Blogs and newsletters both allow you to communicate effectively with your customers, prospects and leads. An effective communication strategy often incorporates using tools such as newsletter software. Your communication strategy is part of your marketing strategy to attract, nurture, and convert leads.
Newsletters are more periodic, around once a week or month, while blog posts are more regular, i.e., a few times each week. However, the fundamental difference between a newsletter and a blog comes down to two descriptive words; push and pull.
A newsletter falls into the push category since you have to “push” it to your audience. On the other hand, a blog falls into the pull category since you must “pull” your audience towards it, or they must find it on their own.
When Should You Use a Blog?
A blog lives forever on your website unless you delete it or stop paying for hosting services. Blogs can be seen by anyone, and therefore, they are quite useful when it comes to educating prospects and customers about your products and services as you move them through your sales funnels.
- Blogs are especially useful when it comes to positioning yourself as an industry expert. A blog covers a single topic, often exhaustively, allowing you to share helpful knowledge and positioning yourself as an industry authority.
- The most important distinction between a blog and a newsletter is the communication aspect. Unlike newsletters which are highly personalized for a specific audience, blogs tend to be more general or public. Blogs may have a target audience but it’s often larger or wider as compared to newsletters.
- Blogs are more shareable, and they encourage engagement (likes, comments, discussions) since they are generally not overly promotional which can be off-putting or turn off the audience. If a blog answers a query and provides helpful information, a reader is likely to share it on social media. A single blog post can have a snowballing effect and reach thousands of prospects.
- Blog posts are a crucial component of both a social media strategy and an SEO strategy. They can improve your visibility across the web your search engine rankings and increase the total number of leads you get.
When Should You Use a Newsletter and Newsletter Software?
Newsletters tend to be more company-centric and can cover a range of topics revolving around one theme. They can include company news, promotional content, or a business showcasing its products and services. Therefore, they provide valuable information to your audience while directing them to your website.
Newsletters are more personalized than blogs and you can create different newsletter content for different target audiences, especially when using newsletter software. However, they don’t usually feature in-depth coverage of topics and mostly feature snippets and news-like summaries.
While newsletters are generally hardworking lead-generating tools, they will hardly contribute to your SEO strategy. They aren’t indexed by Google unless you save them on your website.
One of the best approaches to newsletters is to use them to share a collation of selected blog posts around a specific topic. In this case, your newsletter serves as a preview of your blog posts as well as blog posts from other experts around a theme or topic. This will turn you into a hub of knowledge which can be a powerful lead magnet.
Newsletter Software
Newsletters keep your subscribers and contacts engaged with your business. They are powerful lead magnets and essential components of email marketing and the overall digital marketing strategy. However, creating newsletters can be a lot of hard work. Newsletter software can make the process of creating and distributing your newsletters more efficient.
There is several newsletter software for windows, macOS, and other platforms now available in the market, you’ll want to identify which one best matches your marketing goals. This is because newsletters differ in terms of how far they can go along your customer buying journey.
The right newsletter software can help you design, analyse, distribute, and ensure your email newsletters are optimized for your marketing goals. Therefore, it isn’t about identifying the best newsletter software in the market but rather identifying the best one for your particular use case.
Conclusion
Blogs and newsletters are two of the most common ways to get the news about your business to your audience and educate them about your products and services. They are powerful digital marketing tools that add value to a content marketing strategy since they both help you build email lists and leads. While you may opt to use one or the other depending on your digital marketing goals, we recommend using both so you can have a more dynamic and effective content marketing strategy.
