I still remember the days when people used to write off Twitter as a time waster. Some do it even now, but the number has diminished over time. Twitter has been growing on me, and to be honest, I’m quite sure it will take over blogging. So did blogging take a beating while I was away tweeting ? Not really. In fact, I wasn’t even away tweeting. I just found a new balance between tweeting and blogging, and it took some time for me.

In my honest opinion, blogging and tweeting should go hand in hand with tweeting and blogging. There’s quite a lot they can do together. However I agree that it isn’t easy to find a momentum. Its easy for a blogger to think Twitter is a time waster (and push it off), and a twitter user can easily get carried away with it and completely forget blogging.

So where is the sweet spot ? Let’s try and find out.

Time Involved – Which one, blogging or tweeting takes up more time ?

In my opinion tweeting takes more time though it was not meant to be. But it depends on how you use it. If you use it as a basic communication device between your circle of friends, then you’re talking a completely different scenario. On the other hand, if you’re talking about popularity and thousands of followers then then time involved on Twitter is more. I can safely say, about 5-8 hours depending on your mileage.
Blogging gives you more time, you can blog at leisure and if you have the "real stuff", you’ll find success.

Results – Which is more satisfying in terms of numbers ?

As a webmaster, Twitter is more appealing to me, as it gives me quicker results, and more traffic. I could write an awesome article on my blog and wait days together to get the traffic numbers rolling. But when it comes to twitter, there is no waiting. Provided you have the real content, its just a matter of letting the world know through a tweet and you can almost see in front of your eyes how the fire spreads. I think there is nothing as close to this phenomena that I’ve seen earlier.

Money – What gives you more money ? Twitter or blogging ?

This might be the wrong question to ask. It might even not be fair to be asking it, because even at this moment, we don’t have a clue as to what the monetization model of Twitter is, Heck, even EV doesn’t know, so who cares ? Blogging gives me money (AdSense that is) for clicks and all I have to do is send people my blogs way and pray for clicks ! Which is great, because I know of a couple of guys who’re minting money with this thing. It works for me too, but it isn’t something I’d consider as a sustainable revenue model. Twitter on the other hand, doesn’t even give you a option. The most popular guy on Twitter and the guy joined it today doesn’t even make a dime out of it directly. But the clever guy knows two things. 1 – Twitter can give you indirect money. And, 2 – Twitter might give you an option later to make direct money. Who knows ?

Effort – Which requires more effort ? Blogging or tweeting ?

Tweeting requires effort, I don’t know if its more or less than blogging. But blogging requires effort in a different scale. Blogging requires you to write, write and write. But tweeting requires effort in a different way – you need to stay updated, be interesting also entertaining, to have followers. You can put the same effort to tweeting and blogging, but the results would show up on Twitter quick.

Summary

So is it blogging or Tweeting that’s more appealing ? I don’t want to jump in to conclusions, I’d rather say that one should find the sweet spot between the two. Blog well and have fun with Twitter. Be seriously interesting on Twitter and your followers might just comment on your blog.