Many a times, the business owner is confused when it comes to online marketing. He might have no knowledge of the field whatsoever and he doesn’t know the technical terms. And hence, when an internet marketer asks the customer, whether he wants a website or a blog, the answer will be a half hearted shake of the head to either a website or a blog. Because the customer does not know what he wants. In such a case, if the internet marketer guides badly, the customer loses his online traffic.
So what is better, a website or a blog?
The question can be answered when we understand the basics of a website and the basics of a blog and we do an analysis of Website vs Blog. A website is static in nature. It will not change much. In general, website pages remains the same for long period of time. A typical website is built of 6-7 pages like the home page, products you offer, about your company, a contact page, so on and so forth.
A website will not give the customer insight into the latest happenings in your company. Or your latest achievements. The best you can do with a website is to post the latest achievement as a link or the latest happenings as news item on your website page. This involves a lot of coding and plus each update will be painful and nothing will showcase a personalized approach to the customer.
A blog on the other hand is dynamic in nature. On the blog, it would appear that the company is in itself talking to the customer. From a blog, a customer can come to know the daily happenings at the company (if the company publishes the same on the blog), the customer may come to know reasons why your product is better from competition and overall, the customer will get the feeling that the company is made up of people and is not just a robotic entity.
However, before straightaway moving to start a blog, read the following to know the difference between a website and a blog.
Website vs Blog for business
Website – Setup is tough but minimal maintenance is required post setup.
Blog – Setup is very easy but it is high maintenance as lot of articles and techniques are required to make a blog work.
Website – investment is higher
Blog – Investment is comparatively lower as blogs are cheap and can be setup easily.
Website – Can use Ecommerce
Blog – Can generate business through referrals but occasionally can use ecommerce
Website – Requires manpower during setup
Blog – requires dedicated manpower who keep updating the blog.
Website – Is like a book. Once made, it should not be changed again and again.
Blog – Is like a magazine, where you get to publish new things every day
Website – Requires higher search engine optimization
Blog – Search engine optimization is good and search engines love blogs.
Website – Gives a standard online presence
Blogs – Gives a personalized online presence as you can interact with your followers
If you do not have the time to maintain a blog, we suggest you go for a website. Or you can also try the hybrid. A hybrid will be a website with a blog section, where from time to time, you keep adding content. This added content will update your website and search engines will recognize your website better than the competition. Thus, a hybrid is the best solution if you want best of both worlds.
So, as you can see, this is an endless debate of Website vs Blog. However, the bottom line is this, if you have the manpower to work on a blog or if you yourself can work on it half an hour a day or at least once or twice a week, and if you have the potential to develop yourself as a blogger than blogging is for you. Another way to look at it is, if you are a company and you have the funds to invest into a blogger, than the blogger or internet marketing company can do the work for you.
If you do not have the manpower for blogging, than it is highly recommended that you go for a website. By having a website, you have a presence online and you can pay extra to get search engine optimization done for the website so that you show on the top pages of google. Overall, if you don’t have the manpower to take care of a blog or if you are not comfortable with blogging, than don’t go for it.
Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Blogging
