Choosing the right Blogging platform
This is a modern age, the age of online communication – in order to reach out to people, you need to present yourself to the online communities. Starting a blog is your best option for sharing your ideas with the world. The web is an inexhaustible source of information available for all people who access it and it has become the power that fuels all other mass media – people with shared interests are constantly researching, shopping, connecting and discussing ideas. With the rise of technology and the appearance of mobile devices which offer quick internet access, the number of people who are actively on the web has exponentially grown over the past few years.
So, if you are looking forward to being heard of out there, you need to start blogging. Keep in mind that besides the relaxation of the mind when you pour out all the ideas from your mind and remove the burden from your shoulders, blogging is a hard job. It takes time, engagement, punctuality and in some cases even nerves of steel. You cannot expect to burst out in rage for every bad comment or negative feedback you come across your blog post. The blogosphere will eat you, chew you up and spit you out in a day, and you will remain never to be heard of again. The key is in consistency.
So, how can you start a blog?
There are numerous blogging platforms which you can use to start a blog. For example, there are open blogging platforms such are Medium, Svbtle and Kinja, which you can employ and start blogging fast. However, these platforms are universal for all users and you do not have the option to design your blog to present your true colors. Visual design that embosses your content is what will keep people’s attention on your blog and vice versa. So, here are a few blogging platforms you can take in consideration for starters:
Blogger
This is a pure blogging platform launched by Google in 2006. By creating a Google Account, you gain access to Blogger, amongst other Google products such as YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive. This is great for any fast publishing bloggers, being that you can write down your ideas, save them on your Google Drive and access them anytime you like with your Gmail. The setup process and design is easy and it requires very little HTML knowledge (basically, typography codes). Being that it is a Google product, blogs created on this platform are friendly and optimized for web crawlers and thus have better visibility in the search engines.
IM Creator
This is a fast and easy solution for creating a whole website in a matter of minutes. The main difference between blogging platforms, such as the ones mentioned above, is that they depend on platform automation and they feed off their domain authority (this comes from extensions such as “.kinja”, “.blogspot”, “.svbtle”, etc.) thus giving you mixed signals when you try to track them with the analytic tools. Analytics is an essential factor when it comes to blogging – by knowing where your audience comes from and what content are they interested in, you can mold and adapt your content for them and increase organic traffic to your website. This is why IM creator is great for beginners – you can create a whole website, with multiple pages, functionalities, blog posts, all by drag-and-drop method, where you put elements on “the canvas”. There are a great number of predefined and customizable templates you can choose from.
WordPress
WordPress is by far the most popular website platform in the world. This content management system fuels almost a quarter of the whole web. There are 75 million websites created on its platform. However, setting up a blog on WordPress isn’t that easy. It requires intermediate/advance knowledge of coding in order to cover its functionalities and regular maintenance. For more advanced users, it is easy to work with, but it still presents a larger investment and it is not recommended to head rush with it.
So, reconsider again – are you thinking of doing blogging as a hobby, a life call, or for business – which platform will be your choice?