The Best Thing You Can Do TODAY
In the webinar I hosted earlier this week I was asked: “Why have a blog if we already have Facebook? With limited staff resources and ability to actually spend time writing one of these, can’t I just have discussions on Facebook and generate excitement that way?”
Well, sure. You can spend your time creating great content and then just share it on one platform. But why would you do that once you’d taken the time to create that great content? It costs pennies on the dollars – and minutes in the hour – to share that content in other forums. And I happen to think blogs beat Facebook, and all other social media, as a forum for truly making friends and influencing people. Here’s why:
Let me start by pointing you to an infographic, Facebook or Blog: Top 10 Reasons Business Blogging is Better Than Facebook, that lays out a host of logical reasons why blogging beats Facebook. Now let me tell you why I really think blogs are the magic bullet to constituent engagement, aka bonding.
Recent research shows that for all the interconnectivity we have online, we’ve never been lonelier. While we’re ostensibly socializing more, we have less and less actual society/community. A recent article in the Atlantic, Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?, posits that Facebook is at the center of our malaise. One of the things it notes is that when you sign up for Google+ it suggests you include only your “real friends”. There’s widespread recognition that we’re not being real on Facebook. We’re putting on a show (often a narcissistic one). And this is tiring to everyone else. Could it be that Facebook distances us from one another?
There’s a definite correlation between Facebook use and loneliness, per the Atlantic article, although not a causality. Perhaps lonely people use Facebook. However, that’s a LOT of lonely people (1 in 13 people on the planet are on Facebook). The article cites research showing an increase from 20% to 35% in self-reported loneliness over the past decade by adults age 45+. Another study found that 1 in 5 Americans are lonely. That’s significant. Health care professionals are speaking of “an epidemic of loneliness.”
Meaningful social interaction is a way to combat loneliness, and people are longing to be meaningfully connected. In What’s Your Tribe?, Newsweek, April 9, 2012, we learn from biologist E.O Wilson that everyone (no exception) needs a tribal connection. We’ve a deeply ingrained evolutionary drive to join. Tribes give people comfort and pride from communal fellowship. I believe, unlike Facebook (where the average user had a network of 190 “friends” six months ago; and today they have 245 “friends” – a lot of friends to make for each us in six months!) blogs can tap into this drive and enable these meaningful connections. People don’t collect connections on blogs; they simply engage. One activity is passive; the other is active.
Blogs bond; Facebook isolates.
Of course, reasonable people can disagree as to the best platforms for connectivity. This is what I’ll cover in Part II tomorrow, as well as the role of a blog in serving as a means for sharing confidences – something we all are longing for more of in today’s disconnected world. Let me know if you have thoughts, and I’ll share in Part II. Thanks!
6 Comments
I always urge for blogging over Facebook or any platform which has a walled garden approach to access for a multitude of reasons, but primarily access.
In a walled garden such as Facebook you lock yourself into their platform and their options for accessing and syndicating the content. While a blog is not blocked by login requirements (depending on your settings) and can be shared via a link to any service and provide access for constituents to choose how they engage with the content. On the blog or at the location of the share. It is of great concern to me to continue to watch services latch onto Facebook only approach, but the long term viability and health and control of content is at risk with this. You can always share a blog to Facebook, but cant always share Facebook content outside of Facebook and get the same previews and freedom to view and respond.
Too many organizations focus on the right now trends when it is the long term viability that also needs evaluation. Such as archiving and control of content, access methods, content organization, and what is flexible for your organization when that platform is no longer the hot thing or even in business. Can you leave and take your content without breaking the links established over time… Facebook no, blogs yes (especially ones that can be mapped to your domain).
Thanks Jonathan. You make an interesting point. It certainly is advantageous to own the site, the content and the subscriber list. We can't afford to ignore sites like Facebook, sadly. Like it or not, we have to be where our audience is — or suffer the consequences. Still, the great thing about blogs is that our audience really wants to be there with us. They subscribe. It's more like email in that way. Direct. Personal. Engaging. And then we can always repurpose the content to FB.
GREAT post Claire. If you go back 15 years and look at who was popular then on the internet, what you'll notice is 85% of those companies no longer exist. And those companies were just as "big" as google and facebook are right now. THe fact is, most companies around now probably wont be around in ten or 15 years, which means most (if not all) of your content on those places will likely be lost when they go down. For that reason alone, there's an advantage to having your own blog.
I don't buy the time argument. If you don't have time to write a post, either on facebook or your own blog you shouldn't be engaging. If you want to make the web and social media part of your strategy, either take the time to learn the technology and carve it out of your day, or hire someone to do it for you. You can't expect to get results from a medium when you don't take time to figure out how that medium works.
Thanks so much Craig. And you make a persuasive argument. Certainly we should all have learned from the recent financial meltdown that there's no such thing as "too big to fail".
And, in terms of the time argument, my experience is that blogging really helps one to focus on planning for and delivering relevant and fresh content. It's then easy to re-purpose this to FB or wherever, and certainly beats the random posts we see all to often. Appreciate the comment!
-Claire
From a business perspective I think you need to do both. The blog provides depth and insight while Facebook, Twitter are great for short top-of-mind reminders.The old-school analogy to this is: blogs are like reading a newspaper column; Facebook is like passing notes in class.
I don't disagree that it's good to do both. You want to be in whatever platform your constituents are using. At the same time, you need to WORK the platform to get to your goal. It's not just about being there. And that's where I think blogs outperform FB and Twitter, etc., because the level of engagement is deeper and more serious. I'd change your analogy to: blogs are like attending class, listening to the lecture, and then asking and answering questions; Facebook is like passing notes in class. Thanks for contributing!
–Claire