1.3 Why Start Your Own Blog?

Why start your own blog when you can simply use a website? That is a question many marketers ask. The truth is that blogs are started for decidedly different reasons--some social, some productive, and some a combination of both. If you plan to start a blog for entirely social reasons, you may want to select a medium with high networking value, such as one of the networks that have large amounts of members and allow for high degrees of interactivity.

If your goal is to create a blog that is completely productive, the question of "why start your own blog?" may become even more crucial, as you probably see starting a blog as a potential time trap. If this is the case, you may want to bypass social networking altogether and instead create something with an easy-to-manage and easy-to-update template, such as Blogger. If you do this, you will find yourself asking the question "why start your own blog when you've already got a website?" less and less.

You may want to block comments altogether to prevent extended conversations between blog viewers. Even though comments can improve how fresh a blog appears to search engines--and can also add new content--they can be seriously abused if you do not have the time to monitor them closely. They can be the source of perpetual fights on your blog--or a means for blog spammers to post their irrelevant and unrelated comments on your blog. Additionally, if you've ever been involved in a heated forum debate, you can understand why allowing viewers to interact could seriously detract from time you could spend marketing.

Your third option is to create a blog that combines both productive goals with social interaction. This might seem impossible, as social interaction can only decrease the amount of time you can potentially spend working, but it actually isn't.

If your goal is to position yourself as an industry leader for your topical blog, then you will want to have some means of interacting with other industry leaders; and you will also want to prove your worth through responses to questions. Additionally, you can also use social controversy to market your product. For instance, if you own a dieting blog and you have a defensible, controversial stance on something like low carb diets, you could benefit significantly by stirring up controversy on low carb blogs -- and then sending them your way. You can then use your blog to reel them in to your salespage.

So, to answer the question of "why start your own blog when you have a website?" : blogs can be created for completely social reasons, for completely productive reasons, or for something in between that involves both. In many cases, this simply isn't substitutable for a website.