A Personal Site Versus Social Media

I enjoyed reading a recent post on Kev Quirk’s blog in which he replied to a question: why bother having a personal site when social media works well enough for presence? Kev had good responses, but I wanted to add one.

Kev talked about the importance of owning your own content. And he promoted the benefit of personalizing your site and content. Good points for sure.

I’ll add another key reason: writing.

On social media, you share microposts; you write short-form stuff. But a personal blog has no character or word limit, so you can write long-form posts (plus short…whatever you want).

There’s a place for microposts and for megaposts.

It’s important to be able to write long-form stuff because it means your brain is thinking on a deeper level or with more focus. For many bloggers, writing is a way of thinking.

The process itself of writing/thinking is desirable. The final product, a published blog post, is a goal, but so is the process of writing in the first place. Both the journey and the destination are valuable.

A personal site lets you write long and deep to your heart’s and mind’s content. Sure, you can kind of connect threads of microposts on social media, but the medium isn’t really made for long-form nor does it encourage such writing.

I like thinking through something and “putting it to paper.” My blog lets me do that. Writing like this is worth the time and effort; it’s kind of cathartic, getting my thoughts out. Feels satisfying.

One weakness of a personal site compared to a social media profile is a lack of presence. Most blogs are independent and less connected or integrated with other blogs. But social media profiles are tightly knit with built-in commenting and sharing. Many people connect there.

So most bloggers use both social media and a personal site to write long and short and connect with others. Each has its place and are tools for anyone to use. I think most folks only need or want social media. But if I had to choose only one, I’d definitely keep my blog.

My thanks to Kev for posting on his own blog about this topic, causing me to think and thus blog about it.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog yourself, I highly recommend the service I use, Pika. It’s simple, making it easy to start writing on your own site.