Individuals and businesses alike have took on blogging as the #1 type of online content marketing. Whether you’re a non-profit leader seeking to build a social movement, or a small business attempting to grow a customer base within a tough market, blogging is really a key tool that nobody should ignore.
But you may be wondering what if you’re just starting to get your online presence ready to go and you don’t have the resources to purchase robust content marketing software? Should you avoid blogging? No. You have to find alternative resources that still help you increase your customer base! You will need a free blogging service like WordPress or Tumblr.
Creating a Strong Blog Presence for Free
People all around the web are building amazing blogs using simply free tools and their personal computer. Recently, I encountered a fresh religious blogger on Facebook who’d built a following of over 6,000 by simply opening up a Blogger account, purchasing a $12 domain, and writing intelligent, thoughtful posts. This individual wasn't even seeking to make a profit, but was certainly decided on market himself. Amateur bloggers like him demonstrate just what it takes to create a great blog: effort. Money has hardly any to do with it.
Regardless of how fancy a blog you have, in case you don’t write consistently along with a focused mindset, there’s no way anybody will probably pay attention. With this in mind, let’s consider the free options out there that provide a well balanced basis for promoting your thoughts and stories. The best two are WordPress. com and Blogger. net.
Blogger may be the older of the two; it goes completely returning to 1999. Eventually, Blogger was bought by Google, and it has since risen among the top choices among current bloggers.
In comparison, WordPress. com features a somewhat shorter history, using its beginnings in 2005. WordPress is really a name you’ll hear utilized in two distinctly different contexts. First, WordPress. org is really a blogging and web content management system that is used throughout for free, advanced blogging and website design. It’s completely open source, as well as for users with coding skills and a ready host, a fresh great choice. Still forget WordPress. org today. The free blog service I am with reference to is WordPress. com. Like Blogger, WordPress. net provides a free blogging service that any broke college student can use. It’s a very popular choice, and I’d believe recently, it’s gained a reputation as more trendy and professional compared to Blogger, due to its well-known, easy-to-use interface.
But let’s not extend about which service may be better. This post is all about examining which service has more potential for making a robust content marketing presence.
A Complete Evaluation of Blogger and WordPress
To get started, I wish to point out the major differences between both of these massively used and free blogging options. I believe a side-by-side comparison is most useful. When you subscribe to each without paying anything, here’s what you get.
A totally free WordPress.com account provides
A Blogger.com account provides:
WordPress.com features that need payment:
All Blogger solutions are free…
As our side-by-side analysis displays, Google’s Blogger certainly provides a lot more free of charge than WordPress. com. Beyond the basic requirements of the amateur blogger, WordPress really starts to help make the user pay if he/she wants to convey more control. From first glance, these constraints can be hugely limiting, especially for business bloggers. Still free doesn't always mean better either, so you will find reasons to be mindful of Blogger. The question then is: Do they offer a qualitative difference between Blogger’s fully free feature set and WordPress’ fairly free options? Do free features equal cut edges?
New Bloggers Feel the Biggest Distinction
After reviewing both processes, my perspective could be that the differences between WordPress and Blogger are most apparent when taking into consideration the user experience of a new blogger. In case you really are just getting started, then you’ll determine what I am talking about as soon as you begin.
Don’t misunderstand me. Blogger’s dashboard is not bad. Actually if I didn't know WordPress’ setup then I will be perfectly happy with Blogger. The issue is that WordPress has just really out done itself for making blog settings simple to handle.
Strong, Easy Design vs. Custom Control
As i have stated earlier, Blogger certainly has a leg on WordPress in terms of letting users edit all facets of the design. However, here I must provide a caveat. Yes, in Blogger, you can basically change anything because you get access to both CSS and HTML. However, that needs a specific level of web-code literacy. If you do not have that, you will absolutely find yourself restricted to Blogger’s pre-designed templates.
The following is where WordPress shows a good middle-range advantage. For your vast number of users-including businesses-a blog needs to be the where a CSS illiterate person can simply and actively operate a good-looking, customized blog. Along with WordPress, users can make an instantly good-looking blog because the site has its own more ready-to-use templates than Blogger. Specifically, WordPress’ designs appear better and more up-to-date, having a wide selection of design types. Blogger’s templates exist in extremes, with 2 - 3 dynamic themes on a single end and older, fixed-width blogs one the other side associated with the coin.
