How Article Writing Differs from Blogs
Are you interested in article writing or creating contents for websites? Viva One Studio is here to help. Let’s start your journey by learning the differences between blogs and article writing.
These are the things we are going to cover:
- What is article writing?
- What is blog writing?
- Things in commons of article writing and blog writing
- The differences of article writng and blog writing
- Wrap Up
What is article writing?
Article is writing work that aims to give information about a certain topic. It usually provides in depth information and overall view for topics. Articles’ objective is to reach and educate a mass volume of people. Articles are published in both paper and digital formats.
What is blog writing?
Blog is a piece of writing that is more fun and informal compared to article writing. Blogs are written to convey opinions and personal experiences. It aims for a smaller audience and topics can be quite narrow. It does not offer much information.
Things in commons of article writing and blog writing
Before we look at the difference, let’s talk about what article and blog writing have in common.
Audience
The first thing that articles and blogs may share is the audience. As articles are being published more and more in the digital format, they reach and attract the same audience as blogs which are solely posted online. The audience of these two types of writing are online readers.
Self-publishing
The next aspect is the publishing process. Both online articles and blogs are self-publishing. It means that any writer can write and publish their work on their own without going through many steps in the publishing process.
Usually, if you want to publish something in print format or even some academic digital format, you need to work hard in contacting the publisher and many steps of editing that require lots of time and effort. Self-publishing is time saving, but it leaves room for errors since less people and less time are used to edit and proofread your works.
SEO: Search engine optimization
In the past, people might say that articles have nothing to do with SEO, however, articles have been used to boost the SEO ranking just like blogs these days. So both blogs and articles should consider SEO since they will affect the SEO as well.
Comments
Blogs are posted online and they will usually come with a comment section where the readers and writer can communicate with each other. Articles before did not have any tool that allowed readers to communicate with the writer and reader friends. But as digital articles are gaining popularity, article pages apply this comment section to get the conversation going as well.
And these are all the four similarities of article writing and blog writing.
The differences of article writing and blog writing
Where to Publish
As mentioned before, blogs’ only medium is the website, it is invented with the website. Actually, the word “blog” is from “web log”, which will further confirm that blogs belong online.
While the only place you can publish the blogs is on an online platform, articles have a long history with paper based publication. You can publish your articles in both paper and digital formats.
Content
Now, the biggest difference between article writing and blog writing is their content. Blog writers are sharing stories, their opinions, and their experience through the blogs. So there will be lots of personal opinions in blogs. Blogs might provide some facts, but they are mostly opinions.
Writing blogs does not require as much research and study on the topic, you could write in from what you know. But nowadays blogs can be written based on facts with opinion remarks as well. Also, the topics for blogs are quite specific and narrow, each blog usually talks about one specific topic.
On the other hand, articles’ purpose is to present the information, fact, or result of the research. So articles are there to inform and educate readers about each topic, it must not contain any personal opinion, it must be 100% facts. Articles are written based on research, study, or interview. While the topic of blogs are quite narrow, the topic of articles can be broader. Articles can even be an overview of each topic.
Language and Tone
As we all know now that blogs are less formal compared to the articles, so the language and tone that is used for blog writing can be less formal, more fun, and casual. It can even be at a conversational language level. When writing a blog, you do not need to be perfect nor flawless with grammar and spelling. You can use any kind of language that will convey your feelings, since the objective of the blogs is to tell your stories.
However, with article writing, you are writing more serious topics. The purpose of this type of writing is to inform. It is meant for many people to read and learn about a certain topic, so the language needs to be more formal, polite, and sound professional. You should never use slang and informal language when writing an article.
But, since digital articles these days are aimed for various types of audience, and companies want everyone, any age, any level of background knowledge to understand the content, articles posted online can be less formal in the aspect of language and tone. Some websites may use friendlier language to seem more approachable to the audience. But they since strictly focus on presenting facts not opinions.
Length
This one is the easiest difference to spot between blog and article writing. Blogs are normally shorter than articles. Blogs are not expected to be long at all, in fact, the average length of blogs is only around 300 to 600 words. However, there is no rule of how long the blogs should be, so it is depending on the topics and the writers.
While the blog’s average is around 300 words, the articles should not be shorter than 300 words. Since the articles are supposed to provide in-depth information about the topic, naturally, they cannot be shorter than 300 words. There is also no rule that indicates how long an article should be as well. The length of the articles should depend on the topics, just includes what needs to be included. The long length of the articles are from how they need to cover and give an overview of the topic.
SEO keywords
The last differences between digital article writing and blog writing is the necessity of the SEO keywords. Search engine optimization is important for every digital content especially blogs since it helps your work reach more people. Blogs should use focus keywords and follow SEO writing guidelines in order to score and rank well in search engines since most companies use blogs as a tool to climb up the rankings, reach more audience, and get more traffic to your website.
While originally, articles do not need SEO keywords. Since it was not meant to be used as a SEO tool. However, since the articles are published widely online now, the publishers have seen the importance of reaching more audiences and ranking well in search engines’ result pages. Which is why the SEO keywords are used for attracting more traffic to the articles these days.
Wrap Up
Now that you know the difference between article writing and blog writing, we hope you can make better content that will help you accomplish your goals of writing and digital publishing. Don’t forget to consider the purpose of each type of writing while working on it. Most importantly, keep in mind that whatever you are writing, the quality of the content is the essence of the writing piece. Without good content, your work will not be received well.