What is a blog and what differentiates it from a website?

What is a blog and what differentiates it from a website?

A blog is a very popular type of website where, as a magazine, its author (often an individual) periodically publishes content (called “posts”, “posts” or “articles”) to which readers can add comments. .

If you wanted a quick definition of what a blog is, the definition above summarizes all the essentials. But you should know that blogging is much more than that.

The concept first appeared in the mid-1990s as a kind of personal blog that the authors practically used as a personal journal exposed to the Internet public.

But things have evolved a lot since then. For example, they have been found to serve as powerful digital marketing tools, so much so that they have revolutionized the professional world by democratizing access to Internet business.

What will you find here?

 What is a blog for, what is it made for and what characterizes it?
        What is the difference between a blog and a web page?
        A blog can be a simple hobby or a powerful professional tool
        Why blogging works so well in digital marketing
        And wouldn't it be better to create a YouTube channel?
 What types of blogs exist and what are their characteristics
        Personal blog
        Professional and personal brand blog
        Company blogs
        Niche blogs and websites
 Examples of successful blogs and ideas of what can be done
 How can I create my blog then?

This same blog, Citizen 2.0, is a perfect example: I founded it in 2011 as a mere hobby, an outreach site on topics that I liked, with some perspective also of generating income via advertising, but without expecting much more than a modest extra help a month.

5 years after founding it (in 2016), the blog had evolved in such a way that it had become (along with other websites that followed later) into a family business.

What is a blog for, what is it made for and what characterizes it?

Have I captured your interest with this example? Well, let's talk now about the aspects that make a blog a blog, what it is for and how it can be brought to a point like the one in our case

What is the difference between a blog and a web page?

Many people wonder what difference there is between a blog and a web page.

Well, what you should be clear about is that a blog is not something different as such, it is one more web page, but with some specific characteristics, functionalities that make it a blog.

These functionalities are implemented in web applications or platforms (software that is installed on a web server) and cloud services such as Blogger or WordPress that, thanks to this, make blog creation quite simple and fast.

But, in addition, the most important, Blogger and WordPress, are free, a fundamental reason in the tremendous success of these platforms. Only WordPress-based (the leader) is known to have at least 25 million websites right now.

Furthermore, these platforms are not exclusively used to create blogs, they are used for practically any web of low or medium complexity. So much so that there are even large brands such as Sony or Walt Disney whose websites are based on WordPress.

Well, what is it then that makes a blog a blog? Let's see it:

Periodical publication

Blogs publish content on a regular basis, similar to a traditional magazine that publishes new issues every X time. The top blogs try to be rigorous about it by posting on a fixed basis, typically once or several times a week.

Blogging platforms include feed functionality that allows feed readers such as Feedly to give readers a quick glance at what's new on all the blogs that follow.

Interaction with readers and community

The blogs were from the first websites, but the first ones that, through comments, introduced the possibility of interacting directly with the author and other readers.

This produced a feeling of closeness between them and with it an experience previously unknown to readers that has been very successful and inspired Web 2.0. It was the basis for developing ideas based on that concept, such as social media.

On the other hand, he forged the concept of web community, a group of people who follow the blog in question, forming the community of followers with a group identity that is articulated around the common interests reflected in the theme of the blog, etc.

Today these types of communities are formed in the same way around YouTube channels or the “influencers” on social networks.

Marked casual and personal touch

Within this spirit of seeking closeness with followers, a more informal relationship with readers is also logical. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that the norm is to talk about "you" to your readers.

In a good blog, in short, you should always look for an environment similar to that between a group of friends. So much so that even many of the well-made corporate blogs also maintain that style of communication on their blogs.

The posts and blog pages

Along with blogging, the concept of “post” was also introduced, which has later been taken to other areas, such as social networks.

A post, entry or article is the content par excellence in a blog, they are the pages of new content that a blog publishes periodically every X time. All blogs have a page with a list of their posts.

In this sense, the same term has also been applied to other areas. A "post" on Facebook, for example, would be a new Facebook post.

