What is the difference between managing a blog and a forum?

[harrygreen90]

Can someone tell me what is the difference between managing a blog and a forum? They look the same to me.

Which one is more advantages to get traffic and rankings on search engines?

What do you guy think?

 

[Hawker]

Hmmm blogs and forums are two completely different things and hardly ever look the same.

Blogs and forums are the same in that they list recent topics or posts in chronological order and have different categories in which posts or threads go in to.

But a blog is more of just a platform to publish content on, articles etc etc. Example WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr etc.

Where as a forum is a platform where discussions can take place and you have your own account/profile and features that come with it like private messaging, avatar, signature etc.

Of course, discussion can take place on a blog in the comments section for those blogs that have comments/commenting enabled.

But with a blog, it's not the same as a forum because with a forum you get your own profile, post count, forum abilities, private messaging etc.

Forums are for communities, a place where people can come together and discuss things together.

But a blog not really for a community, its just for writing, publishing articles, posts etc.

Some forums, such a this one, provide a blog as well though. Example http://www.webmastersun.com/blog.php

Neither are more advantageous than the other, both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Blogs generally let you post more content and you can post what you like if it's your own blog.

Some blogs are very SEO friendly and have features that search engines like such as RSS feed, Sitemap etc.

But then, these days you can get all of that with a good forum platform such as VBulletin etc anyway.

Hope this helps!

 

[Ron Killian]

The big difference between a blog and a forum is that a forum can take ALOT more of your time to manage. Sadly forums are magnets for spammers, and many people are on forums just to get something, and not to be a part of the community.

So you can spend SO much time weeding out the bad posters, deleting junk posts, those who break the rules. It can be a never ending 24/7 job. Then you need to make sure every one is getting along.

With a blog, the only bad folks you will have to deal with are those who spam comments, and most of them can be weeded out automatically with a good comments plugin.

And as Hawker said, with your own blog you can post what you want, with a forum it's going to be more limited. Your own blog will give you more freedom.

 

[jaymish]

I would go for a forum, as a means of attracting traffic. A forum, in my opinion, is also easier to manage. All you need to do is come up with topics that are interesting. You also need to make it the place to find information on a particular matter. Once you do this and you attract participants, you will be able to use it for advertising to your heart's contentment, provided you don't make it obvious.

Setting up a blog is easier but managing a blog is harder. There so many blogs how do you attract people to yours ? Have you read blogs on the Huffington Post, the Newyork Times and the Washington Post? Think you can complete? Think you can match the quality and interest? If not why should someone visit your blog? Unless you're giving out Bitcoins!

 

[Hazelting]

In blogs, there are articles that a person will read. So, the owner of the blogs will spend time in writing articles for a specific topic. Then, these articles are published. Then the reader is given a chance to post his comments. While in the forum, the owner starts a certain topic. People may post as they share their ideas as sort of discussion related to that topic.

 

[24x7serverman]

As stated previously, main drawback will be the spammers who used to register using the registration request. You will need to remove all the requests which are looking like spammers. So security is the main aspect while starting the forum. You will need to check and define the all security rules for your forum.

Without user registration, there is no point to start the forum. So if you are continuously monitoring your forum then it will be good go.

On blog, you will get the high traffic if you will post the best and unique contents. There will be no option for user registration but commenting section is the part which you will need to monitor on the blog. You should have the field validation in the blog commenting section to avoid the spam commenting, else you will have too much spams.

You won't have any limitation in the blog commenting but in the forum there will be limitations of posting.

 

[javascriptrules27]

In blogs, the posts are the highlights. It is focused mostly on the content and often detailed like news and updates straight from the author. In forums, discussions are the main interest of the users. Most of the time forums are more interactive and you can get more opinions on a certain topic comparing to blogs which come only from one perspective. That is why forums have higher probability to grow than blogs because of involvement of many users per topic.

 

[gkcm]

Managing a blog is done by writing articles about certain topic while managing a forum is done by posting a topic where others can comment on. Blogs are more of a subjective expression of certain ideas that can be validated by citations, reviews, surveys, pictures, or even merely by the bloggers themselves. Forums are very direct to the point with open line for others' opinions.

 

[Nancy G]

Both blog and forum are meant to drive visitors to the website, draw sales leads and optimize search engine ranking. The difference is in the approach or methodology.

Blogs are made managed by an individual or company. Its main intention is to make their sites more interesting / appealing to the target market. Quality of content is very important and techniques like keywords, tags or backlinks are used mainly to improve SEO. There is normally a comment box where visitors are allowed to provide feedback but author or publisher is not required to react but can use reactions constructively as a gauge for know the market better and for improvement purposes.

Forum is like a community gathering where members are free to post their opinions and problems based on a centralized theme normally pertaining to an industry, specific company, etc. Joining means signing up as a member first and your write-ups or questions need to be approved first for posting. Forum is normally managed by an adminstrator and moderators. Some companies use this for customer service or technical support.