Blogging for business has attracted a lot to me and as I’m jumping in Blog Consultation for businesses, more I’m falling in love with blogging. In a recent post by Krishna De, he has suggested that Blogger, TypePad & WordPress.com are not at all good for a business blog and I second that!
When it comes to blogging for business, unfortunately most of the businesses don’t take it that seriously and just because someone told them that it’s nice to have a blog, they start a blog on these free alternatives as they don’t feel like it’s worth investing money over it or may be they are not sure that how easy it is to install WordPress on servers.
Well, either way I think businesses should be serious about blogging for their business as this can make or break their brand image and it is definitely possible with blogging. Blogging can help in improving the branding as this shows that you as a business owner are interested in communicating with the customers in public and that you are open to ideas more than your competitors.
Why will I not suggest blogger or free alternatives ?
1. You are not in control of your own data – I know I’m one of the avid supporter of SaaS over at CloudAve and in general too however when it comes to blogging and cases where Blogger had shut down few blogs over complaints and there have been cases when blogger and other services have completely got banned in China, India. Well, it’s just not these two countries there have been many cases like this. Would you like to see your business blog get hurt because of these reasons ?
2. WordPress is powerful than all free alternatives – Self hosted WordPress is way more powerful than all the other blog platforms and it has been blogged over and over and over again.
3. WordPress can be used to create your full website – If you already have a website for your business then it’s a different thing, however if you don’t then WordPress can act as a CMS and you can have a fully functional website along with the blog in one single wordpress installation.
4. Brand stays with you – If your own business website gets the traffic then you’ll be able to create a much better brand image rather than having a separate website for business and the blog is hosted on blogger at this URL – http://xyz.blogspot.com.
Well, it’s pretty easy to install and run a custom and self hosted WordPress and I’ll always suggest any business owner to give some time and have a strategy for business blogging and that one should refrain from those free hosted blog solutions.
And the company that can blog for business through blogger is Google. You know the reason why :p
While there’s little doubt that WP is better than Blogger (at least for techies who don’t mind upgrading their core software and plugins almost every month), a lot of points you made about Blogger can be easily fixed if one resorts to Blogger with Custom Domains (or FTP publishing) instead of the default blogspot thing.
As Amit correctly mentions, you can easily change the URL on Blogger (and WordPress) to a more business-minded one via premium domain purchasing. While I personally prefer a self-hosted WP blog, I can see the benefits of Blogger or WordPress.com to small businesses just starting out in blogging and wanting to get to grips with it first.
And remember, you can always import your blogs over to a self-hosted WP any time you feel like moving up. :)
@Chetan – heh! yah, just like Microsoft sticks to live blogs. If they won’t eat their own dog food, then I’m sure no one will.
@Amit – Well, I agree that lot of things are possible with custom domains or ftp publishing however, I still believe that if you have agreed (I believe too) that WP is better than blogger than it has to be better than that ;)
@Danny – Well, yeah for business owners wordpress.com or blogger are good as they don’t have to worry about setting things up and all that. However, don’t you think that setting up WordPress is one of the simplest things you have to do and for those it may be a daunting task, there are lot of guides available on the internet.
spelled business wrong in second paragraph :}