Blogging in 140 Characters or Less
One of the biggest (legitimate) concerns about business blogging is the time commitment. "I'm already overextended, how can I possibly start writing meaningful posts that discuss the future of my industry? Rest assured, you don't need to solve the world's problems with your blog; you just need to initiate a conversation that resonates with your core audience (customers, prospects, suppliers, etc).
BusinessWeek recently updated a previous article about blogs and social media, which now concludes…"Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later."
But what happens if you really don't have the time (or staff) to write 2-3 posts per week? You may want to consider micro-blogging (or tumblelogs). According to Wikipedia, micro-blogging is 'a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.' The most popular service is called Twitter (check out my Twitter account), although there are others like Jaiku (acquired by Google), Cromple, or Tumblr. Think that micro-blogging is a teenage fad. Just the opposite.
NYTimes reporter Michelle Slatalla wrote an interesting piece about her struggles to convince her teenage daughters that Twitter was an easy way to stay connected. At least with teenagers, the experiment didn't go as planned (they preferred text messages).
Using services like Twitter, or something like Tumblr, you're able to initiate conversations with your friends/customers/prospects in 140 characters or less. Think about a series of posts over several days that go something like this:
"Off to visit supplier x to see if quality meets our standards" "Good visit with supplier X, think we may carry their product" "Started shipping product from new supplier, let me know what you think". "Thanks for feedback, we'll stock more next week".
In less than a minute per day, you'll be able to start creating an additional channel to gather feedback and insight from your customers by making them feel part of the process.
Once you've mastered micro-blogging, you can go on to have a full-fledged blog that allows readers to add comments directly to your posts. Good luck.
One Response to “Blogging in 140 Characters or Less”
1 planetrelations 26 February 2008 @ 5:30 am
For another perspective including stats on Twitter use, see Geoff Livingston’s post - Overhype Alert: Twitter at http://tinyurl.com/3c5y99
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