My guess is you’re already promoting your business on social media. And there’s a good chance you’ve dabbled a bit with blogging to promote your business too. Or you’ve at least thought about having a blog on your website. But the thing that’s really baffling you… is blogging better than social media for business growth?

Because ultimately, you just want to do it right, yeah? You want to make sure you’re promoting your business in the best way possible, using the right channels, the most effective methods, and preferably not taking up too much of your time. But the problem is, you’ve got someone in one ear telling you it’s all about being on social media, and you’ve got someone in the other ear telling you blogging’s more important.

So, who do you listen to?

Which one is actually going to grow your business?

To help you make the right choice, I’m going to look at the pros and cons of both. So that you can decide where to focus your efforts and to help you create a solid marketing strategy for your business.

What’s The Difference Between Blogging and Social Media Content?

Although the content you share on your blog is likely to be similar in subject matter to what you share on your social media accounts, there are (and should be) differences between the two.

Before we move on, let’s understand each one a little better:

Blogging

Blogging involves creating long pieces of content (also known as long-form content) that sits on a page or pages of your website. Unless you decide to delete it, that content stays on your site permanently. The content belongs to you and most importantly exists on a platform that belongs to you.

If written and structured correctly, blog posts help improve SEO, drive organic traffic to your website, and help build authority and trust for your business. And most importantly it continues to do its job days, weeks, months, even years after you hit that publish button.

Social Media

While you can share long-form content on social media, the main focus and by far the most effective strategy is to share short engaging posts (also known as short-form content). Social media content has a fast turnaround. You publish it, it (hopefully) gets engagement, and then it’s gone.

Although great for connecting with your audience and encouraging real-time interactions, social media content has a much shorter life span than blog content. Plus, despite you owning the copyright to the content, once it has been shared on social media they often have the right to use, copy, adapt, process, distribute, publish, or delete it. So, it’s yours, but it’s also kind of not yours.

Both content strategies help build audiences, but if we weigh up the differences listed above, is blogging better than social media?

Let’s go deeper…

Using Blogging for Business Growth

Blogging isn’t just about writing posts and sharing them on your website. That’s the very essence of it, sure, but there’s way more to it than that and that’s why having a strategy is so important. Because when you have a strategy it means you’re blogging with purpose and that’s what’s gonna get you results.

There are 4 main reasons why blogging is an essential element to growing your business:

1. SEO

Blogging gives you the opportunity to get your content appearing higher up on Google search pages, which will help drive organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic means that visitors are landing on your website because they’ve searched for a specific word or phrase and your website has naturally appeared in search results.

Well-optimised blog posts are much more likely to be found by people. If you’re unsure how to use SEO in your blog posts check out my simple SEO checklist bundle, which comes complete with an easy to use, tickable checklist and an SEO terms explainer.

2. Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that continues to be useful long after it’s been published. Unlike social media posts that drop in and out of people’s radars within a day, blog posts remain searchable and valuable pretty much indefinitely. The SEO benefits of blogging far outweigh the results you can get from social media.

Check out my guide on how to structure a blog post for better SEO. I know blog post structure is something my audience struggles with and that audiences in future will continue to struggle with. It’s helping to solve a problem and as such will continue to get traffic.

3. Credibility

Consistently sharing valuable, knowledge-based articles on your website positions you as an expert in your field. And when potential customers read these in-depth, well-researched blog posts, it builds trust in your business and signals that you are a credible source. Once you have the trust of your audience you are far more likely to convert them into paying customers. Talking of which…

4. Lead Generation

Having a blog on your website gives you way more opportunities to add in those all-important CTAs (calls to action). You’ll no doubt have them scattered around your website already, but you can add them (more than once!) to every single blog post you publish. Which means your audience will have lots more ways to engage, get in contact, and buy from you.

This is all about you making it as easy as possible for your audience to take the next steps. Remember that unless someone arrives at your website already wanting to buy something from you, which these days is very rare, you have to not only spell things out for them but you also need to gently steer them in the right direction.

Encourage them to sign up to an email list, download a free resource, buy a product etc. Take this blog post for example, how many CTAs can you spot?

3. Using Social Media For Business Growth

OK, so we’ve looked at how blogging can help the growth of your business. Now let’s give social media a fair whack. Of course I’m biased, I am a blog strategist after all. But credit where credit’s due, social media has its benefits.

Let’s take a look at 4 reasons social media is good for business growth:

1. Engagement

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok etc. give you the opportunity to get in front of your audience immediately. So, whereas it takes time and patience for a blog post to rank on Google, your social media posts can potentially reach thousands of people instantly.

You’ll notice I use the word ‘potentially’. Because it is getting increasingly more difficult to get good engagement on some social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram I’m totally looking at you here!) Algorithms seem to change on the daily and I know just from looking at the stuff I get shown on my own feeds it can be completely random. Which also goes to show that the stuff I share for my business may not always be reaching the people I want it to.

However, if you can beat those algorithms, you post consistently, and you’re creative with what you post, your potential audience numbers are massive.

2. Community

What social media does have going for it and what it can do that blogging alone can’t, is build a community. There’s much more scope to show your personality, interact with customers, and connect with your audience in a more real life way.

