Blogging was the first social media. Some people might think it was AOL but I’m not sure AOL really counted as social media since it was more of a news and information site. In any case, blogging continues to be the biggest purveyor of social media information, even in the face of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
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Why do I say that? If you look at what’s shared most of the time via links it’s one of 3 things; video, news stories of some sort, or blog posts. Huffington Post, in all its glory, is nothing more than a huge blog site; exclusive in its own way, but still mainly a mash of opinions and such.
While blogging can be considered as social media, it’s also different. The idea behind blogging overall is much different.
For instance, I post something on Facebook and I might get some likes. Most of the time, if I get a comment, it’s one line, then on to the next thing.
With blogs, one hopes to build up a community whereby there’s a nice mix of usual visitors with new visitors, with multiple intentions. Some of us just want to espouse our philosophies on things. Some of us want to make money. Most of us want to talk to people, which is why we leave comments open.
With that as a setup, let’s look at this interesting relationship between blogging and social media in the context of being separate entitles:
1. Bloggers promote their articles on social media; social media helps them gain notice.
That’s pretty much how it’s been since the old days of sites like Blogger and diary sites, where the people who promoted you were people who belonged to the same sites. Back in 2004 there were lots of people promoting their blog posts on Ryze; later it became MySpace. Take a look at your Twitter feed one day and you’ll see all sorts of posts going to some type of blog.
2. Social media feeds the bear with blog topics to write about.
I’ve written a lot of posts over the years about all the big social media sites. I got those ideas by participating on those sites. I also got ideas for certain types of topics by reading what people put up on these sites. You don’t always have to think of something on my own… thank goodness!
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3. Social media gets more benefit from your blogging than you do.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s true. This doesn’t mean you’re not getting anything out of it, but social media gets more. Let’s use Twitter as our example.
How many millions of blog links do you think goes through Twitter every day? How many of the people you’re connected to do you think are actually seeing your link so they’ll come to your site for a visit? How many more of those actual visitors are retweeting your post as opposed to leaving a comment on your site?
4. If you want to make any real money, you need to get people from social media to come to your blog or website.
In some ways people are missing the idea behind social media marketing. The idea isn’t to get people to like your stuff offsite; the idea is to find ways to entice people to come to your blog or your website. I’d say your affiliate link but trust me, most of those links and posts are getting ignored.
People hate being sold to blatantly. However, if you write an article about a product you like, then promote it on social media, and make it attractive enough to get people to come to your space, then you have a real opportunity to possibly make some money. Think about why we all hate those people posting links telling us they can get us thousands of Twitter or Facebook followers; it’s not only that we don’t believe them (it’s a scam by the way) but how does that help us?
5. Unless you’re already well known, famous people or people thought of highly in your industry aren’t coming to your blog unless they hear about you via social media.
I’ve had a couple of folks known fairly well online stop by here for a comment or two; it’s rare but it’s happened.
However, I’ve connected with a lot of famous people via social media… and they followed me first! lol I’ve ever had the opportunity to talk to them; that’s pretty cool.
Here’s the overall thing, at least from my perspective. I’ve never really tried to get anything from any of these people and I don’t go out of my way to show who I know and how I know them. In 13 years of being online and 10 years of blogging the only person I ever reached out to for anything was asking Guy Kawasaki to add my business blog to the leadership section of his Alltop site, and that was after I helped edit his book Reality Check (and my name’s in the book; pretty cool!).
The thing is, you can connect with someone via social media in a way you probably won’t on a blog. If you’re genuine they might even stop by your blog or possibly help promote you. Don’t ever expect it though; do your own work.
6. You benefit most from both blogging and social media by sharing.
You might benefit more from sharing things on social media but your blog can get a benefit also. If you mention and link to others on your blog you may get more people to your blog. That’s because a lot of people look at trackbacks for their stuff and sometimes if they see you’ve linked to them they’ll stop by to see what you had to say or share.
Social media allows you to easily share the content others produce. If it’s certain people better known than others it can bring you some attention. If it’s regular folks like you, then they’re more apt to stop by your blog or website to take a look… Some of that depends on…
Don’t even think about changing someone else’s article title to fit your own needs, even if it’s just to tell people what the article is about. For your own missives, finding creative titles will be productive because that’s what a lot of people are looking for. They’ve all been told that one way to garner trust is sharing other people’s links so they’ll do that, even if they never read what you’ve written. This leads to #8…
8. More people will read your blog posts than your links on social media, even if more people see them on social media.
Isn’t that a shame? I have way more people comment and share my stuff on Twitter and Google Plus without reading it than I get comments on the blog.
