The questions arising from that question is: In what way is a blog better than Facebook? – And vice-versa.

First, let’s brainstorm: -

Let’s make lists of:

a) Similarities between a blog and Facebook.

b) Glaring differences between a blog and Facebook.

Begin Operation.

List A: 5 Similarities Between a Blog and Facebook: -

1. Both are controlled to some extent by the author. (A self-hosted blog is generally fully-autonomous – and you can basically do what you like with it, provided that you continue to pay for your own domain-name and associated hosting. – A hosted blog, however, is partially-restricted as to what content you can add to it. Therefore I would say that a hosted-blog, such as Blogger or Windows Live Spaces, bears a closer similarity to Facebook than a self-hosted-blog such as, for example, the blog you’re reading now.)
2. Both act as a platform for the account-holder or owner to socially interact with online visitors.
3. Both can be used, to some extent, as an advertising medium. (A self-hosted blog can be used to any extent its owner wishes, within reason, as an advertising platform; whereas a hosted-blog and Facebook can only be utilised in this way to a limited extent.)
4. Both require the account/owner to compete for traffic to some extent.
5. Both can direct traffic into a marketers’ sales-funnel(s) and assist in generating an online income-source.

List B: 5 Glaring Differences Between a Blog and Facebook.

1. Facebook always has the same main title on every page: Facebook. Any personal information, such as account-holders’ name, is always a sub-title. A blog’s main title is always exactly what the writer wants it to be.
2. There is limited space for a single entry on Facebook, whereas on a blog the author can virtually use as much space as they desire for writing any given entry.
3. A blog normally is targeted at a particular niche or niche-market, whereas a Facebook account is generally targeted at family, friends, and acquaintances.
4. A blog, even a hosted blog, is far less subject to changes in format and layout than a Facebook account, thus causing less confusion to the reader.
5. Facebook is a much better-known commodity than all but the most popular high-traffic blogs.

OK – So having now established those facts, we return to the question at hand: In what way is a blog better than Facebook? – And vice-versa.

I don’t like this argument, in all honesty: Trying to make a blog compete against Facebook is like trying to make a textbook compete against the village notice board – or make chalk compete with cheese. – It just doesn’t work.

… But returning to our lists of 5 similarities and 5 glaring differences; we can come up with some ideas for making Facebook work in tandem with a blog.

As account/blog owner we have control over the content that we display on both our blog and our Facebook account. Although both a blog and our Facebook accounts allow us to socially interact online, we have more control over our blog because we can post larger amounts of content to them and we can influence the layout, theme, and the niche catered for in regard to our blog to a much greater extent than we can with our Facebook accounts.

- So it would seem, from the above paragraph, that there is far more versatility with respect to a blog than there is with regard to a Facebook account. – But there is, nevertheless, one bigger advantage to a Facebook account, in fact any social-networking account – and that advantage is traffic. – Now whether you have 10 friends, 100 friends, 1000 friends, or more; your Facebook page is far more likely to be noticed (Provided that you allow it to be noticeable.) by a lot more people than your blog is. This also applies to your page on any major social-network; Twitter, Plurk, Windows Live, bebo, whatever. Yes you may only have a limited number of friends on Facebook, but you don’t think that your friends, your dedicated followers, are the only people looking at your publicly-visible page do you?

People are nosey and curious. – Fact: -

Put anything personal on the internet and everybody makes it their business. Dish out a few personal titbits, combined with lots of links to other “of interest” sites and stories, then inject a smidgen of the links that you want to promote, (By promote I mean encourage people to visit links personal to yourself for whatever reason, not purely commercial necessarily.) and you have a delicious cocktail of subjects for the average browsing internet-user to get their teeth into. – And they won’t avoid clicking in the knowledge that anything from you is always a link that advertises something that you want them to commercially interact with. ( – Which is a roundabout way, in most cases, of saying the word “BUY”. )

– Now it’s given that you definitely do not want everybody on the internet knowing all your business, no matter who you are. – But you don’t have to put all your personal business on the internet anyway. – In fact I have a motto which I generally adhere to as a rule: -

“Never send anything to the cloud (online) that you never want anyone else to know.”

- I mean, this IS the internet we’re on about here, right, and, as we all know, nothing online is totally 100 per-cent secure. – So in short; if you want to keep a secret then don’t ever put it anywhere online, unless you want to run a risk- however small- of it getting out. – Otherwise, if it’s not classified sensitive, share it: After all; a problem shared is a problem halved, so they say.

Now let’s not go too far off the beaten track here: We can use our Facebook pages; in fact any social-networking pages, as outposts for our blog. – After all we want people to come visit our blog yes? – WTF is the point of having a blog if nobody ever visits it? – So we use our social-networking pages to invite people to visit our blog… But remember these are SOCIAL-networks, not commercial-networks. – You wouldn’t go to a party and advertise your latest promotion would you? – You’d get kicked out, beaten up, shunned, or all three.

*News: ‘spam social media and you’ll get much the same. Remember there’s a very thin line between advertising and spamming; and social-networks are where the thin line gets rather blurry. Keep it real; you’re there to socialise. When you get to know people through socialising; invite them to drop by your blog – your home on the internet.

Just to recap then: A blog isn’t in competition with social-media. If your blog IS in competition with social media then you have a problem. A blog, any blog, should be working in tandem with social-media; utilising social media sites as social-outposts which draw traffic in to your blog, which is at the centre of your online-world.

- So which is better? – A blog? – Or Facebook?

Answer: Both. –