Hi, I am Praneeth.
In this blog, you will learn which platform is superior social media or blogging.
Without further ado let’s get started.
Here is a 30000-foot view of the blog.
Definition.
Here you will see the definition and differences between blogging and social media.
What is blogging?
A blog is an informational website where the articles are published on a website and keep the website updated and engaged on the internet.
Blogging is the practice of writing and managing blogs on a website.
An example of a blog is this blog, & Neil Patel.
What is social media?
Social media is a place like a website or an online application where people can interact and share their views and content on a platform, for example, Facebook and Instagram.
What is the difference between both?
The basic difference between blogging and social media is that,
Blogging it’s about creating content and publishing it on the website to make the website more engaging and rank on search engines like Google.
Where social media is about sharing the content published on blogs, discussing different views and ideas on the platform.
Social media is the platform that allows people to share different opinions without creating content with each other in a large audience whereas,
Blogging is about creating content and writing blog posts that get published and keep the website alive and drive traffic from search engines.
With blogging, you own the website or the platform.
With social media, you just have to create your profile and start sharing information.
with that said let’s consider some pros and cons of blogging and social media to see which platform is the best for business growth and why.
Pros and cons of both.
Let’s see the pros and cons of both in terms of business point of view.
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Pros and cons of blogging.
Here are 9 pros and cons of blogging you should know.
Let’s talk about the pros first.
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Blog posts can be long lasting.
One of the most important things you should consider between blogging and social media is how long-lasting a platform and content is.
This, of course, depends on the Niche that you are blogging on,
But, the benefit of blog posts are,
They are targeting different queries and problems of people.
Blog posts are going to be longer-lasting than typical social media posts.
You write a blog post on an evergreen topic like fitness or anything and still after a year later people are gonna be searching for it and people will visit the blog and the blogs are going to be still relevant in the future.
It is a one-time investment sort of thing.
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Blogging teaches you a lot.
With blogging and writing blog posts for others, you can learn a lot of things inter-process.
Here is a list of the top five things that you can learn through blogging.
- You can learn how to express yourself and improve your communication skills.
- You can gain a lot of knowledge.
- You can learn how the internet works and how major companies work.
- Blogging teaches you how to be patient and disciplined.
- Blogging teaches you a lot of skills like negotiation, networking skills, analytical, and project management skills.
With blogging, you can learn new things every day as self-improvement while your life will not be the same in some perspectives like it won’t be boring as you will be able to learn new things every day and share them with your blog.
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Blogging can be passive.
Another advantage of blogging is that you write a bunch of articles like 50 articles and start another blog and write another bunch of articles.
This way you don’t have to go back to your old blogs and keep uploading lots of content to be relevant and earn money.
Like you can rank on search engines and drive traffic targeted to that particular blog even after a couple of years of publishing the blog.
Earning money while sleeping can be a reality through blogging.
You can also earn money in many ways through blogging including things like.
- Showing ads on your blog.
- Selling affiliate products on your blog.
- Selling physical and digital products on your blog.
- Doing paid consultations on your blog.
- Writing sponsored posts and reviews of brands.
- Creating a membership website.
- Attending a Webinar or an event for some charge.
These are the possible ways of making money blogging, Checkout alternatives of affiliate marketing.
The foundation for all of the blog’s success is that blog posts are long-lasting and they’re relevant when compared to social media.
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You own the website or the platform.
The most important thing to be considered while choosing social media or blogging for your business is CONTROL.
With blogging your own website it is highly recommended to use WordPress as your content management system.
With blogging the additional benefit you have is that you own the platform.
The ability to have control over the platform or the website is very much important because,
If you don’t have the control over your website or your platform where you’re making money there is no guarantee of making the money in the future as well.
Let’s consider blogging here,
by creating a blog on wordpress you own the website and the platform and you can do whatever you want with your website.
You create your own rules and regulations.
There is no way for others to delete your website or your content unless your website gets hacked.
