Tim Bossie.com

As Apollo Creed so eloquently put it… “ding, ding.”

I feel there is a storm a brewing and a fight that will change the way people market, and write, on the web. This might sound a little crazy considering I am a certified addict to blogging. I run several of them on a myriad of different subjects. I even ghost write on several more blogs. Blogging is great.

With that said, I do feel that “blogging” is poised to radically change the way that people market their products and services on the internet. (Eventually social media platforms like Twitter and Pownce will again alter the way things are done online.)

Writing and online advertising is changing.

What do I mean when I say blogging will change the way people advertise and write on the web? Basically it means that more and more people are relying on the writing that they do on their blogs to do their marketing for them. And the difference in writing is markedly different.

Article marketing has been a very strong way to get targeted traffic to your website for little, to no, cost. Websites like ideamarketers.com, ezinearticles.com, and goarticles.com have been the places to go to find pretty good content for your website and/or newsletter. It was also a way for people to market their own brand through their writing.

That’s the key word… writing.

I have forever been saying that the way to get more people excited about your website is to provide great information that speaks for you and what you/your website can bring to the person reading it. I stand behind that as I see it working all the time.

But, the writing on blog posts just isn’t the same as the writing in an article. I’m not condemning blogging as a form of writing or a form of advertising. But, should it be the only one?

Are blog posts articles?

Kinda sorta.

Blog posts are, and should be, short snippets of information that drop information in bite sized portions. That’s the intention. (Yeah, my posts can get long sometimes) What I see is more and more bloggers are putting all their efforts into writing on just their blog and calling it an article. But is it really an article?

Articles should be pieces of information that contains a lot of info about a particular, focused topic in a condensed form. Meaning all the fluff has been taken out and the meat remains. For instance, I was just hired to write 1000 articles on several different topics. Each article is to be about 300 to 400 words in length. But the topics are very keyword specific and I can cram a lot of info into each. I won’t be putting my own opinions or any off-handed, or off-colored remarks into the body of it. Just information that people can read quickly and get the info they want instead of my personal biases or, in a lot of cases now, filthy mouth.

Blog posts are personal in nature. That’s the beauty of them. They show you for who you really are. Your own writing style in a laid back, come as you are style. You don’t need to really follow any set writing rules (except maybe capital letters and punctuation) and you can pretty much say whatever you want.

Articles need to follow grammatical rules. An example would be a recent blog I stumbled across. No capital letters, no paragraphs, run on sentences galore, swearing, and a ton of misspellings. Did it bother me? No because I knew it was a blog and I was there because I wanted to be. But, I won’t read over an article if it’s like that. I won’t even visit the author’s website if the article is loaded with mistakes.

So, what’s the big deal?

The way I see it, and I could be wrong (I just won’t admit it), is that as more and more people see blogging as a great way to both write and get search engine rankings (pretty quickly) that they will give up on other forms of advertising and even worse than that not work on their writing skills.

Why put so much effort in crafting an article when I can just throw up a blog post and not think about correct grammar? Yes, an argument could be made that there are a lot of bloggers who follow correct writing form and have meticulous spelling. But, they are the ones who are also following other forms of writing and keep their skills in check instead of letting them go for an easier (seemingly easier) way.

Maybe I’m way off. Maybe nobody has even thought of this yet. Maybe it’s not something to be concerned about.

What do you think? Is your blog the only advertising you do? Is it the only website you have? Do you have static sites with articles for content? Do you send people to your blog? To your website? Or both?