“Your “thread” should have been a blog post… Yes. All of them. Every time.” – Rhoneisms

I agree with Patrick, Twitter threads are a terrible use of your content writing. There are so many awesome Twitter threads out there. This one on making sure your work isn’t devalued during review time…solid gold.

Unfortunately for the “authors” they have lost most of the value from the content. Twitter threads suck.

Why Twitter Threads Suck

The big reason that Twitter threads suck is that you don’t own the content anymore. If Twitter decides to take threads away…the content is not available anymore in the form it was intended.

Twitter owns the content published on Twitter, despite what they say. They own how they monetize it. They own how it’s visible to your followers. They own the relationships between you and your friends.

Long term, Twitter threads are lost content as well. Sure I have over 1600 blog posts on my site and many of them see little traffic. They are lost content in many ways as well¹. But I still own the content. I could choose to pull it back out and highlight it.

When some random confluence of events comes together on search engines, I still see the traffic. That traffic gives people an introduction to my email list. It gives them an opportunity to engage further with me.

While Twitter may say it’s about engagement, it’s not. It’s about getting your attention so they can show you ads.

So if you shouldn’t be using Twitter threads, what should you be doing?

Do This instead of Twitter Threads

I bet you can guess what I’m going to say, blogging. You should be writing on your site. If you don’t have a good system to consistently produce content, then please steal my 3 bucket system for writing content regularly.

I like blogging over any other medium because it lends itself towards deeper thinking. Where you can fire off 10 tweets in a thread from your phone, blogging often requires a mode change. It’s more serious in ways I could never quite describe.

Yes it’s harder to blog. You need to have a blog setup. You need to open up the CMS or Ulysses and then post the content to the site. You may even need to write, revise and then proof the content.

This is all more work than firing off a social media update. It’s more valuable work as well.

It’s also more work for the trolls. They have to head over to your site and then comment on it instead of flinging off a shit reply. If you don’t have comments, they have to find your email and then craft it.

In The Art of Focus I encouraged you to blog because it’s your online CV. If you look back over the 10 years I’ve been writing you can see how I think. Many of my membership site clients read my blog before they work with me. They say they already feel like they know me because of that.

They trust me because they’ve heard how I talk to my peers about how to treat clients. Then they get to see me follow through with it.

Conversely, social media is a barely existent vote for your idea. A favourite or stare or like or retweet is easy and almost doesn’t count.

Stop devoting your thinking to social media. Start writing again. Start publishing again. Start interacting with others that write via comments or writing on your own site as a response.

If you can start doing that, you can start refining your thinking. You can start demonstrating your communication skills. You can start building something that has some substance to it, instead of throwing away your thoughts.