How do I know this? I have posted videos that take at least 5 minutes to watch and seen them shared in 30 seconds. I’ve checked viewer counts later in the day and the counts, if I had any views, never match how many times the link has been shared.
On Google Plus, I’ve gotten responses to a link that don’t match up with the article but might match up with the title. Every once in a while I’ll press someone on it and they’ll admit they didn’t read the article. The same happens on Twitter; although I have a couple of folks who’ll retweet my stuff because I’m on their list and they know me, many more share my links and occasionally comment on the title that never come to the blog.
However, if people come to the blog, I can tell who’s actually read the article or not. Some comments aren’t even worthy of keeping and I immediately move them to spam but that’s not the majority of what I get anymore, thank goodness.
What does this mean overall? It means the people you’re really going to reach are the people you can get to come to your blog. Sure, every once in a while you might get some attention on Facebook if you do certain things, but in general people are going to skip it unless you can bring them into your space.
9. Neither blogging or social media is going away any time soon.
As a matter of fact, I predict that both are going to continue growing in some form or another for decades unless there’s some type of world catastrophe; I hope against hope on that one.
Since both are going to be around, both individuals, bloggers and marketers still have time to figure it all out, how to work with each other, how to make each other grow, how to protect each other… well, I have big dreams I suppose.
There are some things that need to stop. Trolling needs to stop. Bullying needs to stop. Revenge sites need to stop. Honesty needs to be spoken of more. There probably needs to be more social progress. The world needs to find better ways to talk to each other rather than at each other.
I don’t have that answer; I’m probably too old and set in my ways for that one. However, when there’s the potential for discourse, I’ll probably be there. I’ll comment on the blog; then I’ll share it on social media.
How will you participate?
Hey Mitch,
I never thought of a blog being the first social media, but yet when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
But i can see the relationship between social media and blogging. I first saw this when I first joined facebook about five years ago when there was this thing called “Blogging Tribes”.. this is when i started my journey into the social media/blogging world.
We would comment on each other blogs, share them, comment in these tribes, and it was good for a while. So all the the things you described here as far as leveraging both of these resources and getting the best out of them happened within these tribes.
I can remember myspace and i temporarily used them, but I didn’t have great experience with leveraging it for my blog. But then again I was a beginner and really had a generic idea of how to use myspace.
I don’t think blogging and social media isn’t going to go away anytime soon either. There’s too many bloggers and people using social media for it to go away. It’s like if someone invents a portal system like you would see on Star Trek taking the place of the automobile. The transition of people who’ve been driving since they were 16 won’t be that easy. So since there’s billions of people using social media and blogging, anything new that comes up will have a difficult time to become the top resource that people will use.
Thanks for sharing Mitch! I hope you have a great week ahead!
Hey Sherman,
First, let me say that if we ever have that Star Trek type portal I’ll never drive again. Heck, I want to get to places and then get back home as fast as I can. lol
Second, thanks for your comment on the correlation of these two things. I’ve tried the “tribes” thing and it just hasn’t ever worked out for me because people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and, frankly, sometimes there’s content one just can’t comment on because it’s beyond their realm. For instance, I’m not great with poetry most of the time.
But there is a relationship and if folks are ready to merge the two then there’s at least the possibility of being successful, if not entertained.
Hi Mitch,
You had me laughing when you talked about the response you have gotten on G+ where there was a video and you know the person didn’t bother to read your post. I don’t know why people do that! I found it funny because it happens to me on social media a lot.
Even beyond that…those one liners that try to get on my comment section HA! I don’t let them in because I know they didn’t read my blog post. Only exception is if I know a newbie and am teaching them the right way to comment.
Our blogs are our real estate and social media is rented space. Although they do work together, we are always sharing on social media so direct people to our blogs.
What I love the best in this post is #4. You are right on the money with that one. Whenever I want to sell my own trainings, I write a blog post about that specific topic. Then and only then do I mention there will be a training for more information on this topic. I find it a more appealing way to capture attention because I’m also giving some value in the post.
Sure, I spread it out to social media, and even may do a campaign. But the thing is not to scream out buy me. That approach will only get lost in the shuffle.