Yes, with Blogger, you are able to change nearly everything to choose a Blogger blog look beautiful, but you’ll require the skills in order to do that. If you only want to be able to customize an already-strong theme, opt for WordPress.com.
Integrating a Totally Free Blog With Your Website
After noting the benefits of each site in terms of design, the next phase for a business is to really think about how exactly this free blog will work together with your site. Looking back at the side-by-side comparison, keep in mind that both WordPress and Blogger are hosted options that cannot be connected to an actual site—at least not technically. An ideal option for businesses on a budget is to connect your site to your site by putting the blog on the sub-domain, for example blog. mybusiness.com. Then, you are able to create any static site you wish having a blog that, if designed appropriately, fits in like a separate but visually integrated page.
It’s simpler to do this on Blogger than WordPress simply because WordPress enables you to pay to put your blog on the domain or sub-domain separate from WordPress. com. Blogger happily will direct your blog to a sub-domain or domain free of charge. Here, Blogger obviously wins the evaluation.
Still the success of integration isn't just restricted to the technical details of domains. It all depends upon design, yet again. In case your WordPress or Blogger blog looks vastly different from your site, it will likely feel very odd, but it will certainly surely be obvious to your visitors that they left your website. Many businesses will likely find that they require more customization in order to match the UX of the site to the UX of their free blog. Because of this, many people will discover that Blogger’s deeper customization will offer branding advantages of total website integration.
Which Service Much More Sharable on Social Media?
The solution to this question is easy: WordPress. There’s undoubtedly that this Publicize feature on WordPress will beat Blogger for easy-to-use social spreading options. Probably the most Blogger provides is similar to, Tweet, and +1 buttons on each of your post, while Publicize really makes WordPress an all natural extension of the social media sphere. When it comes to marketing your content, this is certainly a large hit against Blogger.
However, there are a variety of third-party options and Blogger widgets which you can use to inform you on these topics here. While Publicize has become a strength with regard to WordPress, Blogger users must not feel worried that their content will never get shared. Maximum sharing is merely more straightforward with WordPress.
Video and Multimedia System Running a Blog
The last area that’s important for discuss is how WordPress and Blogger each connect to multimedia like video and audio. Increasingly more, companies are benefiting by using blogs to provide more than just regular writing. The very best blogs are embedded video and/or audio, including pod-casts, blogs, and even video info-graphics. Even though you may not you’re using free blog services, no burgeoning marketing effort ought to omit multimedia.
Here, Blogger’s integration with YouTube most likely beats out WordPress’ VideoPress feature. There is certainly simply no stronger social video site than YouTube because its capability to make small marketing efforts into viral campaigns remains unmatched. Because YouTube and Blogger have both been fully integrated along with Google+, the options for sharing and visibility are just increased.
VideoPress certainly a great option, but because it doesn't possess the force that is available with natural YouTube integration, I believe most marketers would regret depending on it completely.
Conclusion
If you believe that WordPress may be the hip, most up-to-date service free of charge blogging, you’re probably right. For your amateur individual blogger, this is definitely true. However for businesses, the comparison between WordPress and Blogger swings heavily towards Blogger for 2 main reasons.
But you may be wondering what if you’re just starting to get your online presence ready to go and you don’t have the resources to purchase robust content marketing software? Should you avoid blogging? No. You have to find alternative resources that still help you increase your customer base! You will need a free blogging service like WordPress or Tumblr.
Creating a Strong Blog Presence for Free
People all around the web are building amazing blogs using simply free tools and their personal computer. Recently, I encountered a fresh religious blogger on Facebook who’d built a following of over 6,000 by simply opening up a Blogger account, purchasing a $12 domain, and writing intelligent, thoughtful posts. This individual wasn't even seeking to make a profit, but was certainly decided on market himself. Amateur bloggers like him demonstrate just what it takes to create a great blog: effort. Money has hardly any to do with it.
