Website vs blog: what’s the difference?
What is the single most important difference between “conventional” or “static” websites and blogs?
Many people will probably reply:
- Blogs are dynamic, websites are not
- Blogs encourage conversation, websites do not
- Blogs offer feeds, websites do not
- Blogs publish current news, websites do not
- Blogs create the blogosphere while websites are in a way standalone islands
Now you already might suspect where I’m at: All of the differences are not true (anymore)!
1. You have all kinds of websites with interactive elements.
They are enhanced in ways that allow users to personalize e.g.
They are dynamic by way of the technology used. Yet I do not speak about static HTML vs PHP.
2. Also you do not need a blog to lead a conversation. Yet blogs are not the only ones. What have
- communities
- forums
- social media
- wikis
in common?
They all support UGC or User Generated Content and onsite engagement beyond clicks.
Basically any site can add a comment form or a connection to a forum.
This will enable users to “engage in a conversation” and also engage you, the publisher, in one.
3. There are plenty of services which will create a feed for any website.
Market leading feed reader Feedly offers this a a premium feature.
4. News sites like CNN or BBC are of course not blogs.
Nonetheless they publish news. Of course the two are not the only ones.
Everybody can create a non-blog website that deals with the latest news, buzz or products.
5. There was never an extra “sphere” for websites.
Yet the so-called blogosphere is not a thing anymore. It’s history.
The good old days of a somehow coherent blogosphere are long over.
Nonetheless there is indeed a difference somehow.
Is this the most important difference? No, it isn’t.
That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
Blogosphere? “That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.” That can’t be it.
What is the most important difference between websites and blogs then? It’s about being up to date or timeless.
In other words it’s about being still valid.
The info on a blog is expected to be valid at a certain point in time while the content on a website is expected to be timeless.
People visiting blogs often look at the date a post has been published to determine whether it’s still relevant.
Of course there are plenty of exceptions to this.
Yet generally you assume that a website you visit that is not a blog and has no “published” date still contains valid information.
In contrast you will often not even read a blog entry after noticing that it was published two years or sometimes even 2 months ago.
When I started my seo2.blog I was surprised that my theme had the date removed from the posts.
After realizing it I thought about it and decided to let the date to be hidden. Why?
I wanted my blog to both a timeless website and an up to date blog.
A few weeks later I published a post called 5 Dirty Blogging Tricks which covered this decision in a short sentence.
This time I came up with an even better version of it and a new term: Blogsites combine the best of two worlds.
After almost 9 months of blogging at this blog I was convinced that it was the right decision.
Combining the advantages of websites and blogs is not as easy as I imagined though.
Publish less polish more
You have either to refrain from publishing news or you have to find a way to deal with the fact that they are not timeless. You can:
- Add a “last updated” date to the post
- Add “significant” updates to a post to change the date – then you can add to the headline or even republish as new
- Delete old posts or rewrite them.
- You can also show the “last updated” date and the “originally published” one WordPress shows by default
Who wants to update existing content which gets rarely visited if it all?
Well, I do it all the time!
This post is an example of this content strategy.
You can also change the date and republish them on top. I do in case the changes and updates are significant enough.
This way you save some time by not posting a completely new article while also offering new insights, perspective or another update.
In short you can publish less fresh content and polish more existing content.
Do it especially when you have hundreds of articles published already like I am.
Which one of the two approaches do you prefer?
Do you rather write throwaway blog posts?
Do you create ephemeral posts that will be relevant for a very short time?
Or do you write timeless pieces that only need some optimization down the road?
Do you combine the benefits of both and create evergreen blogsites?
Think about it and please share your opinion with me on @onreact anywhere on social media:
- What dis/advantages do you think this combination of blogsites does have?
- How else can you combine the advantages of both without doubling the workload?
- Do you update or delete your old postings?
- Am I right at all? What is the most striking difference between blogs and websites in your opinion?
- Who will become the next president of the United States of America?