The initial step of making a blog incorporates picking a blogging platform. A blogging platform is a product you use to make a blog and distribute content. It is a kind of substance administration framework (CMS). Different blogging platforms are accessible online which offer an arrangement of blogging instruments and administrations giving all that you have to set up and run a blog. A platform can be free or paid.
WordPress
More than 15 million sites on the internet use WordPress, which is relatively 30% of all sites around the world, making WordPress the most prevalent CMS platform. There are more than 76 million wordpress.com websites.
The principal two purposes behind such an immense WordPress prevalence is this is an easy to use and search engine well disposed platform. This implies you needn’t bother with much involvement in coding or website architecture to make a WordPress blog. Additionally, the platform bolsters a great deal of modules and expansions to enhance the blog much more and include highlights that are not a piece of the center platform. Accordingly, web search tools think that its simple to file such a site and present them to their clients as a reaction to a hunt question.
On the off chance that you are occupied with exploring WordPress as a platform, you will have two alternatives to look over: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The platform is the equivalent in the two cases, however these speak to two distinct answers for bloggers.
WordPress.org
With this choice, you will be hosting your own site or a blog. By visiting WordPress.org, you download the free programming which should be introduced on your web server. After this, you will have the capacity to set up and modify your blog.
This solution is a good choice if you want to have more control over your blog and adaptability with regards to blog plan and advancement. Notwithstanding, this accompanies an additional expense of blog facilitating. You will also require specialized know-how to introduce this blogging platform on the server. Despite the fact that this isn’t excessively entangled, regardless it can be a lot for somebody who has no involvement with it.
WordPress.com
In the event that you need a blog without dealing with facilitating and web server installation, you will utilize the WordPress.com choice. To make this blog, you will visit the homepage of WordPress.com and enlist for a record, which will take two or three minutes.
The pros of using this blogging platform incorporate a free and very clear setup, which is ideal for apprentices. The platform likewise offers a few paid redesigns, for example, area enlistment, however on the whole, this choice gives considerably less capacity to tweak and control the platform.
Choosing between these two depends on the goals you have with blogging.
If you have a personal blog, the free choice without your own facilitating can be sufficient to enable you to exchange your vision to a blog. All things considered, you must know that this choice accompanies heaps of impediments. If your plan is blogging for business, acquiring cash through blogging and extending your blog, you should utilize WordPress.org from the begin.
Reasons why bloggers choose
Some of the reasons why bloggers choose the WordPress platform (both .com and .org) include the following:
- The platform installation, management, and optimization do not require a lot of technical skills
- It integrates well with social networks and other platforms such as marketing automation software, email marketing software, e-commerce website, etc.
- There are lots of plugins to optimize the blog and upgrade its features
- The platform is intuitive and easy to get used to
- It is known to be a very secure platform
- Numerous options for customization and plenty of templates are available
- There is a strong online community which is great for getting help and support
As an open source platform, WordPress is always refreshed which fixes potential bugs and presents better than ever includes.
Blogger
This is another prominent blogging platform. It is facilitated by Google and allows creating blogs with blogspot.com utilized as a piece of the domain name. A custom area can also be enlisted to expel the blogspot.com from the name and Google permits this for nothing. To make the blog utilizing this platform, you will require a Google account.
Features
A chance to make a blog for nothing and to effortlessly set up the blog are regular purposes behind picking this blogging platform. In any case, this arrangement offers less alternatives for customization with barely any blog layouts to browse. Blogger provides some of the following features:
- Adding area to posts through geotagging options
- Country-particular augmentation in the URL
- Blog is facilitated on Google servers, which are considered as extremely solid
- Drag-and-drop templates altering interface
- It bolsters Google’s AdSense benefit empowering bloggers to create income from blogging
- It can be effectively incorporated with Google+ empowering client commitment
- Mobile application is accessible for blog administration
- Blog depiction is restricted to 500 characters (HTML markup isn’t bolstered)
- Individual blog pages are constrained to 1MB
- Blogger Product Forum offers online help
By and large, this blogging platform is utilized by learners and the individuals who consider blogging as a hobby. Various limitations and poor customization choices are the principle reasons why experts and eager bloggers, and in addition organizations, look for a more adaptable and upgradable solution.
Tumblr
Here is another easy-to-use blogging arrangement which accompanies no extra month to month costs. The platform itself is structured as a small scale blogging platform which includes short-frame blog articles, cites, pictures, and so forth. The chance to pursue different websites and get devotees gives that social flair, hence expanding the commitment level. In December 2017, Tumblr reports having more than 381 million online journals.