Regardless of how fancy a blog you have, in case you don’t write consistently along with a focused mindset, there’s no way anybody will probably pay attention. With this in mind, let’s consider the free options out there that provide a well balanced basis for promoting your thoughts and stories. The best two are WordPress. com and Blogger. net.
Blogger may be the older of the two; it goes completely returning to 1999. Eventually, Blogger was bought by Google, and it has since risen among the top choices among current bloggers.
In comparison, WordPress. com features a somewhat shorter history, using its beginnings in 2005. WordPress is really a name you’ll hear utilized in two distinctly different contexts. First, WordPress. org is really a blogging and web content management system that is used throughout for free, advanced blogging and website design. It’s completely open source, as well as for users with coding skills and a ready host, a fresh great choice. Still forget WordPress. org today. The free blog service I am with reference to is WordPress. com. Like Blogger, WordPress. net provides a free blogging service that any broke college student can use. It’s a very popular choice, and I’d believe recently, it’s gained a reputation as more trendy and professional compared to Blogger, due to its well-known, easy-to-use interface.
But let’s not extend about which service may be better. This post is all about examining which service has more potential for making a robust content marketing presence.
A Complete Evaluation of Blogger and WordPress
To get started, I wish to point out the major differences between both of these massively used and free blogging options. I believe a side-by-side comparison is most useful. When you subscribe to each without paying anything, here’s what you get.
A totally free WordPress.com account provides
A Blogger.com account provides:
- A blog. You can also the actual blog into a completely static site (no blog entries) or perhaps a site which includes static areas (blank pages or HTML areas).
- three Gb-storage for posts and media (uploaded images, videos, or even other files). Media is definitely added to blog posts, and it is saved within file management viewer.
- A totally free subdomain on WordPress. com. Everything is automatically managed.
- Entry to Publicize, a tool for connecting the blog with social support systems.
- Statistics for tracking visitors.
- Mobile apps with regard to iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry, along with blogging via SMS service or email.
WordPress.com features that need payment:
- Custom design - adding custom CSS as well as fonts. ($30 each year per blog) Templates can not be edited beyond customization.
- Custom domains (i. e. amazingconstructionskillz. com), which may be bought through WordPress. com, cost $13 per domain utilize each year.
- Removing the chance that WordPress. com will location advertisements on your site. ($30 each year per blog)
- Premium themes-really nice designs-with an excellent selection. (priced per blog for the duration of the blog)
- VideoPress for uploading hosting and embedding your personal videos on the WordPress. com blog.
- A blog. Plus you might have the option to add lots of static areas (blank pages or HTML areas).
- Unlimited space for storage for posts and media (uploaded images, videos, or some other files). Media is definitely added to blog posts, and is saved inside a file management viewer.
- A totally free subdomain on blogspot. com. Everything is automatically managed.
- Quick access to Google’s advertising schemes and gadgets for social spreading.
- Entry to the Blogger analytics panel with statistics and visualizations.
- Cellular access via iPhone and Android apps, along with blogging via SMS service or e-mail.
All Blogger solutions are free…
- Custom design - full entry to underlying HTML with Code Editor. CSS may also be added within templates and Google Fonts can easily be bought.
- Custom domains with easy mapping services with GoDaddy. com along with other major domain services.
- No advertising is ever going in order to appear on Blogger blogs with no user choosing to monetize your blog with Google Ads.
- All templates on Blogger are totally free, but there is not a wealth of templates to select from. Instead, customization is inspired. Users can share styles, and third-party sites offer designs for any price.
- Your Blogger account as well as your YouTube account are one in the same, meaning that your videos will be hosted on a single service and will also be natively embeddable.
As our side-by-side analysis displays, Google’s Blogger certainly provides a lot more free of charge than WordPress. com. Beyond the basic requirements of the amateur blogger, WordPress really starts to help make the user pay if he/she wants to convey more control. From first glance, these constraints can be hugely limiting, especially for business bloggers. Still free doesn't always mean better either, so you will find reasons to be mindful of Blogger. The question then is: Do they offer a qualitative difference between Blogger’s fully free feature set and WordPress’ fairly free options? Do free features equal cut edges?
