Welcome to Part 2 of my blogging platform series. In Part 1, we went over some crucial factors when finding the right blogging platform. I believe when you have the right blogging interface, it’s just much easier to start your business and start building momentum. People often spend weeks designing their website and by the time they publish their 1st content, it’s been months. Along the way, they lose motivation, which pretty much destroys your business, but if all this can be compressed, then you won’t lose the initial motivation. The quicker you can get your blog set up, the faster you can start marketing and building momentum. With momentum comes greater motivation and a drive to keep pushing forward.
In Part 1, we looked at the following factors that matter when choosing the right blogging platform:
- The backend interface
- Theme selection
- SEO interface
Today, I’ll be exploring another 3-4 important factors to consider when choosing the right blogging platform. These factors make it very easy for you to set up your blog and start building your business. Let’s get started.
Plug-in Selection
When choosing a blogging platform, it’s important you choose one with plug-in variety. A plug-in is an easy way to customize and tweak your website WITHOUT paying for a coder. For example, if I want to add social sharing button above and below my content, then I simply have to install a “social” plug-in from the backend of my blog. They have so many different ones to choose from, all bringing something unique to your blog. Currently, on my blog, I’m using the following just so you know what I can do with this feature:
- Social share
- WP Cache (speed up my website)
- Decrease bounce rate
- SEOPressor (LSI keyword research)
- AutoTweet
- Aweber integration
- Google Analytics
- Many more
All of the above were installed with the click of a mouse and are fully integrated into WordPress.
Expansion
When searching for the right blogging platform, it’s important you keep popularity and growth in mind. You want to use a blogging platform that will keep growing and offer new features, etc. You don’t want a blogging platform that becomes outdated because progress begins to slow down. The blogging platform is only as good as the people involved in development. If the platform NO longer offers security fixes, plug-ins, a community, etc., then it will eventually lose all the functions that made it popular in the first place.
When choosing a blogging platform, pay close attention to updates and the latest news surrounding the community. This way, you can find out what the plans are for the platform and how they will be improving their interface.
Price or Subscription
Some popular blogging platforms will charge you a one-time fee or monthly subscription to use them. This fee doesn’t matter as much to those who are making money through their blog, but for those starting out, it can pretty steep. When you are choosing a blogging platform, it might help to check what the monthly charge will be to use their CMS. However, keep in mind, from my experience, you have many FREE awesome blogging platforms that provide you a complete solution.
For you to find out if the blogging platform has a fee, you simply need to browse over to their website and check out their home page.
Final Thoughts,
I currently use WordPress for all my blogging needs because it provides me everything I need to jump start my business. Over the years, it’s grown in popularity and continues to allow for more advanced customizations. As a matter of fact, WordPress is offered for FREE by many hosting providers when you sign up using a one-click install mechanism. If I was going to suggest a blogging platform for your business requirements, I would suggest WordPress. I’ve had years of experience with it and it continues to provide me with everything I need.