What is microblogging?

The term ‘microblogging’ refers to a combination of blogging as well as instant messaging which permits users to create short messages that are posted and shared with online audiences. Social platforms such as Twitter have become very popular forms of this new type of blogging, especially on the mobile web. This makes it much more convenient to communicate with people compared to the days when desktop web browsing and interaction was the norm.

These short message formats can come in the form of a number of different content formats such as text, images, video, audio as well as hyperlinks.

What are the features of microblogs?

The requirements of microblogging is lower for a user as opposed to regular blogging. This is because the character limit which the user can make use of is limited. This makes updates generally more regular as users make posts several times a day and this increases interaction among users as well as followers.

Users can:

• Include tags in the body of the message to highlight interest in the thread to others
• Mention (@Mention) a particular user in order to get the attention of that user from the post or reply they are submitting.

For example, if a particular user is a subject matter expert in a particular area, users might @Mention the user to get that user’s attention and maybe a response to the current conversation.

Users can ‘like’ a post or reply in the newsfeed as a way of giving public validation that a post or reply was useful to them. By liking an item, a user can easily reference that item from the Likes Newsfeed.

Users can also follow people, sites, tags, or documents that they are interested in. When following an a person or a company, updates and new information about that entity will be displayed in the user’s newsfeed.

Microblogging as a marketing tool

Business owners and digital marketers can make use of a microblog in order to quickly share bitesize pieces of information with their clients. These may include tips, links, news updates or – alternatively – video commentaries.

Owing to the very nature of a microblog, stand-alone posts are generated fast. This gives businesses an alternative way of posting content to their website in addition to sharing information with their customers. They can do this without having to devote as much time as the usual blog post may require.

As posts can be easy as well as quick to write, companies can easily incorporate a lot of actual website content as well as information into a microblog.

As well as providing customers with a nice, steady stream of information, organisations who make use of a microblog on their website will also be generating great content which will help with their search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) as well as ranking.

Microblog posts can be directed (automatically or manually) to social media platforms. This depends on the nature of the microblog. A good digital marketer may also make use of microblog posts in order to fuel ongoing social media posts.

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