You can start building your email list from your blog own the traffic, and capitalize on it by being able to control and direct traffic.
The point I am trying to make here is that you control the platform and the audience that you build through blogging.
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Blogs increase sales by being helpful to the audience.
When you blog on a particular subject and publish a good number of articles on it.
With time you will be perceived as the expert over the subject if your blogs are really helpful.
With your blogs being ranked on the search engine,
people will start looking at you as a credible source of information because of the trust they have with Google which ranks and recommends you in search results and in general.
- Blog posts are considered the 5th most trusted source of information online.
- Read why blogs are important for SEO and businesses.
As you continue blogging over a particular niche.
Apart from being helpful you will also establish expertise and build the trust level because you are helping an audience.
With blogging, you can build a strong community even if the number of people is less.
The level of trust and credibility that you build with blogs will also increase your brand loyalty with the audience and contribute to more leads and sales to your business as a by-product.
For everything in life, there is always two choices and two directions in the same way,
There are a few cons that come along with blogging.
Cons of blogging.
Let’s discuss the cons of blogging.
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It takes time and effort to create content.
Blogging may seem very easy and interesting with lots of pros and advantages.
It has its disadvantages too.
Creating blog posts is not an easy task.
There is a lot of work behind publishing blogs that only a blogger knows.
Things include these,
- Coming up with topics.
- Researching for the information.
- Writing and editing the blog.
- Publishing and Promoting the blog.
- Repeating the process over and over again.
Hence, blogging takes a lot of time and effort.
2. Results are not instant.
Another thing that you should keep in mind while blogging is that you won’t get instant gratification or result for your work in blogging.
you gotta have to wait for a while to see the result of the labor on your blog.
Because you are dependent on search engines to drive traffic to your website, there are a lot of factors that determine how soon you are gonna see the results of your labor on your blog.
Things like,
- Competition.
- Backlinks.
- Search intent.
- Content quality.
- Age.
When you are new to blogging, with the new website if you start a brand new blog ok Google is going to be very cautious in ranking your website because it does not know the credibility of a new website,
That is the reason why it takes time for new blogs to rank on Google and get traffic.
3. You need to invest money to make money.
Looking to start a blog professionally.
You got to invest money in blogging before expecting returns.
You have to invest money in places like domain, hosting, tools, and software to make money in blogging.
Of course, there are alternatives to investing money in blogging,
Read my guide on the pros and cons of blogging without investing money in domain and hosting.
Read, how to start a blog on wordpress in 11 easy steps.
4. You might face some problems.
there are some serious problems that you might face during the process of blogging.
Problems including these,
- People and your friends might not understand what you do.
- You might feel lonely as it is most of the time sitting on a desktop and creating content, unlike a regular job.
- You might have to face a lot of technical problems and issues with your website like designing your website and solving technical issues.
- There is no guarantee of traffic that you get from Google because Google which is the largest search engine where most of the bloggers are dependent for traffic to the websites, Google continues to change and bring new updates in its algorithm or some of your competitor may outrank your position of articles and steal all of your traffic from Google.
- There is no guarantee of paycheck like the way you have with the job at the end of the month because of fluctuations in traffic to your website.
Blogging is like an online business where you need to be ready for all sorts of problems to face before thinking of making some money.
Read, truths about starting a blog.
With that Said let’s look at the pros and cons of social media.
Pros of social media.
Let’s see what are the pros of social media.
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You can create content instantly and see results fast.
The benefit of social media is that you can create content easily and fastly without much time.
Unlike blogging where you have to do a lot of research for topics to make sure that your content is factually correct,
You don’t need to do the same sort of research or anything like that with social media content.
You can upload videos, images, infographics, and blog links as part of your content on social media.
it does not take much time creating content for social media platforms as compared to the one that you need with blogging.
By creating content instantly within few minutes you can also have the benefit of being able to see the result of your work faster than blogging,
You can see results like.
- Likes.
- Shares.
- Views.
Overall the results are also quite fast as compared to blogging.
