The future of poetry blogging

The last few years have undoubtedly seen a significant drop in the number of poetry bloggers on the U.K. and in the regularity of their posts, almost as if there were a tacit recognition of the format’s growing irrelevance in the context of social media.

However, I’d argue that this shift is also tied in to two important points. Firstly, it’s far quicker for a user to tweet than to write a blog post. And secondly, even if the blogger gets their finger out and writes a post, it seems to fall into a vacuum and garner little reaction (how many people leave comments on blogs these days?!), whereas a tweet might receive several replies in minutes.

Well, I can do little to address the first question apart from suggesting we all need to fight the growing loss in our attention spans. Nevertheless, the second issue does have several potential solutions that can not only help poetry blogs survive but enrich our interaction with them.

Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with how I use this blog in conjunction with social media. My point of departure was a quick analysis of the differing temporal nature of blogs, Facebook and Twitter as a poet’s main means of communication with their readers. If a blog post often gathers pace over the course of days and weeks (and sometimes even months and years if Google takes a fancy to it), Facebook posts accumulate likes over a period of hours and days, while Tweets find audiences mainly in minutes and hours.

This is why blogs are losing impetus. But it’s also their possible saving grace. Rather than viewing my blog as a separate entity from my social media use and lamenting its decline as a fading anachronism, I’ve begun to realise that my blog posts could acquire a crucial function on Twitter and Facebook. And as a consequence, the viewing stats for Rogue Strands have increased once more.

For instance, on some occasions, I now initiate a debate on Twitter via a quick, questioning Tweet, let the replies fly back and forth, then collate the differing opinions in a blog post that can consequently be posted on Twitter to bring the discussion together more coherently, thus enabling it to take a step forward instead of being lost on a morass of other threads.

Meanwhile, another option is to use a blog post as an anchor for debate. If a quick Tweet feels insubstantial, too open to misinterpretation or not long enough for a position to be coherently explained, the afore-mentioned blog post can work as starting point for exchanges of views. What’s more, if posted as the start of a thread, a decent blog post is a place where Twitter users can check back to recall a discussion’s initial frame of reference.

Oh, and one final reflection-cum provocation. I’ve found that certain blog posts fly on Twitter and others on Facebook. Facebook tends to work best with posts that reward lengthier engagement, while Twitter homes in on catchier stuff that’s more immediately attractive. Once again, the question of our ever-reducing attention-spans.

Do you agree? Does your experience tally with mine? Am I right in feeling that there is a strong future for poetry blogs if they learn to interact with social media in innovative ways…? Do you have alternative suggestions?