Small, Medium and Large

Blogs seem to come in three sizes, (my preferential divisions.) There are smallest, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and all of them can expand their capabilities to a Medium size blog. Some are very prominent such as Tumblr. The big ones like Blogger and Word Press can handle pages of text and hundreds of photos, even videos.

"Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining 'blog' may be a fool's errand."

Twitter allows writers to post plain text messages to a variety of followers that can be replied to and easily shared with others. It’s high profile in the media and its adoption by millions of people make it a great place to begin if you’re interested in blogging. Most will go quickly into Google Plus or Facebook because there is more room. Which Platform Should You Choose?

"Good Night Irene" by the Weavers

Micro blogging is a great platform if you want to quickly record thoughts, share succinct ideas and create awareness. You can meet an awful lot of people in a short time. Micro blogging offers the advantage of having a much easier audience to engage with, given that the interaction is live and in real time.

Full functioning blogs, on the other hand, allow you to develop and publish your ideas in a much more comprehensive way. You have more opportunity support and expand your ideas with images, video, links to additional sources, etc. Furthermore, content management systems, such as Blogger and WordPress, are now commonly used by website developers to build interactive and engaging websites for small businesses.

"Morning Dew" by Bruddah Iz

Further complicating the equation are hybrid platforms like Tumblr and Posterous. These platforms are capable of publishing full blog articles, yet they are as easy to use and require about the same technical knowledge as a micro blog. In addition, micro blogs themselves, like ‘New Twitter’ (Twitter with additional features), now allow users to attach images and display video right within the update stream, so the lines between blogging platforms and micro blogging platforms are being blurred all the time.

In a nutshell, choose whichever platform that interests you enough to post (and continue to post!) relevant content to your target audience. And make as many attempts as possible to check the effectiveness of each method. Note which platform your target audience is using. This will provide you a hint as to the most effective type of content for this audience.