New Bloggers Feel the Biggest Distinction
After reviewing both processes, my perspective could be that the differences between WordPress and Blogger are most apparent when taking into consideration the user experience of a new blogger. In case you really are just getting started, then you’ll determine what I am talking about as soon as you begin.
Whenever you register for Blogger, you’ll immediately see that Blogger is surely a Google service, through and through. You have to register for a Google account, exactly like you would if you were to spread out up a YouTube or even Gmail account. However, permanently marketers, this really should not be seen as an drawback. If you’re seriously interested in making smart digital marketing decisions, then you are most likely looking to invest in Google products anyway. To become strong in SEO today is to buy a Google+ account. Similarly, to become a good content marketer, you will need a YouTube account. So, should you be well-prepared, almost all of these services is going to be organized by one central Google account. You may also set up these services making use of your own domain’s email by using Google Apps for people who do business (yet another one of Google’s extremely popular services). Therefore in a nutshell, to use Blogger, you need to use Google, but more likely than not knowing, you are already, so don’t perspiration!
However, the Schwinn recumbent bike, WordPress. com doesn't really care what their own account is like. In just one particular step, a person can receive a free account with an email, username as well as password. You’ll immediately reach pick your free WP sub-domain for the blog, as well as you’ll be up and running. Within the next few steps, WordPress users can begin modifying their templates and choosing themes. Particularly in the design phase, WordPress.com is becoming famously recognized as user-friendly. All the templates the actual the majority of recent design standards, and i believe most marketers would concur that WordPress. com surely make novice users look great in hardly any time. To the actual casual user, the simplicity during these early steps makes WP. com much more simple to handle. But, think about that point for any 2nd. If you’re trying to participate in strong advertising, are you going to be casual with regards in order to your blogging efforts? No. Businesses require to purchase their work, whether or not the service is free not truly.
Once Blogger users find their own method to the Template Designer and begin fashioning their weblog, the user experience of your guide baby gyro bowl is the entire time the planning design and designing tools is not grossly different from WP. The two are well-designed and offer users many pick-and-click choices. Probably the most obvious difference with Blogger is the degree of control. Users will see almost immediately they can customize every single element of their weblog, and also the much more adventurous users can even add CSS as well as affect the base HTML if they wish. These types of options are simply not available in WordPress.
Therefore, for your business looking to get started, We think Blogger is really the greater investment. On Day one, you’ll be happier with WordPress; it all provides immediate gratification. But in terms associated with potential, the full integration of most Google accounts with Blogger is something the majority of marketers will never want to go without.
Blog Success Can be Discovered by Effective Management
While Tumblr wins when it comes to as being a better investment for strong content marketing, users might have very good reasons for giving up the simplicity Google integration with regard to better content management with WordPress.
Overall, WP (. org and. com) is becoming known for being extremely effective content management systems. The reason behind this is because the back-end is extremely simple to navigate. Both WordPress and Blogger have central dashboards that you can manage multiple blogs and optimize any settings. However, you should know people stay away from Blogger is really because its back-end continues to be more confusing than WordPress. There’s too much hunting users have to do. Often, your best option is simply to search Google to have an answer about where to find a particular Blogger preference.
Strong, Easy Design vs. Custom Control
As i have stated earlier, Blogger certainly has a leg on WordPress in terms of letting users edit all facets of the design. However, here I must provide a caveat. Yes, in Blogger, you can basically change anything because you get access to both CSS and HTML. However, that needs a specific level of web-code literacy. If you do not have that, you will absolutely find yourself restricted to Blogger’s pre-designed templates.
The following is where WordPress shows a good middle-range advantage. For your vast number of users-including businesses-a blog needs to be the where a CSS illiterate person can simply and actively operate a good-looking, customized blog. Along with WordPress, users can make an instantly good-looking blog because the site has its own more ready-to-use templates than Blogger. Specifically, WordPress’ designs appear better and more up-to-date, having a wide selection of design types. Blogger’s templates exist in extremes, with 2 - 3 dynamic themes on a single end and older, fixed-width blogs one the other side associated with the coin.
