5 Ways Having A Blog Is More Important Than Social Media

Let’s start with an audacious statement; blogging is a big deal. It’s probably a bigger deal than having a website; it’s definitely bigger than marketing on social media. If that doesn’t counter all the talk about blogging being dead, I’ve got nothing more to offer you.

happy blogging face

happy blogging face

However, if you’ve stuck around to see where I’m going with this, I appreciate your giving me the chance to make my point and hopefully convince you to at least see what I’m saying. You don’t have to agree with me… although that wouldn’t depress me any.

Before I begin, let me add this piece. Search engines are starting to get on my last nerve. The pundits and researchers say that all of them, especially the big G, wants to not only know what we’re writing about but wants us to use lists to highlight our points. I do that from time to time, but today I’m doing it because I want to… not because of them! lol

Why do I say a blog is more important than a website or social media? Let’s get started:

1. Blog owners own their property

I talk to a lot of people who say they do all their marketing on social media. Maybe only half of them write a blog or even have more than a one page website.

I can understand that. It lowers their footprint and helps them go directly to their potential customers. It saves money on hosting fees or paying for a domain name.

Yet… what happens if, for some reason, their accounts get suspended? Twitter and Facebook does that all the time. YouTube’s doing it more often these days, and they’re owned by Google.

If you don’t own your own property and your income is generated by social media sites, you’re pretty much out of luck until you figure out a way to get out of “jail” or find someone to talk to so you can get back in the game; good luck with that.

If you own a blog, “really” own it, the worst that can happen is Google deciding not a show your message on their platform. These days that’s a rare event (unless you’re some kind of anarchist), but not only are their other search engines, you can employ other methods of reaching your audience if you own your blog.

By “own”, I don’t mean wordpress.com or Blogger; I mean pay for a domain name and a hosting package. It might cost you a few dollars, but if you’re serious about your business the costs are minimal.

2. Blog owners can talk about their services or products

products

Let’s look at your marketing efforts on social media. Twitter gives you 280 characters. Facebook limits the number of people you can reach without paying them. LinkedIn will tune your message out if you don’t have enough people seeing what you’re posting. Even on YouTube, unless you’re entertaining or find a particular niche that will resonate with an audience, they’re going to limit who sees your stuff unless you find a way to push it.

With a blog, you can market your product by writing something about it. I don’t mean a paragraph; I mean an article! When I wrote about one of the affiliate products I promote, iDrive, the article was 1,200 words. Wen I wrote about the other affiliate product I market, Mailwasher, I wrote 1,150 words. When I wrote about my 2nd book, Leadership Is/Isn’t Easy, I wrote 1,000 words.

There’s not a place on social media where I could have gotten away with writing so many words about a product. True, you could promote a link to a landing page, but you need a website to do that. Let’s talk about that for a minute…

3. Landing pages vs blogs

I haven’t met the marketer who won’t advocate for a landing page. It’s a pretty good idea, and I have a couple for some of my products.

Yet, I also have articles about products I’ve created on my blogs… sometimes multiple articles about my own products, along with mentions here and there. Regarding my book above, I’ve written about it twice on this blog and 4 times on my business blog, and I’ve linked to it multiple times on both blogs. If I can drive visitors to my blogs (and they actually read the content…), I have multiple opportunities to get eyes on those links and maybe my visitors will check them out.

A landing page is a good idea, but in general it’s a one-off. You can go back and rewrite the copy consistently, but you’ll also wipe out what you already have. If it’s junk that’s a good thing; if it’s not, isn’t it better to be able to keep it there and write about your product or services in a different way on multiple pages of a blog?

4. Promotion of services

I have a business website geared towards leadership and health care finance. I have a few articles on that site telling people what I can do for them. It’s not bad, and I’ve been ranked in the top 5 for one of my major search terms going on 15 years.

But there’s a trick to that. On that one particular topic (which I’m not going to share since it doesn’t have anything to do with what I write about here), I’ve written 106 blog posts related to that topic since 2006. In many of those posts I’ve linked to either the main page of the service I provide or one of the other articles that backs up that service. You can’t do that with a landing page, a regular website or on social media.

5. If you want to market on social media, sharing links to blog posts is the most efficient way to do it

Do you have a Facebook business/fan page? Do you share short messages or images? Sometimes I do the same thing… but not often, and certainly not as a standalone.

