I can see that Twitter will be quite useful - I shouldn't have dragged my heels about opening an account for so long. It allows me to blog when I'm away from my computer - at conventions and trade shows for example. Also, I often end my Blogger posts with an 'In other news' a short bite of information that doesn't warrant a post on its own but that I hope will be of interest to someone. I figure I can also break the weaker 'this is what I did today' posts down into bite-sitzed chunks for Twitter.
In my mind this allows me to use Twitter as designed - to let you know what Reiver Games-related stuff I'm up to on a more frequent and more concise basis.
At the same time, I can strip out what I consider to be the weaker posts here, and instead stick to the meatier stuff: my thoughts and experiences of running a board games publishing company. So hopefully the posts will be more interesting and more useful to those of you in a similar boat, though as a result they may become slightly less frequent (since a 'this is what I'm doing' filler post is less likely to appear).
What are people's thoughts on this? Am I barking up the wrong tree or does this sound like a good idea?
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17 comments:
I don't use twitter, so my initial reaction is to think I'll be missing out on stuff.
Of course, it might be stuff I'm glad to have missed, but I'll never be quite sure about that unless I monitor twitter to see what I would be missing.
Hiya Steve,
You can subscribe to a RSS feed of my tweets in exactly the same way that most people (and you?) subscribe to a feed of my blog posts. If you go to: http://twitter.com/ReiverGames then there's a link at the bottom of the sidebar on the right 'RSS feed of ReiverGames's updates'.
Hope that helps and see you tomorrow.
Cheers,
Jack
Overall, I think you're taking the right approach. My only concern is whether the less frequent blogging will get you out of the habit too much. Only time will tell, I guess.
BTW, it might also be an idea to include a sidebar on the blog with your last 5 tweets. I'm sure there must be some demo code on either blogger or twitter showing how to do it.
Hiya Mal,
That's a good idea - I'll have to work out how to do that. Probably next week though - this week is very busy!
Cheers,
Jack
One click is all it takes: see here.
Hiya Mal,
Slightly more than one-click (I'm not using layouts :-( ), but pretty simple none-the-less. Thanks!
Cheers,
Jack
You might also consider having your blog posts auto-tweet out. That's what we do for twitter - I update status less frequently (mostly 'cause I can't do it via phone yet in Canada without costing me an arm and a leg) but it's a good way to keep other people informed too.
Hiya Tao,
Do you mean an automatic tweet when I post a new blog post? Might get a bit annoying for people subscribed to both?
Cheers,
Jack
You should absolutely send an automatic post from your blog to twitter, and I would recommend Hootsuite (it is free)
If use use Hootsuite you can see how many people click thru that link with their ow.ly URL shortening service, a good way to see if your blog post titles are interesting to others.
You can also schedule tweets ahead of time for time-sensitive issues that you may forget to tweet about.
Reasons why to feed your blog to your Twitter via RSS:
1) some people check twitter from their phone and may be able to click thru to your blog for some quick reading if they dont have RSS on their phone
2) as your twitter subscribers grow, you will find that there is less and less overlap with your blog followers
3) it is easy to share via Retweeting allowing your fans to spread your story for them
Reasons not too:
1) someone may get annoyed (in reality they may just skip over it, b/c they follow your rss, or visit your blog regularly.
Might I also suggest a monthly recap of most commented on posts and a post highlighting best/helpful comments. It rewards your commenters and reminds your readers that some of the best info may come from the comments section of a post they already read. I did this for my blog Pallimed here.
Yup, Christian's got some really good comments and suggestions there. I hadn't thought about that with regard to the comments, but that's pretty cool.
It's how I do it too; though I haven't been too active with promoting both Twitter and Blogger accounts... I've been more active with a Facebook page; I always upload pictures there from the events I've been and people seem to like this very much. Also people seem to join the page faster...
Hiya Christian, Tao and Valentijn,
Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions. Not sure how many of them I'll get round to doing, but I'll try!
Cheers,
Jack
You might also consider having your blog posts auto-tweet out. That's what we do for twitter - I update status less frequently (mostly 'cause I can't do it via phone yet in Canada without costing me an arm and a leg) but it's a good way to keep other people informed too.
Overall, I think you're taking the right approach. My only concern is whether the less frequent blogging will get you out of the habit too much.
You know I have posted a many as 200 blogs.. my recent blog is regrading wow gold. Though I don't play that game but i like it.
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