Blog or Article

[jamesray50]

I hope you all don't think this is a stupid question, but what is the difference between having a blog and having an article on your website? Are they the same or two different things? Can you have both or should you only have one? If only one, which one would be the best?

[Harold Mansfield]

I hope you all don't think this is a stupid question, but what is the difference between having a blog and having an article on your website? Are they the same or two different things? Can you have both or should you only have one? If only one, which one would be the best?

Let me start this answer with...The best thing about having a blog on major platform is having an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is how your readers and other destinations on the web can be instantly alerted to new information...with the headline, a brief excerpt and link back to your website to read the rest of the post.

A blog post is simply an article. But since it is written on a blog, they call them "blog posts", as in posting information.

There are helpful things about posting to your blog. Just about all blog platforms allow easy tagging, and categorizing which is helpful SEO wise along with the date, time and author's name which can also be used to search for your information.

The most beneficial reason for posting to your blog is that RSS feed. When you post, whoever, or where ever is following (subscribed to) your feed, or where ever you have submitted it...such as blog directories, your Facebook page, Your Linked In profile, and pretty much anywhere else on the web where that feed is listed, will get the new information instantly. In other words your new article will go out to all of those places as soon as you hit publish.

RSS feeds are how content is syndicated around the web.

When you publish an article outside of a blog platform or someplace without an RSS feed, you have to do all of those things that I listed as benefits, manually.

[AmyAllen]

To answer on an even more basic level:

Blog is short for "web log" - It's basically a place set aside for you online where you can publish different kinds of content (like articles for example, or pictures, videos, political commentary). The content is usually sorted by date. Think of it like an online diary in terms of format, only you can use it to publish professional content as well.

Here is a very simple definition but the main difference (on a basic level) is that a blog is a place to publish and store lots of content, and an article is something that might be written on a blog.

[jamesray50]

Okay, when I first set up my website, I added a newsletter page and typed up an article and added a subscribe to this newsletter form. Then later after reading some of the reviews I decided to add a blog, so I went to WordPress.com and wrote a blog. I tried to add it to my home page in the right column, but it has to be added in an iframe (btw - I don't know what that is) and it kept cutting off the right part of the text. So I copied and pasted the text into the right column of my home page. So, originally when I had my RSS button on the page and a text link it went to the page that said to sign up for RSS feed, now I have it actually going to my blog on WP.com.

Can you all tell I am really confused? I partially understand posting something on Linkedin and then having it directed to my blog, but I don't want it to go to my blog, I want it to go to my website. That is where I am selling my services.

[Harold Mansfield]

An iframe is code that allows you to publish another document or script on the page.

It can be confusing because you are all over the place using different things and trying them all together to get all of the functions you need.

A couple of your other threads are about setting up your site on your own, hosted Wordpress installation.
I think that you should continue down that road because you can do all of those things from the same site.

You have a website on one platform, a newsletter someplace else, and a blog at yet a 3rd place... that is going to drive you crazy.
You don't have to do it like that.
You can run the website, blog, and newsletter all from a Wordpress site and have them work seamlessly together.

If your blog and website are 2 different places then syndicating your blog content is sort of a waste of time because you can't redirect your blog's RSS feed to your website.


The goal with syndicating your blog to somewhere like Linked In is for it to go from the blog to Linked In and show on your profile...not the other way around.
It only works to bring you traffic if your blog and website are the same.

[jamesray50]

So in other words I need to switch over to WordPress.

[Harold Mansfield]

If you are already headed that way, you may as well. Right now it's obvious that you are trying to piece things together and not getting the desired results.
There is no reason to have your things spread all over the web. It's counter productive and you aren't getting the full benefit of any of them.
You can't have people going one place for your website and another for your blog. It looks really unorganized and unprofessional and makes the blog pretty useless for generating traffic and business.

Yes, I definitely believe that you will be much happier.

Flash forward to 6 months from now...if you stick with what you have, you won't be happy but will be too vested and scared to change. Since you are just starting out, you won't lose anything.

This is the best time to do it. You have no traffic. No links. No page rank. No SEO. Don't wait until you get some, and then change.

[vangogh]

First don't feel bad if you're confused about this. I promise you wouldn't be the only one. In many ways a blog post and an article are the same things. There are some differences, though even the differences are blurred at times.

Generally a blog post will allow for comments and they tend to be more time based where an article usually doesn't have comments and tends to be more timeless. However the reverse can easily be true in both cases. Most of the blog posts I write tend to read more like articles than what someone might thing typical for a blog post. The best advice I could offer is not to get too hung up on the definition of either. Some things you write you'll add as a blog post and other things you'll keep as articles separate from your blog. The reality is that it doesn't really matter all that much.

You don't need to switch over to WordPress (emphasis on the word need), but you'll find both Harold and myself highly recommend using WordPress. If you click the links in either of our signatures you'll see sites powered by WordPress. Not just blogs, but full sites. Every page on my site has WordPress behind it and I believe Harold's sites are the same.

As far as a blog is concerned think of it as a way to continue to product new content in order to attract a community around your site. Most of your blog posts will be heavy on the text and may come across as articles. Text is not the only type of post or content you have to create though. See if you can find other bookkeepers running blogs and subscribe to them so you can get a feel for what others in your industry are doing. Also subscribe to blogs in other industries to get a feel for what people do in general. The best way to understand how to set up your own blog is to read other blogs and study those you like to see what they're doing. Take what you like from them and think about other things you can do that maybe they aren't doing.

There really aren't any hard and fast rules about what should be on a blog and what should be an article or other content separate from a blog. In either case you can usually use the same content management system (like WordPress) to present content that's both inside and outside the blog itself.