I share links, articles, images and short messages on my Facebook business page… all of which I get from my blog posts. Because I literally have at least 4,000 blog posts I can draw from (I’ve recently eliminated a lot of articles), I always have a lot of articles I can go back to for source material and either post it directly, repurpose it by rewriting some of it, or posting a link driving people to the blog so they can read the entire article.

If you’re just posting to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and don’t have not only a place where you’re saving your material or giving yourself a way to consistently get people back to it, you’re not being all that efficient. Having a blog not only saves time and energy, but it’s a great resource that keeps working for you if you do it right.

There you go, 5 things I hope you think about. You can disagree or agree; you can ignore. I’m only here sharing my opinion; will you share yours?
 

24 thoughts on “5 Ways Having A Blog Is More Important Than Social Media”

  1. Hi Mitch, I know this article is geared to business people, but many of your points are also good for hobbyists like myself. As a creative outlet, I can’t advocate enough the joys (and yes, also aggravations, but they are excellent learning experiences!) of owning a blog/website. You have TOTAL freedom to do what you want, and you control your content 100%. Point #5 is spot on! Facebook and Twitter bring in a lot of traffic.

    1. Thanks Debbie. It’s not only to businesses but for small time entrepreneurs who might create their own products or are affiliate marketers pushing other people’s products or services. Having one’s own blog offers to many more opportunities, which is why I’ve promoted blogging for nearly 12 years here; ouch! lol

  2. Hi Mitch,

    Although I think that blogging is important, I have basically let it fall to the wayside. I used to attend networking events and conferences to learn to be a better blogger; however, all I walk away with is a few tips and a giant to do list of things I should be doing. The problem is that I still haven’t made progress.

    For now, I have a limited amount of time and you can’t afford to invest time, money, and resources in things that are not producing results and moving the needle. I do write a post periodically just to keep my blog on life support until I have the time to really devote to it again.

    1. Here’s the thing Rachel. Even if you’re not actively keeping it going, it’s always there when you’re ready for it. You can still promote what you already have on places like Buffer for free (you get 10 at a time for free) or using blogging platforms like Tweetdeck or Tweeten. All that takes is 10 minutes or less to do a day or two, depending if you’ve got files already set up like I do (which allows me to do it faster). Post a title and a link, possibly an image along with it, then you can go about your business until you’re ready to do more.

      Hard to do that with just a website or nothing at all; at least that’s how I see it.

  3. Hey Mitch,
    Yep, I do prefer my blog over social media (but I know you probably figured that out about me). πŸ˜‰

    You’re right – we own our content. I have complete creative control over everything I add to my blog.

    Truth be told, I’m just not really into social media. I enjoy the creative process and sharing my work. But on my own blog, I get to choose everything from the images, the colors and the overall look.

    My blog is my baby. Even though I don’t post as often as I used to, it’s still all mine.
    Plus, the discussions are always better over there as opposed to on social media. More meaningful and thought-provoking. And the relationships I’ve built over time began with my blog, not social media.

    But that’s just me.
    Great post!

    1. LOL! It’s me as well, and I actually like social media more than you. πŸ™‚ I like owning my content and don’t mind sharing it after the fact, as long as everyone knows it’s actually mine. Even if I don’t post as often as I did 5 years ago, I post often enough on all my platforms to work well for me. Truthfully, even though I get more sharing of my content via social media, I get way better comments (real comments that is lol) when people comment on my blog… and they do when I comment on theirs.

  4. Thanks for this Mitch. I am pretty much a newbie to the world of blogging and marketing but agree completely with what you are saying. Blogs are a far better creative outlet and allow people to build trust rather than just shoving products at you on social media.

    1. Thanks Steve. Not only that but it’s always out there if you want to promote it again, rewrite it, repurpose it or just let it stick around so the search engines can send people to you. πŸ™‚

  5. Hi Mitch, well I love Twitter, not all social media but I do agree about our blogs as we own them. I hear from so many people who got suspended from Twitter nad are lost. I’d be a little lost but not totally as I have my blog, my home base. You can do so much from it and grow an email list along the way.
    Not only can you teach and share from your blog but you can also promote too at times. Have a great weekend ahead.