When you register to the platform, you get a subdomain of tumblr.com. It is possible to expel this and utilize your very own domain name, yet you should enlist the area name utilizing another online service.
Highlights for choosing Tumblr:
- Great interaction with Twitter and Facebook, so you can automatically republish on Tumblr or vice versa
- It is one of the fastest growing blogging platforms
- Plenty of opportunities for blog customization including a possibility for HTML editing
- Email or text publishing system allowing you to post quickly and easy
- Live feed shows recent blog posts of the users you follow which increases engagement and content visibility
- Tagging content increases the opportunity to get discovered
- Intuitive dashboard which is easy to figure out and use
Tumblr speaks to a prevalent blogging arrangement, yet it surely isn’t for everyone. Some incredible companies have situated themselves profoundly with Tumblr blog, utilizing its social angle specifically, yet fundamentally, this platform is for the most part utilized for individual web journals or imaginative web journals to showcase work online.
LinkedIn Blogging
The option to publish blog articles on LinkedIn opened up with LinkedIn Pulse, yet as of the finish of 2015, Pulse never again exists as a different platform. Rather, its core features and functionalities are coordinated into the LinkedIn platform empowering articles and stories to be available straightforwardly from the news source of a LinkedIn account.
To begin blogging on LinkedIn, all you require is a content idea, and to think how to shape this into an article people will peruse. Additionally, you will require a LinkedIn account.
You are truly a single tick far from getting your blog content distributed, and that is one of the principle purposes behind picking such an approach to blog. Different highlights of utilizing the LinkedIn platform for blogging are:
- Huge user base which is your potential audience
- Possibility to reach online users without any direct promotion from your end with social network visibility
- An opportunity to gain influence as a professional on the platform through valuable content
- Enrich your online portfolio with content publicly available on the network
- Extremely beginner-friendly
Drawbacks
In any case, blogging on LinkedIn has a lot of drawbacks. Beginning from the restricted control of the platform to failure to gather perusers’ email addresses, and no direct SEO benefits, it implies that you should say something whether LinkedIn can be a platform that will mean your blogging endeavors and help you with achieving your goals.
Medium
Medium is another free blogging platform empowering individuals to begin blogging almost instantly. Everything necessary is to make a record and begin composing. The platform has a stunning import device, supporting diverse substance designs, simple consideration of visual substance and a lot of organizing choices. The majority of this empowers you to make extremely proficient looking substance and start gaining readers through the platform.
Some of the reasons why people choose Medium for blogging include:
- An enormous base of followers
- It interfaces with your Facebook and Twitter account helping you discover associations from other social networks
- This also assists with expanding the quantity of social adherents
- Strong social perspective with highlights, for example, pursue the writer, bookmark the article, applaud to indicate you like a story, and so on.
- Engagement measurements for the articles
- Quite a clear platform with many organizing choices and moment mix of visual substance through a URL
Despite lots of the benefits, like LinkedIn Pulse, Medium is a third-party platform, which means far less control and possibilities for blog customization.
Choosing a Platform
As should be obvious here, the primary choice you should make when you choose to begin blogging, is identified with the decision of the platform you will utilize.
No costs and easy setup
Then again, there are online platforms like Medium, that give all that one needs to begin blogging immediately. The main advantage of such platforms is this social perspective which encourages you increment your span. When you distribute content through this platform, you quickly get a group of people. Despite the fact that this crowd may be restricted, it is more than you would have when beginning blogging freely.
Be that as it may, while blogging for business or chipping away at brand promotion, these platforms can before long end up being excessively limiting. This implies the decision of which platform to utilize ought to be founded on the sort of blog you need to make. Consider your blogging goals, plans for the future and the road map you want to follow.
At last, notice that no standard states should have just a single blog. You could begin different sites on a few unique platforms and investigate how every one of them adds to accomplishing your objectives. This empowers you to experiment with the platforms direct, and investigate the advantages they can potentially bring.
Control and flexibility
On one side there are platforms like WordPress.org, where you deal with the blog management and customization. You fundamentally have your very own CMS platform from which you make a blog. Elective CMS platforms that could also be utilized for blogging incorporate Drupal, Joomla, and so forth.
You will need to create a promotional strategy to spread your blog content and achieve online perusers. Not at all like utilizing outsider blogging platforms, dealing with your own CMS implies that you won’t approach an online network which could in a flash help you with getting guests to your blog. In any case, when you get guests to your blog, you will have a chance to change over those guests and gather their email addresses through your own blogging platform.
Platforms like these, which offer more control, are usually an ideal choice if you are blogging for business. They give you more flexibility and more possibility to convert your visitors, into becoming subscribers or clients.