I missed two big anniversaries back in March: I have been blogging for 5 years and Tweeting for 4 !

My 21,272 tweets, assuming 23 words per tweets, would total 489,256 words: the equivalent of 5 books of decent length. My 199 blog posts (combining smm4biz.com and servicecocreation.com) comprise nearly 88,000 words – call it another book.

This comparison to books raises the relevant question: is it worth it? I am struggling to complete my first book on social media, while in the past four years I have tweeted and blogged nearly 6 books of posts and tweets. To be fair most of my tweets are simply RTs of good info, but the tweets and posts do reflect time and energy used.

Worth it?

On one level, I am disappointed in my blogs. I started blogging early enough that I feel that I should have been able to make a mark and have more impact. Each blog post gets a 150-200 views and average 2 comments and 15 tweets. I am happy with the feedback I get and pleased with my loyal readers, but believe that I should be having more impact. Reading through Mark Schaefers guide to blogging, I suspect that the #1 thing limited my blogs success is:

• Irregular posts – sometimes twice a week, sometimes once, sometimes skip a few

For example I thought of this post back in March!

On the other hand I consider my twitter “experiment” to be a total success, which is truly ironic since I started tweeting with the sole purpose of driving people to my blog!

On twitter I had the good fortune to make early friends with Kent Huffman and Mark Schaefer and to work with Cheryl Burgess (who was also starting up) and with their help I figured out Twitter. I have 70K twitter followers and a Klout score of 70, but the real value of twitter is the community. I have written previously about how my twitter community led to my SMM courses and the importance of a PLN for every “knowledge worker.” Those   benefits cannot be overstated.

BOTH BIG Wins

Overall I consider my experiences on BOTH my blogs and Twitter to be big wins for me. Even if I had no audience at all, the act of writing my blog posts focuses my thinking on topics that are important to me. I know more about a topic after I finish writing a post about it.

My twitter activity motivates me to continue to scan all of the materials in my Twitter lists and RSS feeds to find content worth sharing with my community – what better way to stay current on areas of research or personal interest?

And as already noted my incredible online PLN augments me! As I have previously argued we are all cyborgs now!!

I would encourage everyone to have a blog and active twitter account.