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Should You Have a Blog or a "News" Section?

Should You Have a Blog or a “News” Section?

In order to have a website that looks fresh to visitors – and search engines, adding some type of frequently updated content is a great idea. But what is the best approach? Like most things, it depends.

Having a blog is one excellent and popular option. Having a simple “News & Announcements” section on your site is another option. Which should you consider adding to your web business strategy or should you have both?

First, let’s consider the basics of any frequently updated content:

  • New content should be published at least once a week or as frequently as every day or two
  • It should be interesting and informative to visitors
  • It should further your status as an expert in your field
  • Ideally, it somehow directly benefits your business bottom line

Both a blog and a news section can meet these requirements. Which to choose is largely a function of your personal choice, but some common expectations about the purpose of each are helpful to consider.

A blog is the optimal choice if:

  • you have a desire to write rather frequently (at least 2 times a week)
  • you want to comment widely on current topics related to your industry or of particular interest to your target customers
  • you want your visitors to engage in a conversation with you and each other about these topics
  • you don’t mind spending some time every few days moderating blog comments

If a blog sounds like to big a commitment for you and you’d rather not have to write so much or so frequently, a news section would probably be a better choice for your site, at least to get started.

A news section should also be updated whenever you can, but there is less of an expectation from readers that it will contain new content on a near daily basis. It also tends to function more like a short press release area.

News is generally focused on happenings in your business or major happenings in the industry which affect you or your customers. Good candidates for News content:

  • upcoming events you will be presenting at (thought if you have a lot of these, a separate Event Calendar is also a good idea)
  • sales and promotions
  • mentions of you and your company in the press
  • new service or product launches
  • announcements about other developments in your business (new staff, a new website, etc)

A blog can easily cover this type of content as well, so if you are struggling to decide between the two, go with the blog. Or you can always have both. There are advantages to having both types of content on your site, particularly if you want to write frequently on your blog, but want to keep your business-development-related announcements visible on your site. By having two separate sections you can more easily manage this.

Another consideration is how this will be implemented on your site. If you have a web developer you are comfortable working with and only plan to post weekly, a news section updated by your developer will be fine. But for more frequent updates, being able to update the site yourself is ideal. A Content Management System to handle your news items is the best option for this, or go with a blog, since once set-up, it is easy for non-technical people to update.

Web Action Steps:

  • Think about what and how much you are interested in writing on a regular basis
  • Consider how your site will be updated – by you or a developer
  • Decide whether you will implement a news section, a blog, or both
  • Contact your web developer about adding this to your website
  • Schedule time for you to regularly update your content

Adding frequently updated content to your website will improve your search engine traffic, and your human visitors’ interest in you and your business. If you need help deciding on what to implement, or the best way to do it, please contact me today. The websites Whole Web Impact builds for clients always include a content management system so you can have a news section easily, and we can develop a blog as well, if desired.