Twitter and Blogging: They go together like rama-lama-lama-ke-ding-a-de-dinga-a-dong

As I have used Twitter over the past couple months, I have realized something that recently was confirmed by Hitwise: It’s a great compliment to your blog. It gets others to go there, it gets others to join up for your email updates, it influences the conversation and it also helps you find cool things on other peoples blogs.

Yes, some would say that’s an obvious conclusion…Twitter and blogging go hand in hand. But here is what I am saying: If used effectively, Twitter is the BEST promoter, distributer, and awareness builder for your blog. Better than Stumble Upon, better than sending out to your list and promoting your RSS feed, better than anything really. It’s lightening fast and getting better every day. Plus, Twitter is still growing…by leaps and bounds.

And I think it’s important to bring up because we really should study this phenomenon to see what happens over the next few months. It’s very interesting and could have potentially far-reaching impacts.

In fact, just last week, Hitwise published some Twitter research on their blog and concluded the following: Twitter sent nearly 1 in 5 downstream visits to Social Networks and 1 in 5 to Entertainment websites in February. The top Social Networks visited after Twitter were, Facebook and MySpace, the Twitter Search page and YouTube. This was interesting, no doubt. But here was the really interesting part for me:

9% of the people went to a blog right after they visited Twitter – more than Search, email services and other Social Networks.

That’s fascinating. Twitter is no doubt being used as a social network – but it also is probably the best way of distributing content…and yes, getting people to “find out more” by going to your blog. Sort of like a blog advertising channel.

Makes me wish I would have mentioned some things about Twitter content when Lee Odden interviewed me for his great blog post on Content Strategies a few weeks back. Maybe we’ll have to do a Part II to Lee’s post? Not a bad idea.

In a short time, I gained over 350 followers on Twitter and I’m not quite sure how I got them. But they came. And many have checked out my blog posts. And its effects have been dramatic. I don’t know about you, but I just love how quick and efficient and easy Twitter is. It’s the “super connection machine” that is creating a new online communication paradigm, right before our eyes.

And after all, perhaps the most simple reason is because Twitter is like blogging anyways, just on a very small scale. It mimics it so naturally, it compliments.  I think they’re “for each other like
“A wop ba-ba lu-mop and wop bam boom!”

What are your thoughts?