As a blogger, do you ever feel like your blog is competing for attention with your Twitter account, or your Facebook profile or page? Lately, with all of the social media buzz and hype and attention and coverage and craze, it might be easy to find yourself wondering if the blog is becoming obsolete just like the static HTML website has become obsolete (well, for most industries).
Fact: Social media and social networking are everywhere
It’s undeniable, right? Even I find myself focused more on my social networks and playing with social media than on my blog. Why is that? Hint: it has to do with the great ‘C’ word: Community. If you’re like most, you enjoy interaction. And when social media is used correctly, that is precisely what you get, and it’s something we all crave.
Photo Credit: stevegarfield (flickr)
Focus: Find a way to work your blog into your social networking community.
Have it work with your blog and not against it. If you find yourself always trying to find ways to promote your blog with your social networks, or vice versa, just know that one doesn’t have to be slave to the other. Your blog can be part of the community you are building through your social networks and various social media tools like YouTube, rather than the king or the pawn.
In addition, you should strive to develop a community of readers right there at your blog. Your readers should know you and trust you enough to share your posts, to know that their comments will be appreciated, and to know that you are also a reader of their work.
How: Let your blog serve a different purpose
Your blog may end up competing for attention with Twitter (primarily) or Facebook if it doesn’t stand on its own. Use your own common sense. Is it not completely and utterly boring to you when you start following someone and find the same exact content on their blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, et cetera? Ugh. Talk about overkill.
Instead, if you try and use social networking sites and social media sites in the ways they were intended, you might end up really surprised with how you feel about them and how they actually support your blog rather than echo it. It’s great to post your content across your networks, but you will enjoy the experience so much more if you learn to use them for more than just places to generate backlinks.
Remember to post original content on your blog, along with everything else. My bit of advice is to let your blog serve as your soapbox or platform, and use your social networks to connect one-on-one with other people.
Your blog will retain its relevance as long as it doesn’t end up becoming an aggregate site for your social media.
(If you’re looking for something like that, use the nifty flavors.me, so you can keep your blog focused.)
Giving your blog a different purpose will allow you to use your social networks to be human – to be you. I’m not advocating that you should talk about your breakfast or your hair cut, but hey, if you typically talk about your breakfast or your hair cut with your friends and colleagues, you might as well be yourself! 
Okay, in all seriousness, integrating things like music and Foursquare and YouTube into your Twitter and Facebook accounts will only make you more appealing socially, because ultimately the people who are following you are human, too (well, some may be cats and dogs, apparently). This means that when you do have something promotional to say about your blog, it will be fresh and different and will really stand out.
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About Tia Peterson
