Is It Better To Be Retweeted or Have Comments?

I’ve written over 400 blog posts since I’ve started this project and I’ve noticed a couple of things:

1. Depending on the topic and headline, my blog posts are sometimes retweeted on Twitter.
2. I have received a decent amount of comments on this blog – not to the standards of Mashable or TechCrunch, but a few.

So what does this tell me? Not sure. I’d like to delve more into whether it’s better for bloggers to have their content retweeted or have comments left with feedback? What do you suppose is better? Are they the same thing or is it like comparing apples to oranges?

Having looked at this from the perspective of my own site, I believe these work definitely hand-in-hand with each other, but ultimately when you want to know what people think about your posts, having comments is pretty helpful as long as they add value to the conversation. It probably does nothing much to help to aid in the promotion of your content, but at least it gives you some validation or some insight into what people are reading and has some conversation to show that you’re just not writing for the sake of it.

But there is something to be said about having your blog post retweeted. First of all, it’s having additional press and publicity about your post. Second of all, it’s showing that there is someone has an interest in what you wrote about – not necessarily that they agree or disagree, but at the very least has an interest in your post topic. With a retweet, you would need to do a little bit of work to find out where it’s having any influence or impact. Thankfully through the use of tools like URL shorteners Bit.ly or commenting sites like DISQUS, you’re able to track what links are clicked and if anyone even retweets your blog post. Moreover, you’ll have a greater audience of people who will see that retweet. Since one of your followers might have retweeted, it’s exponentially increased because of their follower count and if their followers retweet the original retweet, then the cycle multiplies again thereby giving you even greater exposure – and let’s not even forget those who search for tags, trends and topics on Twitter search who may find your post interesting.

So the matter then boils down to feedback and publicity. Sure, publicity may also provide you a chance for receiving blog comments but initially once you’ve posted something, what would you think is better to have? Often times I have seen people thank me for my posts or comment to me about my post on Twitter and not on my blog. I appreciate those remarks and responses, but to help truly validate and show that I have something interesting written down, I wish I could transplant those tweets into blog comments.

Then what is my answer? Would I rather have a blog post commented on or retweeted? If I was given an ultimatum, I would say I would rather have more exposure – thereby increasing the chance of additional readers visiting my site and then leaving comments – than originally having comments.

What do you think? Retweet or comments?