What’s the difference between a blog and a website?

One of these things is not like the other. Don’t feel bad if you’re new to this whole blog/social media thing and have had this question cross your mind. It is a question frequently asked, even if silently. The first answer that I would like to provide is this… a website is a monologue and a blog is a dialogue. I knew that wouldn’t be enough for you, but I think you liked the not even a ½ a second elevator pitch style, no? And, don’t look now, but you are reading a blog at this very moment. Moving on, let’s look at some details…

The term blog actually comes from the term Web log, which was later shortened to blog. These logs were journals of the author’s thoughts and ideas. This is still true today. And so you can say that a blog is a type of Website. Though a Website is considered more static and a blog is considered more dynamic. Today, they are converging ever more. Take my blog, which is my Website. Where some people may have a link to their blog from their Website, you land right on the blog when you go to my Website. But, I also have traditional pages ‘behind’ the blog, such as ‘about’, and ‘contact’.

Blogs humanize your company and build trust. Websites, well, they mostly are digitized brochures.

Typical characteristics of a blog:

• There is a series of articles, which are called posts
• The series of posts are in reverse-chronological order with the most recent post at the top
• Blogs are updated regularly with new posts; some are updated as often as daily (some multiple times a day, whew!)
• There is a place for any reader to leave a comment about the post and if the author approves will be published and made visible to all readers
• The comments area can be a place where a conversation develops between author and readers and between readers
• The posts can include written content as well as images, audio and video
• Many times you will find links to archived articles on the side, a blogroll of blogs the author wants to share, and an area about the author
• Sometimes you may find an area with list and links of the most recent comments
• Sometimes you may find a tag cloud that shows the most used terms, which gives you an idea of the blogs content

And Wikipedia lists these to describe what a blog entry typically consists of:

• Title – main title of the post
• Body – main content of the post
• Comments – comments added by readers
• Category (or tags) – category the post is labeled with (optional, multiple categories possible)
• Permalink- the URL of the full, individual article
• Post Date – date and time the post was published
• Trackback – links to other sites that refer to the entry

A nice feature for a blog is that people can subscribe to blogs using RSS (Really Simple Syndication). They can read many blogs in their RSS Reader and easily know when there is a new article available. If they want to post a comment, they simply click on the title, which takes them to the original content and area for comments.

Here’s an example of a blog (something other than mine): Chocolate and Zucchini And, here’s an example of a Website: Sausalito Chamber of Commerce (Oh, couldn’t you just see them with a great blog?! …which would drive more traffic to their site. Ahem, okay, anyway. Though, they are dialoging on Facebook. I give them points for that.)

Once you are on board with a blog and want to know what makes a good blog… Lauren Hatch at Entrepreneur recently posted a list of 11 Characteristics of Highly Influential Blogs from Tamar Weinberg at Techipedia. Can you guess what number 1 is? Consistency. Yep.

Because of social media, the converging of blog and Website is on the increase, big time. As I talked about in an earlier article, the blog should be the hub of your social media. If you care about your online presence, you will definitely want to consider a blog. Search engines like frequently updated quality content.

Blogs are good for business. Hubspot took a poll. Small business that blog get 55% more visitors. 97% more inbound links. 434% more indexed pages. Study shows more pages indexed by Google means more leads.

Ready. Set. Go blog!

Photo by Dave Morris

One Responseto “What’s the difference between a blog and a website?”

1. Debbie Weil says:

   04/15/2010 at 10:43 am

   Angela, great riff on blogs vs. sites. Delighted to see you are reading my book. fyi – there is a 2010 UPDATED e-book edition available on Amazon Kindle. You don’t need a Kindle to read it. Use the free Kindle app for your iPhone or Blackberry (also your Mac or PC desktop) and you can read it that way. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Blogging-Updated-Preface-ebook/dp/B003B654MO/