Creating a blog forces you to make a series of decisions that will determine the future and the permanence of the project.
Since I’ve been blogging for more than 9 years, it hasn’t rained or anything! The two decisions that I see people regret are:
- The name of the blog
- The platform chosen to write
The name is something that they are controlling much more but the issue of the platform is something tricky that until recently has not been given the importance it had.
I remember the blogs that were made in Joomla as well as webs and it was the most of the most, I will not have set up things with this platform that is still in use but it is somewhat more complicated than wordpress and something has been left out.
Surely more than one @ reaching this point will say: “the best platform to write a blog is wordpress, what nonsense, it is much more professional” because it is not always a good idea to do something in wordpress.
That is where I want to go, wordpress is not good for all blogs, even for some it is the grave, choosing an excessive solution is as bad as opting for something that may be insufficient.
There are many blogging platforms but we only focus on the two best known which are Blogspot and WordPress, but there are others such as Squarespace, Tumblr,
To choose the platform, I think we need to do a gathering exercise of all kinds of media in which I highlight these variables to choose or discard media:
# 1 Sincerity, be realistic with what you are going to dedicate.
Think about what you are really willing to do for your blog, the time you are going to dedicate and how far you can do to make it work like clockwork.
If after thinking about what you can do for your blog and the answer is little or nothing, if you do not plan to be aware of updating, modifying and looking for solutions, perhaps wordpress.org is not your ideal platform.
With that I do not want to tell you not to choose WordPress, do not get it wrong, but you will have to consider maintenance, if you do not want to arrive one morning and see your blog blank because you have not updated anything. # Budget
I didn’t want to be a witch and that’s why I didn’t put it first, but we know it’s free… it’s only Tumblr and Blogspot, although wordpress.com is free but in the end you end up paying something because the standard one is too short.
On the other hand, if you have a budget, a very interesting range of options opens up, ranging from wordpress.org to Squarespace, which is paid after a trial period.
The free options are less and less and to get to a good level you will need to spend time.
Evaluate the possibility that any change or improvement will cost you money as is the case with many free blogging platforms in which SEO is something for a fee.
# Ambition and future plans
If what you want is to set up a simple blog to write, period, any platform can serve you, but if your plan is to monetize the blog or set up a store, the options have to be scalable.
You may even want to have more editors or do guest posting, create a forum or do podcasts, so it is advisable that you choose the correct platform from the beginning since migrations are a drag at best.
Almost real cases of doubts when choosing the platform:
This time to make it more enjoyable I have tried to reflect it as practical cases in which someone with frequent characteristics encounters the difficult choice of choosing which is the best way to publish their blog.
1 I just want to write and be left alone with so much trouble.
Marta loves to write stories and opinion articles on topics that interest her. She recently thought of starting a blog because Facebook was too small for her and the audience was very limited; the groups and your contacts.
Marta does not have much computer knowledge, and also does not usually use a computer but rather a tablet or mobile phone.
He is not demanding with the design but when he sees something well done he likes it like everyone else, but it is not something that takes his life, he wants something simple that he can handle easily.
He does not plan to invest money in publishing since what he does is more for hobby than promotion.
He has no plans to hold workshops within the blog, he does not want to sell products, although perhaps if he collects the texts one day he may publish an ebook.
I think that although Blogger can serve you because it is free and easier, perhaps it will give you a little more work than you are willing to do, promotion, setting up the blog (from a horrible mobile) and giving it a few taps from time to time so that don’t get out of date.
Perhaps blogspot will end up overwhelming it and being from the mobile we are going to see other free platforms that allow the dissemination of its content.
We are clear that your publications are short articles, opinion, stories and stories could benefit from the social component of other blogging platforms such as the following:
- Medium is a portal to share stories and articles of all kinds, it has a certain social component since what you write can be shared and within Medium you can reach a sensitive audience with your topic.
In the beginning, eminences on any subject wrote, which was quite scary, now a lot of people write, some of them with an almost daily assiduity and it is worth following because there is a lot of independent journalism on Medium.
- Watpadd a portal to share stories, stories, novels between people who like to write.
Wattpad have a serious problem and it is that if you are not registered you cannot access the content, this for people who want to create a blog may not like it, but it is true that Wattpad has acquired a not inconsiderable market niche: adolescents and women. 2 I only want to upload photos and very short posts.
Manu likes to write little, it is more about headlines and headlines, he likes to share photos and images, GIFs and from time to time he writes a very brief post about something that has caught his attention, on Instagram he is doing very well but he wants to have something that allows you to spread more and that allows you to lower the bar on the photos, sometimes they are not so good but you would like to share them.
Here neither blogger nor wordpress would be the appropriate platforms, Tumblr is the best in this case.
Tumblr is a network that allows you to create posts and original content within it, share from other networks and share posts from other bloggers within your timeline.
Because of this varied way of posting, Tumblr is a very dynamic network, in Spain it is not very popular but in other countries it is, given that it does not have much censorship and that the content can be of any size.
3 I want a blog but I don’t want to know anything about the design or maintenance
Laura wants to start her own fashion blog and she is clear that both in WordPress and in pot blogs she is going to have to work a lot and is not a person who likes to learn, design is not her thing or invest a lot of money knock on the design of the blog to be able to start with it, you know that it will need to have maintenance, but you prefer to see other possibilities that offer design, easy interface and maintenance.
There are many free blogging platforms that offer interesting blog designs, the most famous are Wix and Webbly, although there are others like Yola that offer more services and are not as well known. 4 I need a blog because I want to start a small business
Mayte wants to create a small business advising entrepreneurs, Mayte has a budget so in case she has to make a disbursement she does not find a problem.
She needs a platform where she can write a blog about entrepreneurship to attract future clients, so she will soon need a number of things:
- Create subscriber lists and manage them with mailrelay or mailchimp.
- Perhaps in the future make an area only for subscribers or customers to share information privately.
- Sale of products, such as books by download or service packs.
- Depending on the type of campaign you have active, you will need pop-ups to attract interested parties.
- You need a clean, neat and professional image.
- For your blog you need to share on quite a few platforms.
- Have greater control of analytics to know how it works.
- You may be interested in creating a forum.
Many of the things that concern you most are WordPress and on other platforms they are not accurate or cannot be hired, since this project needs to be scalable, I advise WordPress. I would like to add more cases about the correct choice of platforms, since what I want you to understand is that in this decision some variables intervene that in each case are different but that can be approximated.