Thanks for writing the truth!
-Donna
Thanks Donna. Really, writing that post is the best way to get it done. I can’t say I’ve sold tons of stuff through this blog but when I’ve had a sale here and there it’s come because of a blog post. For instance, I’m not sure if you paid much attention to the affiliate ad next to #4 on the left. It’s for a program called Mailwasher. I wrote a post about that years ago and made a few sales because of the article. Now it’s still there and it’s still something I’d recommend but it’ll be pretty much ignored unless I write about it again. That’s also the problem with blogging to a degree; a post goes away at some point and you either have to keep bringing it up or writing about it again.
Hi Mitch – I was going to see what Donna said in her comment about our blogs being our property and social media being rented space only that can disappear on us at anytime. That is why building an email list is important too. That is how I got to this post now 🙂
You are so right on #3 – I would say so many more retweet vs leaving a comment on your post.
I think both will be around but may look and feel different in the coming years. Everything keeps changing daily now especially tech and online things. We have to keep changing with it.
Great post Mitch – interesting topic.
Thanks Lisa. I have a follow up post coming talking more about the correlation between sharing vs actually getting people to read what we write. If anything I believe that’s the goal we need to work on, getting more readers, though I’m not mad at anyone who shares what I write. As you said, the blogs are ours while social media sites eventually fade away or become something else.
Hey Mitch,
Wasn’t MySpace first? I don’t even know when either of them really came on the scene but I do know it was a good number of years back. I mean the free blogging platforms were much more popular when I started and I hadn’t even heard about WordPress until a couple years after that.
I totally get what you’re saying about blogging and social media. It depends on who you talk to but I just can’t for the life of me still believe that so many people online today are happier to have the conversations taking place on social media than on their own blog. Really? To each his own I suppose and I feel for them if their accounts ever get deleted.
In a way I can’t blame a lot of people, they aren’t taught very well on the proper edicate or the way things should be done online. So many are still taught today to spam the heck out of their links and the money will start pouring in. It’s so sad Mitch.
Well I don’t read every single thing that I share but I share them because I either know the person who wrote the post or a friend shared it so I know it’s good. I only wish I had time to read everything but I just don’t. Still love sharing good stuff though.
As always great insights from you Mitch. We can count on you to keep us on our toes.
Have a great week.
~Adrienne
Thanks Adrienne; glad you stopped by.
I have to read whatever I’m thinking about sharing because I made my own commitment that I wouldn’t share anything I don’t like or doesn’t fit what I’m interested in. That allows me to share other types of stories I see, news and sports stuff along with some science and other things I find interesting without making it look like I’m just sharing stuff to be doing it.
The reason I said blogging is because when I got on the real internet in 1995 AOL existed but not MySpace or Ryze or any other independent social media sites in that vein (I mean, there were lots of things like AOL but not outside of that). Course, Holly brought up on Twitter the other day the old time bulletin boards of the late 80’s and early 90’s and I guess that could be seen as social media; it gets a little dodgy looking that far back. 🙂
Hello, Mitch..!
Actually, you work for your business, but now the social media. However, blogging and social media are almost the single thing that you cannot separate it.
I love what you mentioned about “You need to bring people from social media to our website”. Sure, this is the purpose of social media marketing. You have to know that what is the most people are interesting, and use it to bring those people to your blog.
Again, I agree what you said…social media is not fair.
Thanks Kimsea. No, it’s not fair at all but it’s a lot of fun and can be beneficial for business also. It’s like the symbiosis between certain types of birds and crocodiles; who gets the bigger benefit from it?
Hey Mitch, long time no see! Figured I’d drop by your blog again as it’s been quite awhile. Nice to see some good posts you got up since the last time I visited. 🙂
1. Not only does social media help bloggers get noticed, it can also help bloggers build a reputation and trust with others. Reputation and trust is a big factor in being a blogger and social media can definitely boost that.
2. In the past I have gotten a lot of my blog posts out by getting inspiration and ideas from social sites and it worked pretty good. I’m actually planning to do this with my new blog as well!
3. Also using Twitter as per your example, your link just doesn’t show up in your followers timeline. Your link also appears in Twitter search, which includes hashtags as well. So say if you do a food post and attach #food hashtag to your tweet, anyone searching for “food” or “#food” will come across your tweet with your blog URL. This can mean a new visitor and new follower. 🙂
4. Blogging should be done as a passion in my opinion. People who just blog for the sole purpose to make money aren’t real bloggers at all. Sure it’s nice to get some money from your blog, but that shouldn’t be why you are blogging in the first place.
