This post looking at conventional websites vs blogs is by Suzanne Falter-Barns from Get Known Now.
Have Blogs Killed Conventional Websites?
It’s a question that’s been bugging me profoundly since I got into blogging over a year ago. Blogs are cheap, easy, efficient, wildly easy to find on the Net, super marketing-friendly, and just plain fun. They work rings around websites.
So are conventional websites no longer necessary? To find out, I interviewed Andy Wibbels, the original blogging evangelist and author of the excellent book, Blogwild!. Here’s the short version of what I learned.
- Websites are clunky and expensive; blogs are lean and cheap.
- You have to wait for someone to make changes to your website; your blog can be changed easily by you.
- You have to wait for someone else to set up your site; your blog can be set up by you in 15 minutes.
- You can update your blog at an airport, while you’re on the run. You have to call your webmaster … and wait … to update your site.
- You can collect email addresses, and download free reports and bonuses off of a website. Same with a blog.
- You can use a shopping cart to collect money for e-commerce of a website. Same with a blog.
- You can set up a press room with all sorts of cool links and forms on a website. Same with a blog.
- It takes three to six months for the big search engines to find you with a website. It takes two or three days with a blog.
- You can easily track stats of who has visited your regular website. Same with a blog.
- The media are more likely to find you on a blog.
- You can learn more about your audience from a blog.
- You market automatically with a blog. But not with a conventional website.
- You can make a lot more friends with a blog.
The list appears to go on and on, but you get the picture. Blogs are, quite simply, the next wave. So if you’re thinking about setting up a site, stop in your tracks and turn towards blogs instead!
Note from Darren: what would you add to the above list of comparisons between blogs and conventional websites?