3 Key Differences Between a Blog and a Newsletter

Many people fail to understand the difference between a blog and a newsletter, but depending on your goals, what you choose to optimize for is crucial.

Before we get started on the comparisons, there's one key similarity between the two - and that is access to an owned audience. With an email and blog, or other similar content distribution systems, you own the access to your audience. With paid media, however, you can only generate leads as long as you're willing to pay for it.

Now, why would you pay for ads when you can build credibility with your content and attract a high-affinity audience? Well, both require your time.

As for their differences, there are three primary points you want to look at:

Audience

As for a blog, your audience is restricted to anyone with access to the internet. On one hand, your website could have a hard time growing and just sit in one corner of the internet. On the other hand, open access could help you reach new people every day.

For newsletters, your audience is restricted to people on your email list. While growing your list can be rather effortful, it's usually a higher-affinity audience that wouldn't want to miss any of your content.

Growth

Regarding your blog, an increase in page views will be primarily driven through search engine optimization (SEO) and other funnels (social media). That's probably the biggest problem here - to host a popular blog, you'll need to learn the craft of SEO which isn't the easiest to crack.

However, with the growing stream of features - including referral programs - growth is getting a lot easier for a newsletter. Plus, an email in your audience's inbox now and then will keep you at the top of their mind.

But why would anyone write a blog, then?

Content

Most blog writers prioritize evergreen content and leverage a more narrative, personal tone. So, if you think that content strategy plays to your strengths, blogs might be more your style.

For newsletters, however, the content is generally more current and informative. Therefore, a newsletter is probably your best bet if you have a particular niche you like to write about and want to talk about trends.

To end with, here's my final advice:

• a high-affinity audience, structured growth, and informative content = newsletter

• a changing audience, the potential for virality, and personal content = blog

Take it with a grain of salt, because things are constantly changing and you can honestly experiment with both.

At the risk of making this post redundant, you can always host both a newsletter and a blog on beehiiv. The best part - our SEO-optimized blogs & native newsletter tools, including the referral program, make growth for both streams easier.

So you can focus on the content, and we'll handle the rest ;)