After writing about the power of planning a promotional strategy for your blog, Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com asked me an interesting question:

In this article, you talk about ‘writing articles,’ but you don’t really distinguish between blog posts and email articles out to your list.

So when we are thinking about lead blogging, what’s the difference between and article and a blog post?

In lead blogging we always begin writing with a goal in mind. For readers who are not yet RSS or email subscribers, the goal needs to be to move them to subscribe. For readers who are already on our list, the goal is to convince them our recommendations are trustworthy.

Some people look at blog posts as more of a quick, often personal, note, mainly focused on building a relationship between the reader and the blogger; while they see articles as longer, more impersonal and focused mainly on conveying detailed information.

When I think of the two I don’t make much of a distinction: I use both blog posts and articles to accomplish the same goals: Either get readers to subscribe or build my credibility (or both.)

Often when I have an article that is longer, I will create a brief blog post with a portion of the article and then link to the longer article (or parts 2 and 3) via a PDF download. That’s simply because readers have trouble reading more than 500 or so words as a blog post.

One advantage to longer articles (400+ words) is that you can transfer them almost directly to EzineArticles.com which gives you greater exposure, search engine position and traffic. I do a quick edit to take out any personal references and blog links then submit them.

When it comes to my newsletter I simply link to the blog posts/articles I have already posted on my blog and put teasers in the mailout. It creates a surprisingly high number of click throughs and gets my readers conditioned to click on links I send them.

Popularity: 7% [?]