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Nothing is ever black and white, but for the most part I think every blog can be broken down into education, entertainment, or both. Educational blogs teach you something that you can use later in a practical way. Entertainment blogs usually just invoke an emotion; they make you happy, sad, angry, or a combination of emotions depending on the content. Many blogs provide a healthy combination of these two methods. So which is the best strategy to use: education or entertainment?

Entertainment blogs (or individual posts) are typically very easy to market. People like being entertained, and it’s fairly easy to do. If you make a wise crack at a group or figure that the majority of your demographic dislikes you’re likely to gain instant praise. Post a video of somebody falling down and you’re likely to get a ton of backlinks (who doesn’t like seeing someone fall down?). Entertainment posts also become viral very easily. If you succeed in entertaining your audience they’ll reward you by spamming their friends to go see the same thing. YouTube is a perfect example of this. All of the top YouTube videos are entertainment videos. Sure there are some educational ones high on the list, but the majority of them are funny, weird, or extreme. People like being entertained.

Educational posts have their benefits as well. If you have a solid blog filled to the brim with hardy information then people will be persuaded to revisit it. Posts such as these also win over respect from fellow bloggers in your respective industry. This adds to your reputation (which means a hell of a lot online) and will more often than not give you some sexy backlinks as well. The main downfall of educational blogs is that not only do you have to target people who want to be educated, which is a far smaller number than that of people who just want to be entertained, but you then have to succeed in educating them - giving them something new, everytime. It’s much easier to entertain than to educate.

Which is a More Successful Strategy?

As with just about everything in life the best method is to use a healthy mix of both educational and entertaining posts in your blog. With this blog I try to squeeze in the random cheap laugh in between my long, thought-out posts. Check out my Top 10 Worst Internet Marketing Videos Ever post, or 8 Reasons Why the Masses Love Lists. Both of those stories were Dugg and received a huge amount of traffic, but by being surrounded by educational posts, I believe I was able to retain more repeat visitors than I would if I had only entertained.

There are some industries where entertainment alone works. Just check out Perez Hilton, the top celebrity banter blog on the net. This guy makes a living doing nothing more than gossiping about celebrities. There’s little education to be found in that, yet his blog is ranked in the Top 50 Technorati. That’s a feat.

Know Your Audience

What it all boils down to is knowing your audience. If you’re targeting a bunch of gossip-hungry teenagers then you can probably get by just giving them the garbage they need to feed on day in and day out. If you’re competing against a bunch of online business experts, you probably need to provide a bit more than a “Who’s Sexier: Shoemoney or John Chow” post. Although now that I think about it that may be a good writeup. But I digress.

At the end of the day you just need to do some trial and error. You can research until you’re blue in the face about what should work, what won’t work, etc. But it will come down to what you find out personally works the best for your blog and your niche. For most blogs, however, it will be best to mix education and entertainment to keep your audience interested and happy.

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