Blogging vs social media: Which is better?
Forget Ronaldo vs Messi, Pepsi vs Coca Cola. We have another rivalry to address.
Blogging vs social media.
Now, if you’ve spent time on this blog, you’d know that I tend to prefer blogging, BUT, I understand that blogging is not inherently BETTER than social media.
There are pros and cons to both.
Today, let’s cover them. Keep reading!
What is blogging?
“Blogging” is the action of creating blogs, and blogs are regularly updated web pages, typically in the form of guides, case studies, recipes, or personal stories. It can be used for personal reasons, although businesses tend to use blogging as a way to rank on search engines for a variety of keywords related to their business.
This helps them get more visitors to their website as everyone uses the Internet to answer their questions, and they will generally click on blogs for those answers. After they read a blog, they may hop around other pages, such as your homepage and about page, or they may sign up to your email list if you have a compelling lead magnet.
What is social media?
Social media is the collective term for websites and apps in which people create, share, or exchange information and ideas. Some examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and TikTok.
Just like blogging, social media can also be used for personal and business reasons. Businesses tend to use social media because it’s a good way to connect with their audience, build relationships, and find out things about their audience.
Pros of blogging
Blogging can be incredibly powerful for business. In fact, companies that blog produce about 70% more leads per month than companies that don’t. So, obviously, when done right, blogging can do a lot for your business. But, what are some other pros of blogging?
You can work on it at any time
One big plus of blogging is that you can work on it whenever it suits you. As long as you maintain some consistency (I recommend publishing at least one blog a week), you can work on your blogs at any time, and schedule it for when you’d like. There are no windows of time that are significantly better to publish during, so blogging works around your schedule, not the other way around.
You can drive traffic to your website
One of the best parts about blogging, and honestly one of the main reasons that businesses do it, is that it can help you drive more traffic to your website. The more blogs you write, the more possible keywords you can rank for and the more clicks to your website. And if you have great blogs and website copy, these website visitors can turn into customers!
You can establish yourself as an expert
Another benefit of blogging is that you can use your blogs to establish yourself as an expert. As you blog more and get more traffic to your website, more people will see your ideas and your beliefs and will view you as someone they should listen to.
Great if you like writing
If you like writing, blogging can be really fun. It gives you a way to share your ideas, your voice, and your stories, and you can even experiment with different writing styles, topics, and formats, to keep things fresh and exciting.
Plus, the more you write, the better you get at it, so it's a fantastic way to improve your skills. There's also very little design involved with blogging, so if design isn’t your thing, you can avoid it altogether.
You can provide a lot of free value
One of the best parts about blogging is that it gives you the opportunity to provide a lot of free value for your audience. Whether you're sharing tips, tutorials, insights, or personal experiences, you're giving away valuable information without asking for anything in return.
This generosity not only builds trust and credibility with your readers but also establishes you as an authority in your niche and can attract a loyal audience who appreciate your expertise and addition to the conversation.
Posts can be evergreen
Another cool thing about blogging is that your posts can be evergreen. Evergreen basically means that they stay relevant for a long time. For example, imagine you write a great article about "The Perfect Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies" today. That post has the ability to stay relevant on Google for years.
So, unlike social media algorithms that prioritize new content, good blog content sticks around, keeps bringing in readers, and helps build your audience over time.
Cons of blogging
Blogging, like anything in life, has some downsides. Let’s go through a few.
It takes a lot of time
Blogging is not for the faint of heart.
While back in the day, a short blog post that was SEO-optimized had a pretty good chance of ranking on Google, these days, blogs usually need to be AT LEAST 1,000 words long to rank high on Google (with some research saying the ideal length of a blog post is about 2,100 to 2,400 words long).
This is not easy. And while A.I. and other tools can help speed up the process a bit, most bloggers take around 4 hours to write a single blog post.
Needless to say, one of the cons of blogging is that it can take a lot of time (even more if you’re a beginner).
You have to know how to write (at least somewhat)
Any writer knows that writing is not easy.
Scratch that.
Writing is easy. But writing in an engaging, well-researched, and clear way is not.
The reality is that there are A LOT of blogs out there. So if you think you’re going to see results with poorly written content, that’s just not the case. And this can be overwhelming if you have no experience with writing, or worse yet, just don’t enjoy it at all.
The good news is that you can hire someone to do your writing for you, or you can start writing yourself and get better over time.