Yes, with Blogger, you are able to change nearly everything to choose a Blogger blog look beautiful, but you’ll require the skills in order to do that. If you only want to be able to customize an already-strong theme, opt for WordPress.com.
Integrating a Totally Free Blog With Your Website
After noting the benefits of each site in terms of design, the next phase for a business is to really think about how exactly this free blog will work together with your site. Looking back at the side-by-side comparison, keep in mind that both WordPress and Blogger are hosted options that cannot be connected to an actual site—at least not technically. An ideal option for businesses on a budget is to connect your site to your site by putting the blog on the sub-domain, for example blog. mybusiness.com. Then, you are able to create any static site you wish having a blog that, if designed appropriately, fits in like a separate but visually integrated page.
It’s simpler to do this on Blogger than WordPress simply because WordPress enables you to pay to put your blog on the domain or sub-domain separate from WordPress. com. Blogger happily will direct your blog to a sub-domain or domain free of charge. Here, Blogger obviously wins the evaluation.
Still the success of integration isn't just restricted to the technical details of domains. It all depends upon design, yet again. In case your WordPress or Blogger blog looks vastly different from your site, it will likely feel very odd, but it will certainly surely be obvious to your visitors that they left your website. Many businesses will likely find that they require more customization in order to match the UX of the site to the UX of their free blog. Because of this, many people will discover that Blogger’s deeper customization will offer branding advantages of total website integration.
Which Service Much More Sharable on Social Media?
The solution to this question is easy: WordPress. There’s undoubtedly that this Publicize feature on WordPress will beat Blogger for easy-to-use social spreading options. Probably the most Blogger provides is similar to, Tweet, and +1 buttons on each of your post, while Publicize really makes WordPress an all natural extension of the social media sphere. When it comes to marketing your content, this is certainly a large hit against Blogger.
However, there are a variety of third-party options and Blogger widgets which you can use to inform you on these topics here. While Publicize has become a strength with regard to WordPress, Blogger users must not feel worried that their content will never get shared. Maximum sharing is merely more straightforward with WordPress.
Video and Multimedia System Running a Blog
The last area that’s important for discuss is how WordPress and Blogger each connect to multimedia like video and audio. Increasingly more, companies are benefiting by using blogs to provide more than just regular writing. The very best blogs are embedded video and/or audio, including pod-casts, blogs, and even video info-graphics. Even though you may not you’re using free blog services, no burgeoning marketing effort ought to omit multimedia.
Here, Blogger’s integration with YouTube most likely beats out WordPress’ VideoPress feature. There is certainly simply no stronger social video site than YouTube because its capability to make small marketing efforts into viral campaigns remains unmatched. Because YouTube and Blogger have both been fully integrated along with Google+, the options for sharing and visibility are just increased.
VideoPress certainly a great option, but because it doesn't possess the force that is available with natural YouTube integration, I believe most marketers would regret depending on it completely.
Conclusion
If you believe that WordPress may be the hip, most up-to-date service free of charge blogging, you’re probably right. For your amateur individual blogger, this is definitely true. However for businesses, the comparison between WordPress and Blogger swings heavily towards Blogger for 2 main reasons.
#1. Blogger is really a key component of the Google empire. Using it as well as other tools like Google+, YouTube, and Google Apps for people who do business will put your company in an exceedingly positive (and free! ) situation. By integrating with Search engines, your SEO position is nearly certainly improved, and your content could be more easily found. Simultaneously being integrated with Google products does not curb your position within sharing on other social media-there’s not really a downside here.
#2. Blogger offers more total design capabilities. Non-profit organizations and young businesses can never have to pay to go a step further for making their blog design more creative. The only limit is the business’ level of skill with website design. Bloggers’ flexibility carries over into integration together with your company site because of free use of your personal domain and easy-to-use domain pointing tools.
Right now, overall, both WordPress and Blogger are limited for just one big reason: you’ll never be able to attract leads as fluidly or efficiently as you would in case you built your blog as part of an extensive inbound marketing website scheme. Still that’s really not the point. If you invest in solid content marketing now and build a favorite blog with high-quality effort, making a more complete marketing setup will be a easy in the upcoming. The key is in order to start blogging.
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