Features like stories, Facebook groups, comments, and live videos all make it much easier for you to engage with your audience in real time. And this helps make them feel as though they are part of something, which people absolutely love!

To know that they can interact with the person behind the posts, to ask questions, get advice straight away, as well as to connect with others in the same line of business is a big deal to them. So, you can see why so many people turn to social media as the main source of promotion for their business.

3. Going Viral

Oh to share a post that goes viral! It’s every business owners dream, right? If you manage to share just one single post, video, photo and it goes viral, it could give your business massive exposure overnight.

And that’s how social media can work really well at building and growing an audience. It can create sudden spikes in visibility that blogging can’t.

4. Advertising

If you need quick sales or brand awareness, using paid ads on social media can be game-changing. It allows you to target specific audiences so that your posts reach those people that matter.

But you do need to know what you’re doing. It’s very easy to waste a lot of money on paid ads and not get good results from it. So, it’s really important to know exactly who you’re targeting and to set yourself a budget.

4. Is Social Media Enough?

Right, well I don’t know about you lot, but I’m kinda feeling like social media has the slight edge over blogging at the moment. But is social media alone, enough to grow your business? Or is blogging better than social media after all?

Posting on social media has some serious advantages, but relying solely on social media for business growth is massively limiting.

Social media content…

• Has a shorter lifespan – Posts disappear quickly in feeds. What’s popular today, will be forgotten tomorrow.

• Is out of your control – Algorithm changes can massively limit your reach. Plus, the platform ultimately has ownership of your content and can do what it likes with it.

• Won’t get you ranking – Social media posts don’t drive long-term organic traffic like blogging does. It may give your audience numbers a boost, but the benefits will be short-lived.

So, blogging’s better then, yeah? Oh man, it’s confusing. Blogging gives you those long-term benefits and social media has the short term ones. How on earth do you decide which one to focus on!?!

But what if you didn’t have to choose between blogging and social media for business growth. What if it’s not really a question of is blogging better than social media, but more how can I combine use blogging and social media to grow my business?

Now there’s an idea!

Let’s explore whether it’s possible to combine the two without it using up what little spare time you have in your business.

5. How To Combine Blogging And Social Media For Business Growth

We know that blogging builds long-term authority and traffic. And that posting on social media increases engagement and is good for short-term visibility boosts. But surely combining the two is going to take far too long…

One of the biggest struggles small business owners deal with on a daily basis is not having enough time for all the things they know would benefit their business. And so when you hear me saying you should be blogging and writing social media content, I totally get that you might not be over the moon about it. I mean who, realistically has time to do both!?

It’s OK. You can breathe easy as there is a way to do both, meaning you won’t have to choose one over the other. Because the smartest content marketing strategy is to use both together and the way to do that is by repurposing your content.

Repurposing content means you can turn your blog posts into social media posts, snippets, infographics, videos, reels, etc.

For example, if you write a blog post titled 5 Reasons Why Blogging Won’t Work for Your Business you can:

• Turn each point into a short social media post – 1 blog post will give you multiple social posts.
• Create a carousel post on Instagram – Summarizing the blog post.
• Film a short video for TikTok or YouTube Shorts – Based on the key takeaways of your blog post.
• Share a link to your blog post – Include additional insights and personality to your social post.

By repurposing, you can concentrate on writing and optimising your blog post safe in the knowledge that you’ve got your social content planned at the same time. That one blog post can work across multiple platforms, maximising its impact and saving you time in the process.

Final Thoughts – Is Blogging Better Than Social Media For Business Growth?

In the battle of blogging v’s social media for business growth, who would win?

Well, I reckon it would go a bit like this…

Blogging enters the ring and hangs back in the corner, sussing the situation out a little before making any punches. Social media meanwhile is hopping from foot to foot, making all the moves, a proper cocky little so-and-so. The crowd are going mad for social media, it’s giving then everything they came for and more. Blogging meanwhile is taking its time. 

Social media has clearly got the crowd on its side. They’re all cheering and clapping, and they’re desperate to see more. But wait a minute what’s this? Social media’s run out of steam. It’s seriously flagging, burnt out before it really got going. And hang on, blogging’s noticed.

Blogging strides over and with one tap of its finger, knocks blogging to the floor.

Game over.

Now, I know it seems like blogging won that match. But the reality is, both would have worked so much better if they’d worked together. And that’s exactly how it works in the real world too.

Blogging is better for long-term growth and SEO, and social media is better for grabbing attention and for getting immediate engagement. Which means in an ideal world you should use both for optimum business growth.

So, is blogging better than social media for business growth? In so many ways yes, it is, but combining both is the ultimate strategy. Ask yourself this…

Do you need more traffic to your website?

Do you need eyes on your business immediately?

Or do you need both?

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Author Bio

Bex Stafferton is a blogger who started off writing her blog The Art of Healthy Living as a hobby when she was a stay at home mum and caring for her two young children. The same blog now earns her a full time salary while working part time hours.

Bex is on a mission to help teach businesses how having a blog on their website is a valuable marketing tool. Helping to build a strong online presence, grow an engaged audience, and increase sales.

When she’s not blogging, Bex spends her time hiking up mountains, trail running, cuddling her two cockapoos, and volunteering at a local wildlife rescue centre.