    1. Great stuff Lisa; we’re in total agreement. I remember your being suspended from Twitter for that short bit and it’s hard to reach people because they’re big and vast and you don’t have any ownership in it. Blogs are great marketing tools if used properly, and one’s information is always there; that’s a big win in my book.

  6. Hi Mitch,

    I totally agree … I treasure my blog even though I have slacked off being so active on it. But I write a post every 10 days to keep it going. I own it and it is my property …not rented space. I’ve always felt that way and still do.

    I do advertising on Facebook targeting a specific audience for other products I sell. I have my own landing page instead of the “company’s” but that is all on rented space and who knows if the Facebook gods will do from day to day? I am always weary about that. Another blog for this venture is in the works.

    -Donna

    1. Good stuff Donna, though your lack of a gravatar threw me off until I noticed a different email address. lol

      I think you saw when I had this young guy run a Facebook campaign for me and how badly it failed. I reached more people by posting on Twitter than I ever had a chance to on Facebook. I like the idea of owning my content, which allows me to share it wherever and however I want. Blogging power; yeah! πŸ™‚

  7. I think you’ve nailed it. Currently my blogs are either dormant or working on minimal posts. For the time being my blog isn’t serving me much purpose, but I think it’s worth maintaining my presence until it becomes valuable to me for all the reasons you mention.

    By no means do I think blogging is “dead” except for those who have gotten bored with it or whatever. There is still a lot of value to blogging for those who still enjoy blogging.

    Arlee Bird

    1. I’m obviously totally with you Arlee. I have one blog kind of hanging out there, although I got a new post from it a week or two ago. The others are way more important, and I love being able to keep referring back to them when I write new content. That’s the point of it all; as long as we own and pay for it, it’ll always be ours.

  8. Great blog man! totally agree with all the points also it easy to gain more traffic from blog compare to the social media, I mean the organic reach is almost dead in social media. Nowadays, in social media people don’t go to explore or read something 300 to 500-word text, they go there to enjoy and connect with the people they know. Unlike this blog readers always search for a better blog and best content, by the way Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! πŸ™‚

    1. Thanks Hamd. Blogs are great, and I love visiting a lot of them, often leaving comments. It’s still important to promote one’s articles on social media, but it’s also important to figure out how to drive them back to your blog. Luckily our content’s always here waiting for them.

  9. It’s absolutely right. You said it right that our blog is our own property. Many times I have encountered my Instagram account being restricted. On my blog, I can share anything I like. It was a great read Mitch

    1. Glad it was helpful Rohit. Lately I’ve seen a lot of people talking about their Instagram or Twitter accounts being suspended for one thing or another. Having a blog is great protection over the long haul.

  10. Great blog man! totally agree with all the points also it easy to gain more traffic from blog compare to the social media, I mean the organic reach is almost dead in social media. Nowadays, in social media people don’t go to explore or read something 300 to 500-word text, they go there to enjoy and connect with the people they know.

    1. Which is why blogs needs to make sure they write better content than can be found on social media. At least if we want visitors to come to our blogs and of course hope the search engines will help make us prominent enough to be found.

  11. Mitch, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve thanked you for encouraging me to start my blog. (currently in sabbatical)

    Blog posts provide value to everyone including prospects, clients, and even those who will never hire a coach.

    This body of work, about 300 posts, gives the internet audience a chance to understand who I am, what I believe, etc. etc.

    Thanks Mitch.

    1. Yes it does Steve, and it’s something you can always fall back on when you’re ready or if you want to share something you’ve previously written. It’s always there; that’s the beauty of it all.

  12. Hi Mitch,

    I’ve just launched my brand new blog on the advice and recommendation from my mentors. I can already see how it’s a great way to get started and I’m enjoying the adventure!

    One thing I’ve noticed is how there’s almost a blogging ‘world’ and I’m really loving discovering some great bloggers who are sharing some awesome, helpful info.

    Thanks again for your great post. I hope you have an awesome weekend! πŸ™‚

    Ash

    1. First, good luck to your site Ash. Yes, you’ll discover there’s definitely a blogging community. Depending on the topic it’ll either be big or small, but it’ll also be relatively loyal… though don’t expect a comment on every single thing you write. πŸ™‚ Also, don’t forget to promote your articles; that’s where a lot of bloggers fail, thus don’t get a lot of visitors. Course, now I have to check out the article you’re linked to above. πŸ™‚

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