It takes a while to see results
I’ll admit, one bummer about blogging is it takes time to see results. Especially when you’re first starting out.
It usually takes at least 2-3 months for Google to even crawl your pages, and then another few months for your blogs to start ranking. The good news is that if you keep at it, you’ll see your results start to snowball after a while. But, if you're in it for instant gratification, blogging might not be your thing.
But hey, good things come to those who wait, right?
Pros of social media
Social media is also incredibly powerful for any business. Here are some of the best benefits of social media.
You can interact with your audience
77% of businesses use social media to connect with their audience. And there's no wonder that this is the case because, with social media, you can actually talk to your audience at any time of the day. And not just talking at them, but having a conversation with them as you can do in your comments section.
Another benefit of this type of interaction is that you can also get a good idea about how people are feeling about your business and even some issues they might be having that you can correct.
Generates leads
Social media is not just about fun (although it can be!). It’s also a great place to generate leads for your business. In fact, 77% of people find new products on social media. There are even people out there that do their searching AND buying on social media. So, social media can help you meet your audience where they're shopping, which isn’t always on Google.
Results can be faster
Social media moves pretty fast. While this has some downsides, which we’ll get into later, it can also mean that the content you create has the ability to reach more people faster, especially if virality comes into play. Your posts can reach a lot of people immediately after you publish them, while it’s very unlikely that a blog will reach #1 of Google the day, let alone the first week, you publish it.
Great for networking
Social media is also powerful for its networking abilities. If you find someone you admire, you can send them a message very easily via their DMs. I mean, these days, we all know someone who has gotten a career opportunity on LinkedIn (yes, LinkedIn is a social media platform!), whether that be a job or a client.
Cons of social media
While there’s a lot of benefits to social media, there are also some things that are not so great about it. Here are a few.
Posts don’t last long
Let’s face it, social media posts don’t last as long as we’d like them to. According to some stats, Twitter/X posts last a mere 15 minutes before newer posts start to be prioritized by the algorithm. Instagram is a little bit better, with posts typically lasting for about 48 hours before engagement starts to drop.
And because of the nature of social media, people tend to have to post A LOT to keep their audience engaged. So, if you get easily overwhelmed, social media can be tough to maintain.
Algorithms can change drastically
On social media, the phrase “algorithm update” is basically like the word “Voldemort” — nobody wants to hear it.
Why?
Because it can negatively affect your reach big time. Go on social media, and you can see a lot of horror stories about big accounts whose reach was cut in half because of an algorithm update. What social media prioritizes changes often.
Remember when Instagram wanted to be TikTok and pictures were being treated like the best friend in a romantic comedy? That’s not to say that Google doesn’t have algorithm updates that can affect your reach as well, but they are usually not as drastic.
Harder to take time off
We all love a good vacation. Unfortunately, though, social media really doesn’t care about your vacations. It can be tough to truly take time off on social media, because not only do you have to post often, but it’s also best practice to reply to as many of your comments as possible.
Social media platforms can be fickle
Another con of social media, and maybe even the worst downside of all, is that social media platforms can be extremely fickle. For example, we’ve all heard of accounts that get banned for seemingly no reason, with the owner losing their entire audience and work overnight.
Or, entire platforms can cease to exist or lose their relevance. Remember Vine? Or Clubhouse? MySpace? And how many times have we heard about legislators trying to ban TikTok?
This can be DEVASTATING for any business. Which is why if you’re on social media, always have a back up plan. Branch out into other platforms or better yet, build your email list.
Blogging vs social media: Which is better?
If you want to know which is better, blogging or social media, here’s the answer. Neither is inherintaly better than the other. The answer honestly lies in which is better FOR YOU.
As you can see, there are enormous benefits, and serious downsides to both. It’s up to you which one you think fits into your goals and lifestyle more! If you have the capacity or budget to outsource, you can even do both.
But, if you’re starting from scratch, I’d recommend just choosing one and focusing on growing that. Because the reality is that there are people who grew their businesses from scratch with blogging and there are people who grew their businesses from scratch with social media.
When you’ve seen success with your choice and want to start branching out into other forms of marketing, you can always hire a social media manager to manage your social media accounts or a copywriter to write your blogs.
And hopefully, this guide has given you some insight as to which one would be best for you to start with. For other blogs related to blogging, social media, email & website copywriting, and more, check out more blogs here!