Why You Should Prefer a Blog Over Social Media

We live in the social media era and it is the preferred the marketing channel. Why should we talk about blogs? Here are some thoughts on giving more emphasis on your blog than the social networks.

Abandon Social Media?

No, I'm not telling you not to use social media platforms. If they bring you business, use them. I want to speak of the neglected importance of blogs, not just for SEO, but as a strong marketing and image-building tool.

Aren't Blogs Also A Social Media?

Technically, kind of. Both blogs and social media platforms are internet websites where you publish content people can see, share, and discuss. The main difference is the location of your publishing space. In social media platforms you are like renting a small store space in a huge shopping mall, while on your blog it's like owning an office building. There are more people in the shopping mall (more traffic), but there's more respect to those who have their own place.

Isn't Traffic More Important Than Respect?

Traffic itself doesn't automatically bring business. If it were solely for the traffic, all businesses on social networks should be ever-blooming, but they aren't. When people happen to enter your shopping mall store, they are probably just passing by. There's a great chance not to notice your place at all. When they come to your office building, they are usually consciously determined to visit you, because you have something they want: either information you provide, services, or products you sell.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Platforms

The advantage is these platforms are already built, working, optimized for content publishing, and there are lots of people using them. This creates the user-base, or the traffic, that eventually can pass by your "store."

The disadvantage is it's their rules, it's their place. You are just a guest. They can change their rules whenever they want. They can show, hide, censor, or ban your publications. They may require you to pay more to reach your fans. You may complain about it, but you've agreed to play according to their rules.

More Disadvantages: A Long Never-Ending Feed

Almost all social networks are organized in linear feeds. If someone is subscribed to 100 active content creators, they have to scroll through their daily posts. How many posts will they see before giving up scrolling? 10, 30, 50? What if yours is the last one? Is there any guarantee they will see yours even if there's no algorithm that changes the order of the publications? Most don't admit it, but browsing such feeds is a waste of time. Yet, you publish your stuff on social media and wait for someone to waste their time on the platform in order to engage with your post.

Blog Posts

You've got freedom on your own blog. You can style it the way you want and you can write long posts with mixed content. Conversely, social media platforms are designed to carry short posts and that's why most of them don't allow mixing of images and video in one place. In your blog you have control over the visibility of the publications as they are not managed by a fancy marketing algorithm.

Blogs Allow More Organized Following Which Saves You Time

Most social network platforms allow you to turn on notifications for your favorite content publishers which can save you time browsing through the long feeds. This works fine for a handful of cases, but your favorites will inevitably become a bigger number and you'll turn all those off, because they become annoying.

With blogs you can organize their flow using news feed applications. They allow you to see which of your subscriptions have a new post and you can directly see it without browsing long feeds.

If you decide, you can read the posts later. On a social media you have to see the post immediately unless it's a website. This way they make you hang on the social platform longer, because you are less likely to go back in the feed and search for what you want to read again. Almost all blogs, vlogs, and news websites can be followed using news feed applications. This is how I read Fstoppers.com and many others.

The Respect Blogs Build

Writing an article requires a deeper thought than posting a short message on a social network. In blogs you can write in detail about a project and show your understanding of how you manage your productions. It's not uncommon to get clients because of the way you share your workflow, as blog posts show your personality as a professional.

Conclusion

Social networks come and go, but blogs are here to stay. Your blog or vlog has to be your most important image-making marketing tool while social media can be your back-up. Do not write in your blog just for the sake of having an active blog. Post interesting and in-depth information and your hard work will be rewarded. On social media people may pass by an image or film of yours that cost you a lot of efforts, but in your blog you can really show how much work it involved.