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(I will never rent, trade, or sell your information) * = required fieldI am frequently asked - What is the difference between a website and a blog? Are they the same thing? Which do I need for my business? Traditional business websites and blogs serve different purposes with a different format. Which you should have for your business depends on a few factors.
The short answer is - ideally, both. But sometimes your available resources dictate an initial limitation to one or the other. Choosing which is the best option for you has to do with understanding the purpose and requirements of each and making an informed decision.
Your business website's main purpose is to educate your prospects about the products & services you offer and their features and benefits. It can also share general information about you (such as your qualifications) and the process or experience of working with you (client case studies and testimonials). A "traditional" business website is ideal for sharing structured information (such as an event calendar, list of resources, FAQ, articles repository, etc), standard content (your bio, descriptions of your services, etc), and e-commerce (products you sell, online registration/payment for events or services).
The structure of a business website is inherently hierarchical - there are sections with organized subpages of similar or related items. It is an information- and sales-oriented site - its main goal is to get your business customers by providing the information they need to decide whether and how to work with you, purchase your products, or get in touch for more information.
A blog is a chronicle of announcements and current thoughts about the topic and industry of your business. It is formatted as a date-based collection of "posts" which individually can contain whatever sort of content - it might be an instructional "how-to" article, an essay or "rant", a reference to an article or resource on another website, some news about your business, etc. The ability to post "ad-hoc" content, without the need to fit it into a specific spot on your website is handy and can support more creative, free-form sharing of information, but it can make any specific piece of information more challenging for your visitor to locate. Since posts are displayed by date - in descending order, eventually certain information will "roll-off" the blog homepage and be buried deeper and deeper in the site. Posts can be loosely organized by categories or keyword tags.
The great strength of a blog is to share information in a "get-to-know you" kind of way. You can use a blog to establish your expertise in your industry, provide helpful tips to prospects, and share more personal information about you. (It is common, though not required, to have a mixture of "business" and "personal" posts on a blog.)
Many people are under the impression that a website and a blog are very different things, whereas in reality, a blog is just a certain format of website. The analogy I like to use is that of a magazine and a newspaper. They both convey information in a written, paper form; they just have a different layout, publishing frequency, and main objective.
Some people also are under the impression that by nature, a blog will be visited by the search engine indexing robots more frequently than a "regular" website. The truth is, the search engines are interested in fresh content, so if you had a website with an event calendar, article repository, or news archive which you updated frequently, you would be just as likely as a similarly updated blog to get spidered by the search engines on a regular basis. And if you had a blog which you very rarely posted new content to, the search engines would learn to visit that blog less frequently.
So, you can probably see how having both a "sales" website and a blog would be beneficial to your business. They serve different purposes and can work together - you can mention a new product or service on you blog, and include a link to the details or order page on your website. You can also pull the latest blog posts onto your website's homepage to encourage visitors to read your blog, or at least to get a taste for your voice and views.
If you need to decide which to set up first, you should consider what type of information it is essential that you convey, and what time you can commit to updating the content. If you know you can only post once a month or less, or hate writing, please don't bother with a blog. An empty blog is much worse than not having a blog at all. If, on the other hand, you don't yet have a lot of structure for your business, but you do have the time and inclination to share information via writing, a blog can be a simple-to-set-up vehicle for you to share information while working out your business (and branding) details.
Determine whether you will create (or add) a blog and/or a business website to your online presence. Use these questions to aid your decision-making:
If you need help figuring out the answers to these questions, and adding a website and/or blog to your marketing, please contact me for a complementary strategy session today.
