Find A Blogging Platform That Is Right For You: No Experience Needed

At this point if you are looking at this page, you may be wondering how to create a blog. On the other hand, how many of you are asking what the heck is a blog and how will it benefit me? I too was wondering about the blogging world before I jumped in.

Blogs can be helpful for many reasons such as linking your business to an online platform to gain a larger client base, it can serve as a daily journal, promoting a product or just for family to stop in and say “hi.” Some have thrown in the workforce towel and use blogging as a renewed way of making a living.

Learning how to operate a blog with useful content can lead to a long online presence. This is my review of how I, a person that is minimally tech savvy, created a blog.

I too have fumbled my way through starting a blog so I hope I can help you through choosing what works for you by using my own experiences. Deciding to start a blog is a great theoretical idea but now what. Two popular choices emerged repetitively when I conducted my own search. Blogger and Wordpress were two of the most popular responses. Both of the blog platforms offer a free service but with that free service it only offers minimal customization and does not offer web hosting. Web hosting is commonly used with most websites that want to draw traffic to them, however the downfall is they are not free. So to begin with it may be most feasible to look at a free service until you get the hang of it. That is unless the website or blog will serve as part of your start up costs and become part of a business plan.

Blogger is powered by Google and was my first choice to try. Google was a familiar platform and felt this would be pretty easy. I started my first blog as a way to get familiar with the actual design of Blogger.

Though I found it to be reasonable to find an alternate so I took the advice of others and found Wordpress. This blogging platform came highly recommended and felt since Blogger wasn’t too tough to set up then I would give Wordpress a try.

With no prior blogging experience but pretty familiar with the internet I thought how hard can this be? Still I was not match for today’s bloggers or the complexity of the internet. Once I was able to get past my unfamiliarity with the systems blogging was relatively easy. Just set up a page, input information, update as needed and leave it upon the blogging community and hopefully those on the web to search your information. If you are really proactive and wish to market a product or earn money through a blog then you will have to get out there and advertise your blog, which was not my intention.

Being successful with your blog requires a solid plan whether it is for business or personal. The blog needs to have a theme that will draw viewers.

Creating a social presence results in increased traffic. The best advice for drawing traffic toward your blog is to visit others blogs that are successful in your writing domain. Gather ideas about how you would like your site to appear to viewers. Essentially being recognized for your niche on Google is the overall goal. If your blog can rank in Google your traffic will undoubtedly improve. However, ranking on unpaid sites is truly difficult but if you are offering information on an underreported subject you may find success.

So now that my blog is set-up and running I will review my process and the final answer to the question, Blogger or WordPress?

Pros

• Free sign-up
• Cool logo
• Nice back-grounds

Cons

• Need to understand HTML coding
• Need to know how to use tags
• Not friendly for the newcomer
• Too many tabs that may confuse the placement of a blog
• Must set up the appearance of Blog manually
• Add a Blog or new Post (Confused of what to do?)
• Frustrating

Pros

• Free as well to sign-up
• Easy choice of backgrounds
• Easy to upload
• Page is automatically set up for you; no fuss
• Few clicks and voila, new post

Cons

• Had a little difficulty uploading picture(probably operator error)
• Have not found any others yet

When setting up your blog on the chosen domain there are some things to consider. Decide what type of information are you sharing. For me I have set up a professional blog, but still under a free version of Wordpress. Once I have perfected my blog I will transfer the contents to a paid version and transition into a website. Choosing between a free and paid version depends on your needs. It is recommended that to be completely professional purchasing a domain name is essential. Of course, this is not the focus of this article and thereby not completely addressed.

Setting up a blog will call for some very important content:

• What will you name the blog
• What is the use of the blog - personal or professional
• What information is relevant for the blog
• Will you introduce the owner of the blog (About me)
• Will you offer material on the blog - free links or Amazon
• Can viewers contact you
• Will you link to social media sites - FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc.
• Will viewers receive incentives or giveaways for viewing material
• Will you offer guest blogging on your site

The final conclusion whether you decide on Blogger or WordPress learning the specifics of the platform is a must. Beyond the personal setup frustrations marketing your blog leads to the success of the site. Blogging is used for countless reasons. One may decide to set up a blog for business marketing, personal journaling, keeping near family or posting your favorite recipes. Whatever the reason you decide to blog make the most of your site. There are free and paid options out there. Taking on a free site does not mean that the blog will be less successful it will just take longer to make an solid online presences.

For me, Wordpress was very easy to use and I had 3 posts up and going in about 10 minutes including the sign-up process. Tailoring the site to include tabs and other options takes work and time. Also the success is based on your own online presence and participation.

Wordpress is really blogging for the inexperienced.