Has Social Media Killed Live Blogging

Has Social Media Killed Live Blogging Hasnt Twitter and Storify – pretty much any social media – killed live blogging? Well, no. Live blogging is not dead, not exactly. The reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. Granted, live blogging has certainly changed in recent years, becoming a mix of blogging and social feeds on the blogs and websites of those who use this technique, but it is still very much alive. Why Live Blogging Still Matters Live blogging is when you create single post or page that you update continuously throughout an event. Its a powerful tool, but surprisingly, most bloggers dont use live blogging much. It seems relegated to newspapers and news organizations to cover breaking news. Live blogging used to be the go-to method for live coverage, though its popularity is in decline while interest in live tweeting is increasing. You can see that interest in live blogging has declined since 2011. Information from Google Trends. Despite the decline in interest, its a shame bloggers dont use live blogging anymore.  Even with social media, there are reasons why live blogging still has a place in any bloggers repertoire. Live blogging is easy to promote. A live blog has all the immediacy, but just one link to share. You can promote that post or page on social media, and let people know you are live blogging. With a tool like (that connects directly to your blog), you can easily send out regular social messages alerting your audience to your live blogging. You can publish the landing page or post with information on when the event will unfold ahead of time, noting that youll be live blogging there at that time. This makes it easy to promote before the event begins, giving you a single link and plenty of blog real estate to prepare your audience for what youll be live blogging. Live blogging makes it easy to promote your coverage before, during, and after an event.Live blogging can save your Twitter followers. A live blog can spare your followers a deluge of tweets. One of the biggest problems that happens when you live tweet events is that you lose followers. Every year I get carried away and live tweet the Super Bowl and by the end of the night I have lost at least 15 followers. At least. What if I were to live blog the event instead? I could share a few times on social media that I was doing so, and keep the commentary on my own blog so interested parties could join in. There are some events that your followers might not care to hear about, and even if you warn them youll be live tweeting something, some will still unfollow and take you out of their feed. Tweeting too much is a real problem. Live blogging instead of live tweeting keeps you from losing followers who arent interested.Live blogging is better for coherent information. Live blogging isnt limited to 140 characters, hashtags, searches, or any of the other limitations that Twitter sets. Just as blogging is similar to journalism, live blogging is more like a reporters notebook. Twitter is more like a succession of information blips, forcing you to end your tweets with 1/5 or something similar to carry on a longer chunk of information. Readers end up with soundbite information, snippets of content that arent placed in context and can be misunderstood. If you need to capture an event as it unfolds with more than 140 characters and have control over the order your content appears, live blogging is where its at. Social media feeds have limitations on how much you can say, the order they will publish it, and how your fans can find it. If you have important information or something you want delivered consistently in an organized manner during an event, live blogging will do that. Live blogging prevents soundbite information that happens on Twitter. It puts an event in context.Live blogging is the best draft training there is. If you are a blogger with perfectionist tendencies who dawdles and dwells on drafts for days on end, struggling to hit publish and take a post live, then live blogging is going to cure you of it quickly. Really quickly. Its blogging, remember, and not tweeting. Its blogging, but youre doing it live. Your audience is seeing it as it happens. You are going to develop a keen sense of hearing, distilling it down to the basic facts, writing, instant proofing, and publish. And then repeat. Live blogging is exciting. Live blogging puts an end to draft anxiety. You learn to blog quickly.Live blogging brings traffic to your site. When you live tweet, you drive traffic toTwitter. Live-blogging is how you drive traffic back to your own site where you may have ads or affiliate links you are using to generate revenue. With proper promotion, you can use your live coverage of an event to increase your email list or any other call to action that your blog relies on. When Live Blogging Fails Sometimes, though, live blogging doesnt cut it. Its too insulated in some situations. There are times when you want to be on social networks for an event, participating with others, instead of on your own property. Social is king for nation/world-wide events. Lets use that Super Bowl example again. If Im live blogging it instead of live tweeting it, Im doing my uninterested Twitter followers a favor, maybe, but Im missing out on a lot of camaraderie (and possible new followers). For example, the 2011 playoff game between the Bears and the Packers was dismal until a surprise near-turnaround in the final quarter. After the Bears starting quarterback and his replacement were out of the game (accompanied by much mockery), little-known third-stringer Caleb Hanie was brought in. The game suddenly got interesting. Twitter exploded. Tweets were pouring in by the thousands, and Hanies Twitter account racked up over 7,000 followers in about 20 minutes. This was when Twitter still had a live stream in Google search, and watching the Caleb Hanie tweets roll in was incredible fun. People were making jokes, predictions, frantic pleas – this looked like a classic underdog story. And even though  the Bears didnt pull it off, it was a great time to be on Twitter and watching the game. I would not have had that community experience live blogging. I picked up a few new NFL-loving followers, and followed a few myself, just from that experience. When an event is stretched across a wide swath of geography and people, social media is where you tap into it, particularly if it isnt your event and you mainly want to ride the wave along with the rest. Live tweeting national and global events makes more sense than live blogging them.Social is easier to set up and use. Social media apps are on your phone and on the go. Youre already using them, almost as second nature. Theyre easier. They are right with you when something happens. Twitter is a simple app on your phone, requiring no special plugins, immediately accessible. Traditional live blogging has been the forte of the laptop, not the simple phone. Live tweeting a breaking news event out in the field makes excellent sense. You have your phone, which is your camera and publishing tool. Live blogging is not as portable (yet). So when it comes down to which is easiest to use during an event, social media is almost always right there and ready to go. When you have a small readership, social gets attention. Be honest. You might not have a big readership on your blog. You could live blog an event and all 40 of your readers would see it, or you could live-tweet an event and have all 600+ of your followers see it. If your social feeds are more active and read than direct readership of your blog, take your coverage to social media if you want it to get seen.