From July 2009 to October 2010, I ran a Twitter chat every Friday at 12Noon. A couple dozen other chats were in progress and getting started at the time.
It was a very stimulating and fast way to spend an hour brainstorming and asking questions around business topics and specifically around the themes that inspired the chat's name #kaizenblog:
- How micro productivity can lead to macro results when applied persistently and patiently
- Focus on people -- readers are your customers, be in service to them
- Focus on the process and not the results
- Do the right thing
That was the kaizen part.
Micro interactions
Especially in those early years, Twitter has been an integral part of this blog.
Many of the posts have been inspired the chats, including when I was a guest participant -- for example, here's about how to post more often, and the follow up after the chat how do you use your content to stand out.
Here was another fun one on the bandwagon effect and other social media behaviors. It's now become fashionable displaying Twitter comments on TV. For me, for many of us, it was about extending conversations from blogs, touching base on topics, exchanging resources -- a public collaboration.
Twitter wasn't the top place to run a marketing campaign. It was the shortest way to connect with the people who were tuned in.
The blog didn't go away
It was always one and the other, just like for many it is several screens at once, each performing a different function in various environments and contexts -- the laptop for work, the tablet for video and magazine / book reading, and the smartphone for "right here", "right now" kind of actions.
And even as I have been writing shorter posts than I used to, the archives are filled with content still relevant today (whenever someone discovers it through search, I see the surge in traffic). Here's an example of how I used the content in the archives to be relevant during a Twitter exchange.
Even as blogs in general are evolving, I still feel there are many reasons to blog. I tweeted those this morning -- let's see which ones resonated.
Why have a blog?
Reason 1 -- never a prophet in your own company/agency/town, etc. it helps you spread ideas
Reason 2 -- commitment to your thinking, showing up regularly and putting POVs together as you intended them
Reason 3 -- focus development, because eventually you will need to stand for something
Reason 4 -- documenting experiences, ability to point to a post you wrote 4 years ago when the idea becomes popular
Reason 5 -- learn to be proactive and to look at problems through different lenses through conversation
Reason 6 -- change your stance from "some time" to now
The times are a little off in these screen shots -- somehow my account was set at Central Time. I'm on EST. Fixed now.
I didn't pay attention to scientifically proven times to tweet, and no strategy to pre-announce the tweets was in place, it was just spur of the moment. Integrating content across media still makes sense to me. As it does learning and evolving form and utility.
[find a recent list of Twitter chats here]
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. To book her for a speaking engagement click here.