As a blogger, most of us come across this question, what is the difference between a Blog and an Article? Often we even have to explain the difference to our content writers, when third-party content is needed. Articles are the most common types of write-ups and you can find them from ages ago. While Blogs are relatively new and come up with a different approach. Though we use both of them and each of them has its differences, sometimes they overlap each other, especially nowadays. So, some people even distinguish them as blog posts and blog articles. Well, despite the differences, a question comes that how should you approach your blog readers? Should you go with the traditional blog approach or adopt some goodies from articles to come with a more informational and interactive blog post? Let us take a deep drive and explore the differences.
Blog Vs Article: Casual Vs Formal
As I said earlier, both of them have different approaches. Articles are relatively formal and usually written from a third-person point of view. While blog posts come with a personal touch. They are usually written from the first-person point of view. So, you will usually see lots of “I, me, you, our, your” type of words. It doesn’t mean that blogs are never written with formal touch, as I said earlier, things are changing and sometimes they overlap each other. But in most cases, you will find a casual touch in blog posts.
Now, what should be your approach? Formal or casual? The answer lies with the topic you are writing and what type of information you are sharing with your readers. If you are sharing some research-based analytical data with your readers then you can switch from casual to formal or if you need more interaction then switch from formal to casual.
Blog Vs Article: Content-Length
Content length is another distinguishing factor between a blog and an article. Blog posts are relatively short and usually 500-700 words long while articles are more descriptive and can be 1000-1500 or even 2000 words long. Really? Blog posts are nowadays more than 1500 words long and some even exceed 8000 words. Moreover, for SEO purposes and also for being more informative, we write long blog posts. The thin line between the length of articles and blog posts already crumbled.
What we bloggers require more is the quality of content. So the length doesn’t matter. The rule of the thumb now is to provide good quality content to the readers and to answer as many questions about the topic as possible.
Blog Vs Article: SEO Keyword
Usually, bloggers tend to write blogs considering keywords. Because search engine optimization allows those blogs to reach a wider range of audiences or viewers. On the other hand, articles are usually written without considering the keywords. Keywords don’t play an important role in article creation.
Well, things are changing in both worlds now. After Google’s last algorithm change, especially the BERT update, bloggers are focusing more on answering related questions. Keyword optimization becoming less and less important. It’s is easier to rank by answering questions related to the topics of the blog. I’m not saying that keywords became obsolete already, it’s just becoming a less important factor for SEO.
Blog Vs Article: Editing
Well, editing is another area where articles are heavily dependent. Most of the articles are written in a third-person view and articles are long. So editing is a top priority for articles. What about blogs then? As blogs are written in first-person point of view and it’s casually written, usually just simple editing is good enough for them. Moreover, blogs are relatively short and it doesn’t require a professional editor to edit them.
Well, those are the things that happened years ago. What is the situation now? Now, most of the blogs are becoming longer and longer and sometimes written formally. Moreover, grammatical errors are considered a bad SEO practice nowadays. So, editing is also becoming vital for blogposts.
Blog Vs Article: Interviews & Research
There was a time when most of the articles are written based on facts, and research. Even interviews were published as articles. Don’t get me wrong, articles are still written in that way but what about blogs? Blogs used to be specifically personal views. So, interviews or research-based facts never were a part of blogging.
Well, things are changing now. If you take a closer look, you will find extremely long blog posts nowadays which even include research-based data for gaining reader’s trust, and sometimes they also include interviews or part of interview quotes. Why is this change taking place in the blogging sphere?
Blog or Article or Blog-Article?
Blogging is not what it used to be in its early days. Blogs are now part of big company websites and part of their marketing channel. Nowadays blogs are changed from just personal journals to a big medium to reach larger audiences. So the thin line between blogs and articles is crumbing apart and soon there will be no difference between a blog post and an article. It doesn’t mean that articles will become obsolete. Articles have their place and will remain as important as they used to be. It’s just that the blogging world is changing fast and bloggers are merging the goodies of articles into their blogs.