2. You can create relationships with people from long distances.
Another good thing about social media is that you can create and establish long-lasting relationships with people irrespective of the distance.
the good thing about building relationships with others is that,
- You can increase your perspective on life.
- You can find a new business partner.
- You can get new ideas and opportunities.
- You can run events and polls and nurture the community.
- You can enjoy the free word to mouth marketing of your business.
- You can know what are the problems that your audience is facing by talking to them.
- You can get feedback from people instantly.
This is a great benefit of social media of being able to create and maintain relationships with others and sustain them for a longer period.
3. You can have direct interaction with people.
Besides blogging where you are dependent on search engines to drive traffic to your website or blog,
On social media, you are not dependent on anything other people are going to visit your place directly and,
You can have direct interaction with people instead of a third-party like Google in blogging to drive traffic.
This decreases all the filters and brings the best of 2 people and can encourage healthy discussions.
With this, there is no limit to your growth, a lot of people can visit your page from social media platforms search.
4. You can build your online brand and start influencer marketing.
Another interesting thing is social media is that,
Because there is a direct interaction with people on these platforms, you can easily build your brand online.
By being consistent in your efforts of publishing content, be more helpful to your audience, adding value to the audience in one way or the other like by entertaining them or educating them online you can build your brand.
By eventually you will end up being an influencer for a particular section of people on the social media platforms with consistent efforts and you can start influencer marketing which is one of the best digital marketing strategies at present.
- You can read my guide on digital marketing versus influencer marketing for more details.
5. It is free.
Unlike blogging where you have to invest money in hosting or domain and other essential tools to get started.
You don’t need any investment at all in social media.
We can get started on social media with your smartphone or your computer without investing a penny.
By choosing your niche, you can start adding value to the audience on the social media platform you select.
You can create content like videos or images that educate people or inspires them or entertains them.
By focusing on adding value first you will eventually end up becoming the influencer which will help you a lot in the future when being able to influence people positively.
You just decide what are things that you are interested in, select the niche, choose the platform, create your account, and start creating and publishing content.
6. It increases the marketing efforts of your product.
Using the help of influencers of the platform,
You can increase the promotion of your product and get it reached to a larger audience using social media platforms that have the largest number of people using the platform every day mainly Facebook and YouTube.
- Read why not to start a youtube channel.
- Read how important is influencer marketing in today’s world.
This is an especially great one for the B2C type.
Promotion of B2C products can get faster with using social media as it has a larger audience and using the influencer trust with the audience,
The reach of the product will also increase.
You can also be able to create a few viral posts with social media which can lead to higher visibility and eventually more sales of B2C Products.
With blogging compared to social media, the audience is mostly small so it won’t be that helpful in the marketing of a product as you get limited traffic from search engines.
You can also capitalize paid ads on these social media platforms which work on the PPC model to increase the reach of your products’ advertisements on the platform.
Cons of using social media.
Here are some cons of using social media for your business.
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Though social media is large, posts and content in social media have a short life span.
Social media is huge,
We all know that but,
Something high in quantity does not always translate to high quality.
It is the same thing with social media.
You create and publish a content piece on social media today and it is not going to be e as relevant as today after a month.
Sometimes you might achieve a viral content piece on your social media account but,
Most of the time people don’t look back at the previous posts of your account as they continuously want new posts and feeds.
Ask yourself this basic question,
When was the last time you checked your social media favorite influencer’s posts he uploaded last week?
Either it is Facebook videos or Instagram posts.
Most people have short attention spans while using social media as they want constant new content to get entertained like instant gratification,
So they only see fresh ones with constantly refreshing the page and the old ones become irrelevant after some time.
This is why most of the content on social media is short form not so helpful because another thing is that,
There are millions of content being uploaded on social media platforms every day, which makes it difficult to survive and stay relevant for the old ones.
It is a time-consuming process as well because of a short span of posts to stay consistent in bringing in results on social media you need to keep on adding content to stay relevant compared to blogging.
