Blog versus Website

Blog or Website?

Whatever the nature of your business you are likely to want an online porthole to your business.  For many years’ people said you needed a website and, just when you had grappled with the idea, the blog came along.

Both have their pros and cons.  Whichever you choose, you should know the difference and more importantly how to use it.

Business Website

A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address. Wikipedia

Unless you have HTML knowledge, its best to leave website design to the experts! They can create bespoke, one-off creations that can be user-friendly and design specific to reach your online audience.

For example I worked with the fabulous webreality.co.uk to produce an outstanding hospice website.  I needed a website that reflected ‘hope’ as well as having strong event and donating capabilities, as it needs to raise over £2million in funding each year.  The result was this stunning new website  jerseyhospicecare.com

Alternatively if you have a good level of technical ‘know how’ and the patience to learn, then you can use one of free content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla.

Website Pros:

• Designed to meet your expectations
• Professional looking (if you go with the right agency)
• Many have an easy content management system (which means you can edit the wording, page order etc yourself)

Website Cons:

• Original design costs can be expensive
• Any changes on design need to be made by the agency
• Websites can be less search engine friendly than blogs but you should have a SEO plan in the ready
• They are not conducive to conversations/interaction

Business Blog

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log”) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video…. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Wikipedia

It is possible to install a blog on your own, perhaps for personal use.  However if you want a more professional looking blog then either embark on some training or look for someone offering WordPress (thee ultimate blog).

I had the ‘blog versus website’ dilemma for this site and I ended up choosing a blog for a number of reasons.  I needed a site that that I could manage myself and which actively used social media tools.  More importantly the template was free and I could customise it to the Bright Social Media brand.  The bonus, of course, is that blogs are already search engine friendly.

Blogsite Pros:

• Templates are free and thousands to choose from
• Search engine friendly – plugins such as SEO make WordPress a Google fan
• Content management is extremely easy
• Engagement – people can leave comments and you can begin conversations with potential customers
• Perfect for social media integration
• Cheap – With the right training you should be able to make minor adjustments yourself

Blogsite Cons:

• You need to have some knowledge of CSS
• Somewhere in the world someone will have the same template as you
• Its a blog – you need to keep it fresh with content

Overall

Really it depends on the nature of your business.  Large corporations tend to have both…a professional looking website as well as a blogsite that allows conversations and personalisation.

For smaller companies it often makes sense to go with a blog.  They can still look professional whilst maintaining brand control.

In just a few weeks of this website launch it reached 86/100 in the Website Grader and the top 14% of all websites with Alexa!!!

Have a look around this blogsite and form your own opinion.

If you need a blogsite…get in contact!