Last week, I asked a question on LinkedIn to small businesses that blog regarding their choice in blogging platforms and their reasons why they chose them. I’ll share a number of the insightful reasons small business owners have shared regarding their choice in a blogging platform.
In the interest of full disclosure, here was the question that I asked:
Small Business Bloggers: What is your favorite blogging software (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, etc.) and Why?
I’d like to know what blog software is your favorite, considering ease of use, publishing management, speed and overall value/ROI. Share your experience, why you like it and your blog.
I received 18 answers, which to me was a lot compared to prior attempts at asking an engaging question to the professional community. WordPress (self-hosted) was the majority winner, but folks did also appreciate the Blogger platform, too.
Here are some excerpts of answers I received:
Craig Stoltz (2ohreally) said:
WordPress is a good mix of ease-of-use and flexible (i.e., adding on some good basic features), though the metrics are lousy on the hosted platform. Many good third-party templates available.
Eddy Chu (Business Blue) said:
Put a test on blogging, don’t want to admin too much: Blogger
Fully feature blog, you have backgound of IT system: WordPress
Todd Cabral (The Science of Marketing) said:
WordPress is where it’s at. Easy to use, VERY customizable, and search engine ready, it’s the defacto standard for individuals and companies alike.
Ja War (Make Money Goldmine) said:
I like blogger, it is easy to integrate widgets and monetize my blogs using google adsense.
And there were a handful of responses, too. Thanks to everyone that participated in answering this question.
Personally, I’ve only used Blogger and WordPress. I find WordPress the most veratile because it supports tons of third-party plugins and there is a wide variety of plugins that bloggers can utilize to add additional value to their readers and themselves. Blogger is great to get blogging right away without any configuration hassles. Hosted blogs on WordPress.com or Blogspot.com are generally much more reliable because they can survive being Dugg or Slashdotted because they are designed for scalability.
I find that WordPress makes sense for small business because it can be molded around their needs and supports multiple authors if desired. WordPress also makes it incredibly easy for a small business to self-host it and install it on top of their existing Web servers.
Of course, there are other options for Small Biz bloggers to choose from: TypePad, Wordframe, GrafittiCMS and a number of additional blogging platforms.