5. I actually don’t care if famous internet people come to my blog or not, they aren’t my target nor my main connections. I’d rather have 5 regular bloggers such as myself come to my blog versus 1 famous person.
6. I’ve found often, using Google+ for example, if you re-share things sometimes the person will drop by your profile to say thank you which means they look at your profile which means they see your blog posts. 🙂 I always say thanks if someone re-shares my posts.
7. Blog titles are indeed important. You should focus on creating a title that both represents what the post is about as well as entice people to click it. I wouldn’t go making it full on clickbait though, obvious clickbait is bad in my eyes.
8. I can’t really make a comment on this, as I haven’t seen this happen with me yet. lol
9. Blogging is one of the biggest things on the internet today and is still growing rapidly as more and more people start up blogs. Social media and networks are continuing to explode in population as well. The likes of Twitter, Google+ and Facebook are here to say for the foreseeable future.
Hi Dan, welcome back!
This is a great comment. I only have 2 items you mentioned that I’m going to comment on.
For #4, it was more of a rail against people trying to make money on Twitter by posting affiliate links or sponsored tweets rather than posting their own blog links or links to their own sites with content that might drive people to their sites and thus give them the opportunity to buy from them if they’re looking to make money. Do you know a single person who’s ever responded to one of those fake Twitter accounts promising to send someone 5,000 followers? lol
For #5, whether the intention is to get famous or well known people to your blog or not, we have to face up to the reality that if they like something we do, stop by and then share it with their masses that it can be a major benefit to anything else we do. Those folks aren’t out there trolling blogs though; they’re all participating on social media sites. I was just putting out a truth; the biggest boosts this blog has received has been the few times that someone well known as stopped by.
That’s it; great contribution!
Hey Mitch!
It’s actually kind of hard to know what someone is posting when they use a URL shortener, since most of them don’t have the option to preview the link before you click it. While I’m sure most of them are legit, I’ve seen bloggers use them to push affiliate or referral links. I actually have seen people respond to those kind of accounts, also seen people selling Twitter “followers” on various forums.
I see, well it’s nice to know you’ve had the lucky chance to get that kind of boost. I’ve been blogging since 2009 and haven’t had that kind of boost before.
First Daniel, in case you’re wondering why you keep going into moderation it’s because you don’t have a gravatar. lol
Second, there are Twitter clients, like Tweetdeck (which I use) that will tell you what the link actually is. So, it’s easy to tell if it’s going to a website or is an affiliate link. And the folks who have that stuff about visitors in their profiles… I never even check those folks out.
Every once in a while I get lucky. However, most of the time I get to talk to them on Twitter, and I feel good knowing they followed me first. lol
Oh. I didn’t really mind going into moderation, but ok I went and got myself a Gravatar now. lol
I’ll have to check out TweetDeck thanks, though I usually pay attention to the URL in my browser. If it happens to be an affiliate or referral link I click into, I close the tab and delete the cookie then will revisit with the affiliate/referral stuff stripped out.
I forgot how I initially came across your blog that first time, I think I might have find it on one of those blog lists people have on their blogs (list of CommentLuv blogs, etc etc).
Probably was via CommentLuv on someone else’s blog; that’s how I usually find folks… or used to be before I started hanging on Twitter so much. lol And look, your comment came right through! 🙂
I actually think I stumbled on your blog going searching for commentluv enabled blogs, one of those various sites that have lists of said blogs and what not.
I’m sure glad I did stumble on your blog, twice too! 🙂
These are really great points Mitch!
And I definitely agree with Sherman’s comment, I never
viewed blogging as the original social media, but certainly a case can be made for that train of thought.
And I like you advice in point # four, where you advise to steer our traffic fro our social sites, unto our blog, if we ever expect to monetize our traffic and presence there.
And I agree with # 9 as well, it that rather than waiting or hoping that social media fades way!LOL!
Instead let’s embrace it and make it work foe us, instead of against us!
Thanks for your comment Mark. Social media is a lot of fun but when we decide to try to make even a little bit of money online it’s better to try to get people to our own sites. Social media can help with that if we can get people to like us and come visit us. That’s part of my goal anyway. 🙂