Social Media is No Substitute For a Good Blog

Didit Editorial

10 years ago

Don’t make the mistake of building your Web marketing castle on somebody else’s land

May 27, 2014: Once upon a time, just about every Internet marketing expert agreed that a blog — operating on its own domain — was an essential pillar in any well-rounded Web marketing strategy. Today, however, some voices are challenging this assertion. Because of the emergence of popular social media /micro-blogging platforms, blogs seem — at least to some — to be playing “second fiddle” to presences on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn.

A recent study of professional social media experts conducted by Didit illustrates the opinion shift. While 87 percent of these people — who know a thing or two about online marketing — maintained blogs on their own domains, only 34 percent of them produced up-to-date content for them (“up-to-date” being defined as blog content less than 7 days old). A full 29 percent hosted content older than 7 days. And a full 20 percent had content on their blogs that wasn’t dated at all, making it impossible to say whether this content was fresh or written sometime in the late 20th Century.

It’s natural that these social media influencers — whose job it is to promote their mastery of social media — might regard their blog presences as secondary. What’s dangerous, however, is the idea that a social media presence — even the most robust kind of presence — can substitute for an active, content-rich blog. Here’s why:

1. Link juice. Domains and blog pages can accumulate Page Rank, which improves rankings on search engines. Social media URLs accumulate Page Rank too, but the benefits accrue to the platform — not to the brand. Why send vital link juice to a company other than your own?

2. Control of Reach. Many brands were caught flat-footed when Facebook arbitrarily decided that it was going to force brands to pay for reach that had once been thought to have been “earned.” This can’t happen when you control your own blog/domain.

3. Branding. Social media platforms force you to adapt the unique look and feel of your brand into the format that best serves them, not you. But there’s no digital strait-jacket on your blog/domain: there, you have much more freedom to tell your brand story in a way that such a story demands.

4. Transparency. The analytics provided by social media platforms give you the data that their engineers think you want, not the data you might actually need to grow your business online. For full transparency, you need a full-featured Web analytics package.

4. Social platforms come and go, whereas domains and blogs go on and on. One cursory glance at the history of social media platforms will show you that these “hot” platforms rise and fall quite rapidly. Remember Myspace? Friendster? Geocities? TheGlobe? Nobody else does either.

Make no mistake: social media and micro-blogging have their place in the Web marketing mix. Social media offers a great way to acquire customers, participate in relevant business conversations, gain followers/likers, and extend the reach of your online publishing efforts. Don’t, however, make the mistake of building your Web marketing castle on somebody else’s land (there’s actually a nasty term for this; it’s called “digital sharecropping”). Instead, take control of your online publishing destiny and build a permanent home for your content that’s strong, enduring, and firmly under your control.

Have a question about content marketing or social media? Feel free to contact us or tweet us @DiditMarketing.