What's the Difference Between a Blog and a Newsletter?

During a workshop on newsletters one of the participants asked “What is the difference between a blog and a newsletter? If you ever wondered the same thing, here's your answer.

A Blog is your hub

On a blog which ideally is part of your website, you create content, share your knowledge, opinion and experience. Depending on your schedule, you submit monthly, weekly or daily blog posts. These posts are then public, on the internet, visible to everybody who visits your website, who’s subscribed to your RSS feed or who you’ve shared the post with on Social Media platforms (read this post on ‘Not blogging? You’re wasting your time on Social Media')

A Blog is the driving engine to create traffic to your site

Without a blog your site is static, there’s no new content and except for SEO no real traffic creation for your site. Every time you publish a new blog post and share it with your social platforms, you create traffic back to your site.

Use your blog to get subscribers for your newsletter

Your blog is also one of the best ways to get more subscribers for your newsletter. They are reading your content, and at the bottom of the blog post you ask them if they’d like to receive regular updates from you via your newsletter.

So what is a newsletter?

A newsletter is a regular communication between you and your subscribers. It is content that’s being sent out via e-mail. It may include links to your blog posts, to other content on the internet as well as other valuable information for the subscriber. And of course you will also include occasional promotions, information about workshops you’re running or other deals.

Your subscribers are your VIP crowd

People who are happy to receive your e-mails in their inbox are essentially telling you “I like your stuff that much, that I want to hear from you regularly, so I don’t miss a future article or promotion”. So you really need to treat them like VIP: acknowledge them, treat them special (special discounts, presents etc)

Can I send my blog posts as newsletters?

Yes you can. Most Autoresponder services (I use Aweber) will let you send out your blog posts via e-mail broadcasts. Now I don’t recommend you send your list the whole blog post via e-mail. It’s too much text to read within the e-mail browser and your missing out on one of the main points of a newsletter: bring people back to your website. So if you decide to send your blog posts to your list I’d recommend you create a little intro or description and then a link to ‘read more’.

3 ways to get the most out of this article

1. Read about the '10 reasons why you should subscribe to my newsletter' !
2. Share this post with your LinkedIn network or any other Social Media channel. Sharing quality content increases your visibility and credibility, positions you as an expert & creates conversations & potentially new business leads.
3. Leave a comment or question below.

This post first appeared on my blog.

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Sarah Santacroce helps small business owners get clients online. She will teach you how to increase your online visibility so you can quit chasing clients and get found; how to tap into the power of social media to increase your leads; and how to understand and master the intricacies of Internet marketing. LinkedIn is her favorite platform & she helps businesses & entrepreneurs to use it in order to capitalize their growth. 

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Sarah's expertise and eagerness to share her knowledge with others have made her an in-demand expert and a sought-after presenter at numerous workshops and webinars. Sarah lives & works in beautiful Switzerland but works (in 3 languages) with people from all over the world.