However, when speaking of "pages" in a blog, although technically they are the same as a post, the notion of static content is implicit, that is, content that does not vary or varies very little over time.

Examples of this would be product and service pages or pages such as "About", "Legal notice" or "Contact". These pages articulate the basic structure of the site. While posts are that "trail" of new content that makes a blog a fresh and dynamic site.

Organizing content by categories and tags

A last very characteristic point of blogs is the organization of their content by categories and labels.

It is normal for a blog, after a few years, to accumulate hundreds of posts. Such amount of content needs some organization which is what categories and tags on blogs have been invented for.

Categories with a coarse-grained division of content that must be consistent with the theme. Theirs is that there are few categories, as a general rule, no more than ten, less if possible.

A blog can be a simple hobby or a powerful professional tool

Along with the ability to connect with readers, another of the most important aspects of a blog is its enormous versatility. And I am not referring so much to the theme, but rather why use it.

This, in reality, is due to the very concept of a web page, which allows potentially certain information to be disseminated to millions of people.

At this point in the web, we are already very used to it, but we must remember how absolutely revolutionary this fact was when around the year 95, more or less, the Internet began to reach homes around the world.

The most important contribution of blogs (from their platforms such as Blogger or WordPress) was to make the creation of a website something free and very simple, available to everyone.

With this, everyone could take advantage of this potential, although it took years for individuals (and companies) to learn how to fully exploit it.

Why blogging works so well in digital marketing

The great professional potential of blogs lies, basically, in that they are, by their very nature, an ideal marketing tool.

Blogs make possible, and in a very simple way, what Seth Godin considered to be the ideal way to do marketing, “permission marketing” and which has now evolved towards the concept of inbound marketing:

This is so for several reasons: first, they allow to attract in a natural way (not forced and intrusive as in advertising) an audience with an interest in a certain subject through search engines and other sources of traffic (social networks, etc.) .

But, in addition, powerful platforms such as WordPress, along with email marketing tools such as Mailrelay (which also have free options) have the tools to retain those readers who have come to your website and get their contact (email).

To attract this audience, we simply have to create and publish valuable content for these people and position them on Google (along with other actions such as publications on social networks, for example).

And this is where the real challenge lies: creating content of this quality and positioning it on Google. But both are more a matter of personal capacity and work than economic because the tools are practically free. And the knowledge of how to do all this is also out there for free, on websites like this blog.

Therefore, if you want to use it that way, a blog can be a powerful tool that gradually generates a base of qualified clients (clients selected for their interests), in autopilot mode and with practically zero cost.

And wouldn't it be better to create a YouTube channel?

In recent years, as a content platform, YouTube has shadowed blogs. Now, it is cooler to have a YouTube channel than a blog.

And it makes perfect sense: most people find the video more engaging than the text and figures around YouTube with YouTubers who have tens of millions of followers subscribed to their channel or the more than 5 billion videos viewed per day. they are overwhelming. These are figures that the best blogs can only dream of.

In fact, I highly recommend creating your own YouTube channel. Here you can learn how it is done:
how to create a youtube channel

But beware: things are not as obvious as it may seem at first glance and now automatically dismissing a blog in favor of a YouTube channel without further consideration would be a serious mistake. You should always have your own website and a blog is the simplest formula.

Why?

Here are some important points to reflect on:

In the first place, giving blogs for dead would be as if in the twenties (when TV was invented) people had thought that books would disappear in a few years. It doesn't make sense, they are very different media and both have their space.

However, the above does not mean that the “competition” is not noticed. For example: in many blogs, visits have even improved, page length times have clearly been shortened. And is that time is finite and you have to distribute it ...

But even more important as a criterion in your decisions I consider this aspect: on YouTube and any other platform that is owned by a third party (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) you are completely captive. They have you by the neck.

This is reflected in many aspects, most importantly, that you do not have the real contact of your followers. You have "followers" or "subscribers", yes, but you do not have a real contact like a simple email, that data is saved to the platform for her.

