reading full blogs with well-thought messages and multimedia elements that were more engaging than the short burst of random thoughts that microblogs offered.
Video blog platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustream.tv quickly gained popularity and provide embeddable content for your blog posts. They can also be shared via social channels with ease.
With the influence and convenience of microblogging, Facebook introduced status updates and Google+ later launched to give us more platforms than any one person can reasonably manage.
I think we’re approaching the full circle of content development and distribution when we look at blogs and microblogs as complementary to any online marketing strategy.
Lets review the benefits of publishing to your blog:
- Your blog is a permanent home for all of your content no matter the format
- You attract links to a URL you control
- You notify feeds, search engines, and other recipients that your new content is available
- You can build your brand around your content
- You can tie authors to your content
- You can encourage subscriptions to your blog to perpetuate interest and readership
- You can move your blog at your will
- You always own your content
Lets review the benefits of distributing your content through microblogs:
- You can reach people in your network
- They can reach people in their network
- It’s easier to retweet, or share, than to quote your blog post
- There are 1 billion people on Facebook
- There are over 500 million people on Twitter
- There are 400 million users on Google+
So how do you make these siblings play nice and work to your benefit? That is the question and I’ll attempt to answer it.
Create content that is well-rounded and attracts as many readers as possible. Think about the last event you attended or your newest product release. Instead of feeling compelled to write up 300-500 words of text and publishing it to your blog, think about recording some piece of the event or product launch and embed that within your post. Snap a few pictures of attendees or product launch images and provide a visual to your words. Explain and share your process in a slide deck and include it with the rest of your post elements and your readers will not only have a better chance of engagement but you’ll probably attract a link to your post. By its very nature, the link to your post will share link equity to your media posted on YouTube and Slideshare and provide a greater chance of that content ranking well for your content.
As you can see, publishing great content to your blog and growing your engaged friends on social sites can speed up your page indexation & rankings for new content. You should think about what your readers would like to see, and what would entice them to share/link to your original content, and find a way to publish and distribute that information to your networks.
About the author:
Ash Buckles is the President of SEO.com. He provides strategic direction of executive management and promotes organic search (SEO), content development, integrated online promotions, and analytics. Ash is the co-founder of #seochat on Twitter.