Blogging: What’s All That About Eh?

Posted on 25. May, 2009 by in template customization

In the past you’ve probably heard me mention that one way to instantly add some of those fundamental features of Web 2.0 on your site is to set up a Blog to run your site. In this article, we revisit the idea of running a full website using WordPress. And explore some of the possibilities that go a long way towards building you traffic – and hopefully get you more comfortable around the whole idea of interactivity and collaboration.

Having a professional looking WordPress theme is simple and I’ll get to that, but first off I just wan to clarify what I mean by setting up WordPress to run your site or using a Blog as your actual website. What’s All That About Eh?

I know for some when they hear the word Blog, they immediately link it with having a personal journal or online diary, so in that setting I could understand how one might think their website “doesn’t constitutes the bases for a Blog” or simply feel the website “doesn’t fall under such a heading” – so, what really is a Blog and what could you use it for? And not only that, but also how can you get it looking professional and still escape all the coding and paying a graphic designer?

Generally speaking a Blog is just a website – the difference is that a Blog works like a CMS (Content Management Systems). The great advantage in that is that it makes it so you never have to call a webmaster for every little edit and then wait a week for him to get around to it.

Similarly, when you update your website, you want to be able to do it quickly and easily without worrying about HTML formatting and layout. A good blogging platform will take the worrying out of having to do any of that.

Personally I prefer WordPress – Basically, WordPress is what my site runs off of, and that is also what I recommend my customers to use whenever they want a website that is both search engine friendly and easy to maintain. WordPress is so easy to maintain in fact, that it even lets me post new entries/content by e-mail. How easy is that?

To learn how to configure WordPress to use e-mail to post to your blog, please read the following article.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_by_Email

The fact that a Blog gives you the freedom to make your own updates quickly and easily is great, but what are the real benefits of having a Blog?

Let me tell you a little story. Since the end of the last ice age, Coca Cola has been an international household name – how do they do that? One way they have manage to do it is by keeping the customer well informed on everything from new releases and future offerings to the shape and size of the bottle – one more thing that has benefited them enormously is that they have been zealously working at gathering feedback – listening to customers and reacting accordingly to stay ahead the trend.

Your company Blog can do just that – in fact, due to the interactive nature of blogging, Blogs are literally custom made to allow your customers to post comments and let you gather that information. Great way to get feedback on what your next move should be!

Likewise you can use your Blog as a product or service update center where customers know to check in for status. Also you can share your expertise and become a hub for useful posts on your particular niche. And finally, you can also take full advantage of RSS (Really Simple Syndication); this gives your readers the ability to subscribe to your feed and receive regularly updated content automatically.

So that’s really the basis for doing any business blogging – later this week I’ll tell you how to get your Blog looking professional and not have to do any coding and pay practically nothing for the graphic design and overall look and feel – I will be introducing you to 50 plus professional WordPress themes – I’ll tell you a little bit about each one and let you see a live preview…

Resources:
Is Your Site Search Engine and Users Friendly?
How to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshotize the Ideal Web 2.0 Site in a Nutshell.