Something as simple as communicating something to all your followers you cannot do. Even in the publication of new content, all platforms, including YouTube, seriously limit the organic reach (followers they are sent to). You only reach a fraction of your total audience.

If your YouTube channel is nothing more than a hobby, this may not be too tragic, but if you intend to turn it into a business (if only to generate a little extra per month), things change a lot.

In this case, you have to be very clear that the greatest asset of your business are these people who follow you. If you want to extract the potential from your business, you need their contact yes or yes.

The only way to guarantee this is to have your own website, that is, that the platform is yours, managed by you, with your own domain and in your own hosting, such as, for example, a WordPress blog with hosting.

Am I saying with this that a YouTube channel is a bad option?

Not at all, a YouTube channel is something very powerful and more than recommended.

But my advice is that, sooner or later, you accompany that channel with a blog with hosting (which is its own platform) and a mailing list that allows you to counteract the captivity to which you are subjected by being on a third-party platform where control they have and not you.

And if you already have a YouTube channel and these reflections have made you worry, calm down, do not panic: you are in time to correct the situation.

What types of blogs exist and what are their characteristics

Let's see then what are the types of blog that exist so you can see if any of them can fit with you.

Personal blog

Personal blogging is just that: personal. They are blogs in which the author talks about the topics that interest him, experience, his day to day, political issues and other personal concerns, etc.

The first blogs were practically all personal because the very concept of blog was conceived that way then, a kind of intimate diary open to the public.

My recommendation here is that if dumping this type of content in public really satisfies and motivates you to carry out the daily work that a blog entails, fine, but keep in mind that, unless you are already a famous person, these blogs have it difficult to achieve success.

The reason for this is that these types of blogs have very little potential to reach a large audience (which is what allows you to do "powerful" things), after all, if you are not a known person, there will be few people to the one that interests your life. It's kind of cold to say it like that, but it is.

Professional and personal brand blog

Over time, bloggers began to realize one thing that is, in fact, basic common sense: they achieved much more success with content that interested others than with content focused on their own person.

But, in addition, they discovered that all this entailed a very positive and very powerful “side effect”: publishing useful content on a certain topic generated a reputation for the author of that content on that subject.

This is how blogs were discovered as the ideal tool to create a solid personal brand, in less time and with less effort than by traditional means (presentations, book publishing, etc.):

Company blogs

As it could not be otherwise, the companies realized what was happening with the blogs and also wanted their "piece of the cake". So blog sections began to emerge on corporate websites like mushrooms.

But many companies, I would say that the majority, did it really badly: they put a blog, with minimal effort, trivial content that does not add value and often updated only from Easter to Ramos.

My recommendation: if you have a company, you know that a blog on a company website runs well, it works. But just as in the case of individual authors, it must be carried with affection, striving to add value to the content, taking care of the relationship with the readers and maintaining total discipline in the periodicity of the publications.

Niche blogs and websites

A last variant that many people have discovered as an opportunity for a small business are niche websites, websites that are often blogs or are set up with blogging platforms.

We could be talking, within the health and fitness world, on a yoga blog, for example, or, within the gardening world, for example, on a blog specialized in the bonsai world.

Examples of successful blogs and ideas of what can be done

We have conducted many interviews with bloggers in Citizen 2.0. As the intention of these interviews is to inspire you with the success of these blogs and with the ideas they can give you, the condition for being interviewed has been to generate, at least, an income of € 300 per month.

It may seem like a very modest figure to speak of "success", but, apart from appearing to us that it is a success to get this extra income with an activity that you like, it has been very intentional to keep your feet on the ground, not to mention the " mega-successes ”, cases that are not usually realistic as a goal and with which it is difficult to connect.

How can I create my blog then?

If everything you've read has helped you get started, you'll wonder how to get started.

A website with a modern blog design, the most recommendable, with a landing page cover and the blog integrated into one of the pages (menus) of the website.