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What type of Internet portal is best for promoting your work: A traditional website or a blog?
Results so far:
| Website | 69% | 607 votes | Total: 886 votes | |
| Blog | 31% | 279 votes |
Website
by Victoria Neely
Created on: September 25, 2007
The pat answer is: It depends on you and your business. No, really. Blogs and websites come with their own pros and cons, and you'll want to weigh them before deciding. For most situations, however, a website is the best bet. Here's why:
1. Websites are more flexible
Blog are easy to update and maintain, which is part of their appeal, but websites can have equally sophisticated and user-friendly content management systems. Blogs give readers a way to leave comments, but there's no reason why a website can't have similar features. Websites can be as simple or complex as you want them to be.
At first glance, blogs can seem just as diverse as websites. But for the most part, they all follow the same format: A blog is a series of posts listed in chronological order. The first thing you see when you visit a blog is the latest post. There are usually sidebars filled with links to older posts. Some blogs have static pages that live outside the chronological format, but blogs are still basically online journals. Regardless of how you dress the blog up, that's the format you're stuck with.
2. Websites are less demanding
Regardless of whether you have a blog or website, you'll want to keep it fresh and give people a reason to come back. Even so, it's less critical to update a website on a regular basis. Blogs by their very nature need fresh content all the time. Without a new post every day, or at least every week, blogs get stale and musty. You'll either have to spend a few hours every day writing articles for your blog, or you'll need to hire someone else to handle that job for you. And frankly, there are some businesses that are very hard to write fascinating news articles about on a continual basis.
3. Websites are more professional
Although blogs are gaining preeminence on the internet, a blog will still have the feel of an online journal. Blogs tend to be more casual and conversational. Depending on your business, a blog could set the perfect tone for your web presence. But in almost all cases, you simply can't go wrong with a basic website.
4. You can always add a blog later
In some cases, businesses have both a website and a blog. The two entities can complement each other nicely. The website usually serves as the official store front for whatever services or products the business offers, while the blog is the place where people go to read up on the latest news about the business. So when in doubt, go with a website first. Once you've had your website for a while, you'll be in a better position to know whether or not a blog will enhance your business.
Learn more about this author, Victoria Neely.
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Blog
by Julie Hume
Created on: September 01, 2009
Once upon a time creating and maintaining a website required knowledge of html (Hyper text Mark-up Language) or at the very least a passing familiarity with a so called WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor like MS Frontpage or Dreamweaver. While Frontpage was renowned for bloated and messy code it did at least enable almost anyone to slap together a website without needing to get to grips with HTML or any of its ever more obscure coding language cousins.
Dreamweaver in comparison did not leave such messy code in its wake but seemed to get ever more complicated with each new release which sort of cancels out the benefits of using a WYSIWYG in the first place.
While websites today can be set up on a content management system which makes the creation and upkeep of content much more intuitive it would be hard to beat the simplicity and very short learning curve of a blog platform.
Whether the intention is to create a multi-user environment for a company or a highly visual and interactive webspace for an individual freelancer, artist or consultant, getting started on a blog platform like Wordpress or Google's Blogger is extremely simple. In fact it can be so simple that signing up to either Wordpress.com or Blogger.com and filling in the required fields would have you up and running in minutes.
This however is not recommended. If you choose the Blogger platform you should still have purchased a domain and have it hosted elsewhere in order to dispense with the ugly and unprofessional 'blogspot' suffix that it gets tagged with.
Similarly to use Wordpress's native platform you must be prepared to forgo all forms of advertising. While a company website may not be looking to showcase Adsense or affiliate advertising, any form of commercialization of a website hosted on Wordpress.com is frowned upon. In order to maintain complete control of your own web space, you need to have your own domain and have it hosted elsewhere.
Because it is so easy to get up and running, those unfamiliar with blogging platforms may not realise the power and flexibility that they offer. It is true that it takes minutes to install the default 'Kubrik' theme for Wordpress, usually through the Fantastico panel of the host's control panel but you are not restricted to using it. There are thousands of free wordpress themes available through wordpress.org and most of them are further customizable to make them uniquely your own.
Wordpress and other blogging platforms also offer plug-ins which enable the user to further customize and tailor the blog to his or her own needs. Need a contact form? Try Contact From 7. Want to automate your Google XML sitemap ? Arne Brachhold's version is hard to beat. Mixing and matching plug-ins with an easy install and delete makes manipulating your wordpress based company blog as easy as ABC.
The term blog is a contraction of web and log. The chronologically updating nature of a blog may put off some potential users. It needn't do so for a blog can be run as a content management system with an infinite number of pages under any amount of headers. A manufacturer would have the flexibility of running company news via a blog portion of the site and online product catalogues through the blogs paging system.
Lastly, a very good reason to promote your work through a blog is that Google loves the immediacy of blog posts. With a little basic SEO attention a blog about sales discounts or business awards you make in the morning may hit high in the SERPS (search engine results pages) by the afternoon. Blog posts may or may not maintain high serps positions depending on many other factors but there is far more chance of a new blogger getting noticed in his field that someone who is just getting his first website off the ground.
Learn more about this author, Julie Hume.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
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