Content marketing and blogging – two buzzwords of the modern online era. It’s no wonder that many people believe the two are the same thing. After all, both are about creating web content.
Yet, although in one sense this is true, blogging is a much more shallow form of writing than content marketing. Content marketing should be the driver of all your business’s digital marketing efforts. This allows you to deliver content that isn’t just properly planned-out but also valuable to the reader.
Here, we take a closer look at the similarities and differences between content marketing and blogging. This will enable you to understand how these two forms of writing complement each other. It will also show you how they can fit into a single marketing strategy.
Blogging – What Is It?
The term “blogging” is used to describe the act of updating a website or web page regularly with informative articles. The idea is to inform the reader and engage with them.
Blogging as a concept was first introduced to the world in the 1990s. It is widely believed that the first ever blog was links.net. This was a website that Justin Hall, a college student, created to share photos and interesting web links.
After this point, more blogs began appearing. Websites such as TypePad and WordPress were created. This allowed blogging to become more popular. Today, blogging remains a popular way of publishing content, both professional and personal.
A blog can be defined as a section of a website that needs frequent updating with new posts. Blogs are a tool to engage with a target audience. They allow you to analyse the number of readers who share your posts on social media. They also allow readers to make comments on your posts. This makes a blog a two-way conversation with the reader – something that the rest of your website can’t achieve. Yet, a blog may also be your whole website. In fact, it often is when the blog is solely for personal use – for example, travel blogs.
Blogging is one of the best ways of connecting with a target audience. It allows you to give them information that they’ve been looking for. It enables you to answer their questions and provide more information about their interests. As a result, you can showcase your status as a leader in your industry.
Companies that blog achieve 97% more inbound links than those which don’t, so it’s clear it’s an effective strategy.
However, not all blogs are created equal. A lot of bloggers start to share online content without promoting it or optimizing it properly. Their blog is only a place to share information and thoughts. These bloggers don’t use tried and tested strategies to create income from their writing.
On the other hand, professional bloggers harness digital marketing techniques. They optimize their blog and market its content to a wider audience.
They use a range of marketing methods to create an income including:
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Link building
- SEO
- Guest blogging
- Paid Advertising
- Influencer outreach
This brings us on to the difference between these professional bloggers and hobby bloggers. That difference can be described as a content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing – What Is It?
Like blogging, content marketing has been around for a long time. In fact, it’s been around for even longer than the concept of the blog.
The mid-1980s saw content marketing introduced to the public when “The Furrow”, John Deere’s magazine dedicated to agriculture was launched. Since that time, many business and brands have taken content marketing onboard. They have seen how much value it adds to marketing strategies.
Customers feel more positive about brands when they’ve read excellent blog content. Yet, reading a blog and getting a positive feeling won’t convert leads or grow the brand’s audience. This is why content marketing is more important for any company than simply blogging.
The term “content marketing” is used to describe the creation of blogs, videos and images that inform the reader. They are shared on websites and social media platforms to drive up interest in services and products without over-emphasizing sales.
Strategic content marketing involves creating then distributing content that is relevant, valuable and consistent. The idea is to attract a wider audience and to retain existing readers to drive up sales and profit.
Content marketing centers around taking a focused approach to creating content that attracts an audience to a brand. Essentially, content marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses blogging. Yet, there are other kinds of content marketing too.
As the above chart shows, the various types of content marketing include:
- Case studies
- Infographics
- Guides
- How-To-Videos
- Whitepapers
- Studies
- Videos
- Interactive Content
- Articles
- User Generated Content
And, of course, blogs.
The above statistics show how important a content marketing strategy can be for any business. Custom content shows consumers that the business is interested in forging a strong relationship with them. It also shows that consumers prefer to get to know a brand through its content rather than its advertising.
The Differences Between Blogging And Content Marketing
When it comes to the differences between blogging and content marketing, there are several to consider:
- Keyword research – those who focus solely on blogging tend to produce posts about anything that takes their interest. Content marketers never do this. They start the process of writing by carrying out research into keywords surrounding their topic. This allows them to determine which phrases are popular and simple to rank for. Those keywords can then be built into interesting headlines and creative text.
- Reading competitors work – content marketers read what their competitors are producing. This is something that bloggers rarely or never bother with.
- Studying analytics – content marketers will check analytical data to see how successful previous blog posts have been. This allows them to create more posts that readers will be interested in. Bloggers, meanwhile, have limited interest in finding out about their trends.
- Creating posts designed to go viral – content marketers specifically engineer posts to get lots of shares. They achieve this by quoting powerful influencers or mentioning big brands. Bloggers put little emphasis on this.
