Twitter: Blog Engagement Killer or Lazy Linkeratti?

Written by: Terry Van Horne | November 3, 2009

Social media as I understand it is about engaging your audience to learn their concerns, needs and wants through human discourse and interaction. To start this post I pose this question:

after reading a post if your visitor leaves a tweet instead of a comment has the goal above been achieved?

The other day, Shaun over at Hobo Web posted a great piece on his feeling that the “linkerati” are linking less with more discretion and how twitter is affecting comments on blogs. It was that post that started me on the path to considering the ramifications of adding twitter to comments of blogs.

I had been noticing less engagement at the Search Engine People Blog after twitter was added to comments as part of a re-design of the blog (quite nice by the way) so I mentioned it in my comments on Shaun’s post. I comment on the Hobo Web blog because I like Shaun’s no holds barred style  and the fact he engages his audience.

I posted comments on SEP regularly partly because Jeff Quipp is one of my favorite people in search and also because the posts are high quality with real dialog in the comments and little link dropping (delete them, me too is not a comment, it’s a link drop).

SEP often has good discussion around posts and it was looking like tweets had begun to replace comments as a way of registering approval/commenting on posts.

A few hours later I received a message from Ruud Heine in Tweetdeck saying that SEP were discussing my comment. This is testament to the degree of professionalism and striving for excellence that drives the success that SEP has achieved in the last few years.

Before my comment at HoboWeb the SEP blog had an excellent piece that  did not have a single comment only tweets. I actaully was going to comment on it and seeing all the tweets thought “naw no one reads that shite”.

After they adjusted the blog for both tweets and comments engagement has increased partially due to the rocking post and today is still getting comments. I even joined in the discussion.

I’m also hoping that Shaun (@Hobo_Web ) will drop by and tell us a bit about the plugins he’s using to get around the muzzling of engagement while still allowing tweets. Yes there is no law that says you can’t do both! That goes for users too! You should be engaging on your blog and tweeting to raise your visibility even further. Cuz, quite simply, the Socialization of Search means visibility is todays link!

Here are three questions you should be asking yourself before adding Twitter to comments.

• If user engagement is curtailed is it possible the visitor isn’t seeing the monetization components and therefore is twitter actually affecting the potential for profit on the blog.
• Can you build a community around a blog that everyone just reads and takes off clicking the ReTweet on the way out.
• What % that RT… don’t even read the post. Looks like you got something but actually all you got was a low value, pissy nofollowed link.

My own experience with including a twitter plugin in a blog (I’m still mucken’ with the blog)  is Twitter took over the whole Blog. No posts just my 10-15 tweets a day were starting to over run the site. I’m thinking more and more people seeing these low quality Tweeted comments will be thinking… why bother to comment among that! For me, it could be you just lost me as a commentor and possibly as a reader of your blog… likely a few bloggers installing twitter in their comments immediately after reading this. So… there’s another bullet point to consider!

CYa’ at The Top!
Da’ Tmeister

Topics: New Media News, SEO, Social Media, Twitter | View Comments