Where Should You Blog?

Usually one of the first questions that comes up after a company or individual decides to commit to publishing a blog is where that blog should live. We’re talking not only the look and feel (and web address) of the blog, but also the underlying platform.

There are lots of things to consider when starting up a blog, and some of them will help narrow down the choice of platform, such as whether the blog is tied to a business or an individual, and what your existing web presence is.

If you’re launching a blog for a company, the best answer from a technological standpoint is almost always to make the blog part of your main website. (We recently moved this blog onto our main site, and the traffic bump proved well worth the effort of moving sites!)

Where it’s not possible to integrate with your site or in situations where the blog will be primarily personal in nature, the options can seem limitless.

Here are a few options to consider for your blogging needs.

WordPress (self-hosted)

WordPress is an open source blogging-focused content management system (CMS). You download the software and install it on your own server. (Some hosting companies also provide one-click installation of WordPress and other CMS applications.) From a posting perspective, the software is easy to understand and to use. Making posts, formatting text, adding images and pretty much everything you’d want to do is easy, and for those places you stumble, there’s plenty of resources around the web for answers and plugins.

WordPress.com (free hosted, with paid upgrades)

This is essentially the same as the software you download, but hosted on the service’s servers instead of your own. Like the other hosted options below, you can get up and running in seconds, but unlike self-hosted WordPress, you don’t have complete control over the look, feel and function of the site. On the plus side, because it’s hosted, you don’t have to worry about applying updates or ensuring that the site stays in working order.

Tumblr

Perhaps the most social of the established blogging services, Tumblr’s defining feature is the idea of having different types of content (pictures, video, quotes, text). It is also built around social features, with liking and sharing (reblogging, in Tumblr parlance) built into the platform. The service is free, as are many of the themes that control the look and feel of your site. Unlike WordPress.com, you can customize your design pretty much to your heart’s content.

Blogger

This Google-owned service was pretty much the only game in town ten or so years ago, but has pretty much fallen out of fashion. (Fun fact, it was started by some of the same people who later founded Twitter.) The themes offered aren’t as diverse as some of the other platforms, but the tools work well and the service is reliable. In a lot of ways blogspot.com domain names have the same effect as putting a Hotmail email address on your resume (that is, it signals a certain level of personalness rather than professionalism), so keep that in mind.

Quora

Perhaps the latest entrant into this field is social Q&A site Quora, which recently launched the capability for anyone to post a blog post, replete with voting buttons, but lacking the other question and answer functions of the site. It’s not yet clear how well these will work, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. Hypothetically a blog hosted on Quora will give you access to a growing network of Quora users who might not otherwise find your site.

Services to keep an eye on

A few other services that have sprung up lately with the bite-sized goal of completely revolutionize the way we post and consume content on the web.  Medium was recently launched into beta by the same people who brought us Blogger and Twitter, and although posting articles is currently only open to beta testers, you can browse around to get an idea of the content (and collections) on the site. It’s unclear if it will ever open all the way up to the public, but that seems to be part of their plans. Svbtle is invitation-only and has an application process, so it will never be fully open to the public, but it has a similar approach to content as Medium (no comments, but you can “give kudos” to posts you like).

So, which one of these services do you use? Or, did I miss your favorite?