When it comes to the Internet, blogging and content marketing have often been conflated with each other. After all, to the untrained eye, they might be one and the same: written content for websites. In a sense, this is true – both blogging and content marketing does make written content for websites. However, content marketing goes much deeper compared to blogging.
What is Blogging?
Simply put, blogging is the act of regularly updating a website’s written content by adding new posts. The main purpose of a blog is to engage an audience, strike up a conversation, and see analyze the size of your audience.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing also has written content that is regularly updated, but it also includes other visual content such as images and videos. All the content on a particular website is informational and is created to help increase interest in a product or service. This means that content marketing is an umbrella term that covers blogging as one of its aspects.
How do I Know Which One I Need for My Website?
Since blogging is only a tool under content marketing, you would need to have content marketing for your website, rather than just blogging. Content marketing is an effective way to be able to increase the visibility of your brand and to increase recognition within your target audience. In today’s digital landscape, the more visibility and brand recognition your business has online, the more credible you are with your target market.
One of the key features of content marketing is that it increases interest in a product or service without being overly “salesy”. This means that an effective content marketing campaign is not intrusive or overbearing; it does this by capturing a person’s attention without demanding it. Done right, content marketing provides your target audience with the information they need to be aware of your brand without pressuring them into any sort of commitment to do business with you.
You use blogging if you want to be able to create specific results for your business, particularly if you want to increase your search engine rankings. Indeed, blogging is a critical part of a strong Search Engine Optimization campaign.
Blogging is also an essential component of an effective link-building strategy. If you can get blogs with links to high authority sites in your website, you will find that this leads to a boost in traffic and brand visibility.
In a nutshell: blogging is a tool, and content marketing is the toolbox where you can find it alongside other marketing tools.
Do I need to Hire a Professional?
When it comes to blogging, it might not be necessary to hire a professional. You can start a blog on your website without needing to shell out money to hire a blog writer. In fact, many personal blogs from website owners grow organically and create a sizable audience over time because they can write interesting and genuine content. (It goes without being said however, if you’re looking to outsource copywriting, we here at Panda Copy would love to help :))
For content marketing, however, hiring an experienced content marketer can make or break your business. Remember, one of the key features of effective content marketing is not making it look “salesy”. Great content marketers study for years to be able to learn how to be effective in their craft.
The Bottom Line
Now that you know the difference between blogging and content marketing, you will be better equipped to choose how to handle your marketing strategy. Any blogs that you put into your website should fit into your content marketing strategy.
