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I watched the docuseries Black Twitter like 5 times recently and loved every minute of it! It took me back to when I first fell in love with social media, when it was actually a social space. When people shared with personality and cared less about SEO and going viral. Ahh, It was a great time.
Anyway, during the docuseries, the news and some interviewees referred to Twitter (now X) as a microblog. A term I had never used before and honestly didn't know was a thing. I know I'm not the only one!! When I think about a blog nowadays, my mind goes to those long (and often boring) pieces that give generic tips or send you down an unnecessary story rabbit hole for a recipe (Seriously, just tell me how to make the cake Sara!). I know there were plenty of people who blogged frequently in the earlier days of the internet, but that wasn't my scene and so I just never equated my randomness on twitter as microblogging. And what exactly was microblogging anyway? I had to look it up!
According to the internet, there is no hard definition for a microblogging, except
It is short form content like text, videos, images, or memes (sooo 95% of of social media)
If in text form, it is shorter than a real blog (ummm ok) typically less than 200 words
They are shared frequently (well that's specific...)
And not on your personal website. (uhhh got it??)
With these parameters I literally microblog every day and so do you!
If you're writing captions on LinkedIn, Instagram, and my new favorite Threads you're microblogging. My podcast clips, you're photos from your events, those reels we spend way too much time scrolling through- all microblogs!
Now that I know what microblogging is and ever being the good student, my next thought was, how do I make sure I'm doing this well??? After some research and analysis ( i.e. social media lurking), I've come up with these tips to help me master my microblogging era:
Keep it short: short is relative but considering the average attention span is now 8 seconds for a social media post, know that you don't have a lot of time to get your point across. Choose your words wisely.
Give it personality. If you want to make it those 8 seconds, you have to catch people's attention. My best advice is be yourself, quirks and all
Make it niche. Ok while I would love to put the social back into social media, it's hard to overlook that most of us use these platforms to promote our brands - whether business or personal. So keep your target audience in mind when microblogging and select topics that will resonate.
Don't post and ghost. If you microblog well, people will comment, like, share, piggyback etc. So don't miss out on the opportunity to engage with your growing fan base.
Have fun! I'm choosing to embrace my old social media ways, where I enjoyed the randomness and allowed myself to be myself. So even if this is a strategy for your business, find a way to make it enjoyable. We all have enough to worry about.
Thanks for stopping by!
Kijaffa Z. Hall
Founder & CEO
K.Z. Hall Consulting
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