- Planning ahead – bloggers rarely know what they’ll be publishing next week, let alone next month. Content marketers, meanwhile, have a marketing calendar that they follow religiously. They plan ahead so that their strategy achieves maximum impact.
- Using calls to action – blog posts rarely end with a CTA. However, content marketers want to ensure that readers know exactly what to do when they’ve finished reading a post. By adding a call to action in the text, readers can be moved along the path to becoming a buyer.
- Building an audience on social media – many bloggers simply don’t engage with social media platforms. Yet, content marketers understand the importance of Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. They harness the power of those platforms to connect with a wider audience and engage with them.
Both Methods Offer Unique Benefits
Both blogging and content marketing offer their own benefits for your brand. Content marketing is an effective way of increasing your brand’s visibility and recognition. The more your brand can be present on marketing channels, the more familiar it becomes to your target audience.
Content marketing is an unobtrusive way of building a long-lasting reputation. Blogging, meanwhile, can be used to achieve more specific results. As an example, it can secure a higher search engine ranking. When blog posts include high-quality keywords and the copy is optimized, it’s possible to control your ranking.
Also, blogging is an important part of any link-building strategy. Links can be included to high-authority websites within posts. These sites, in return, will often reciprocate by including a link to that post on their site or sharing it.
Driving Meaningful Results
Part of any successful content marketing strategy is ensuring there’s a clearly defined audience for the content that is produced. This is usually called a “buyer persona”.
Buyer personas, as you can see from the above infographic are well-researched representations of the ideal audience for your brand. Content can then be tailored to these buyer personas, ensuring that it is valuable and relevant to their needs. By building up trust and providing value to those buyer personas, it’s possible to attract and convert customers.
This forms the major difference between content marketing and blogging. Content marketing is designed to drive meaningful results. In fact, it can get over three times more leads than outbound marketing. It also costs a lot less.
Content marketing is about allowing customers to freely engage with the brand in their own way. Buyers are naturally distrustful of anybody who is obviously trying to make a sale. This means that marketing to them is a mistake. Communicating with them through useful and interesting content is a much better and more successful option.
How Does This Impact On Your Company’s Marketing Strategy?
It’s clear that blogging is just part of a wider content marketing strategy. However, how does that impact on your company’s overall marketing strategy? How does it affect the activities that you opt for?
Blogging represents an excellent way of disseminating your message to your target audience. Yet, it should never be your only marketing method. Rather, it must be just part of an overall strategy.
So, how can you make sure that your content marketing strategy achieves its maximum potential through blogging and other methods?
Understanding The Buyer’s Journey
The diagram above shows that there are several stages involved in designing the ideal overall content marketing strategy. However, the first step is consideration of the buyer’s journey.
Any buyer’s journey is composed of three steps:
- Awareness – the buyer identifies a problem
- Consideration – they define that problem and looks into different ways of solving it
- Deciding – they select a solution
To effectively market to a target audience and give them meaningful content, you need to be aware of these stages. Somebody who is visiting your website for the first time needs different content to an existing customer. You must consider the kind of content readers need at each stage of their journey. Once you’ve done this, you can plan and create suitable content.
Measuring Content And Aligning It To Your Business Goals
It isn’t sufficient to align your content to the journey of your buyers. It’s also vital to ensure your content can be measured and aligns to the goals of your brand. It’s important to ensure every piece of content you create ties not only back to the brand but also its goals.
Imagine that your primary goal is to boost your sales enquiries. Then, you must think about ways that your content can positively impact on this. You can also harness the power of analytical tools to ensure your content is reaching the correct audience.
Harnessing The Power Of Marketing Tools
While blogging and content marketing are similar, they serve very different purposes. Although blogging is a useful marketing tool, it’s only a single element of a content marketing strategy.
A successful content marketing strategy must consist of a range of marketing activities that provide value to your target audience. Not only should they engage with both your existing and potential customers, but it should help you achieve your goals.
This means that both content marketing and blogging are vital for any business that wishes to maximize its potential. However, forming an effective content marketing strategy then aligning the blog to it is key.
If your blog isn’t written with your overall content marketing strategy in mind, it won’t drive up organic traffic. Therefore, as a result, it will only be a waste of your time. If you don’t provide your readers with value, it cannot be called content marketing. If your brand’s blog isn’t relevant, then it also can’t be called content marketing.
In simple terms, blogging is only a tool while content marketing is an operating system within which it works.
If you current write a blog, you must also develop other key content marketing strategies. Email marketing, multimedia content, and social media can all build on your blog’s success. This ensures that you can drive stronger results overall from your content marketing strategy.