And most of the social media posts are gonna be situational and event-based based on trends and you know trends are always changing.
Because the content and the posts have a short period, it is hard to monetize or drive sales.
2. People use social media for many reasons.
People have different intentions while using social media platforms like,
- Some people use Facebook for time passes or connecting with people while others use it for marketing and promotion reasons.
- Some people use LinkedIn for new job opportunities while others use it to see what their colleagues are up to.
- Some people use Instagram for knowing what their favorite celebrity uploaded while others use it for getting entertained.
People don’t have that intention of being educated or in a buying mood when they use social media mainly Facebook and Instagram.
This is a serious problem that you have when you want to choose between blogging and social media.
With blog posts people who visit it have a clear intention of solving an issue or a problem but on social media, they go there for being entertained most of the time.
You might face some negative feedback, trolls, or negative publicity of your brand while working on the platform by the people on social media.
Most of the people who use social media are for such kinds of purposes only that is the reason why social media can lead to lots of cyberbullying and other mental problems like depression and anxiety in people.
The point I am trying to make here is that,
It is both a hard and time-consuming process to use just social media to get sales and leads for your company without using any help.
3. You don’t own the platform.
The last and the most important thing about social media is that you don’t own the platform or the traffic that you get.
If you are an influencer of social media,
You don’t own the account where you are dependent,
The owners of the company own the platform and you are using their service for free which means,
The company has complete rights and freedom of doing anything they like to do with your account.
There is always uncertainty.
The company may delete or ban your account permanently or reduce your reach.
You just are not in control of the platform.
If you want to continue using the platform you have to obey the rules and regulations, if not all of your work, time, and energy you invested in the platform with all followers might disappear in a few seconds.
There have been many cases in the past where people’s accounts on the social media platforms have been hacked or deleted without giving notice, you can check here for more details.
There are many other cons of social media like an increase in depression and anxiety levels and many other things very common so they are not included in the list
With that said let’s get to the conclusion,
Which platform is superior social media or blogging.
Considering the pros and cons of both platforms.
I would suggest blogging to be superior to social media.
Here are the top 5 features that make blogging more superior to social media.
- You have control over the platform because you own the platform and traffic mostly, you don’t need to follow any rules and regulations of anyone.
- With blogging, you can be more helpful to users writing comprehensive articles covering all the queries of a topic or a problem which both establishes expertise and builds trust which eventually increases sales of the business.
- Blog posts are long-lasting and still relevant after a year of creating them on evergreen topics compared to social media posts.
- Blogging can be passive because though people who visit the blog from search engines may be less compared to social media but are highly targeted with clear intentions which increases the conversion rate.
- With blogging, you can monetize it in many ways and build a loyal community of like-minded people on social media like Facebook groups and capitalize on the audience.
Here is the best solution for the scenario.
Consider both instead of one.
It is not that social media is bad,
Social media is also a great place too where you can do the promotion of your products and it can lead to the visibility of a product to a large number of the audience because,
Of the volume of people who use the platform, you can also create and build relationships with the audience and build an online brand, etc.
With blogging, you can get more sales and be more helpful to the audience with your blogs.
You own the platform on a blog.
Both have advantages and disadvantages in terms of business standpoint.
Consider using both the platforms for your business and career to succeed.
You can start with writing blog posts and leverage social media to share the blog meanwhile for the marketing of your product or leverage paid ads on social media,
To drive targeted traffic to your blog from social media in your blog and make sales.
Like you can use your blog posts and share things like images, infographics, and content on the social media channels and drive traffic and marketing of your product or build your brand.
You can also create a group of like-minded people and community on Facebook or your blog and do the advertisement for your product on the platform.
Ending remarks.
There you go, I have answered everything related to which platform is superior to blogging or social media.
Do comment on what you think about which platform is superior in terms of your perspective.
Share the blog with your family and friends if you found it helpful,
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Read my other blogs,
I will catch you in the next blog,
Till then,
Keep learning and keep growing.