For business blog marketing should you use Blogger, the Google hosted product or Wordpress.org? Blogger and Wordpress.org are the two leading blogging platforms in use today for blogging.

Over and over I talk with bloggers that started with Blogger because it is free and easy to set-up. Then they realize the limitations and need to convert to the self-hosted version of Wordpress. The Wordpress.org product in our opinion is a much better product for business applications because it can be customized to give better blog marketing results.

Wordpress.org should not be confused with Wordpress.com which is a hosted version similar to Blogger.

Blogger
Blogger is owned by Google and it is free. It is an excellent tool for the beginner. Hosting is done on blogspot.com.

Advantages

1. It is free.
2. Set-up is easy and quick. No coding knowledge required.
3. Pre-installed themes, templates, plugins and widgets.
4. Software is updated automatically for you.
5. Built-in spam controls.

Disadvantages

1. Limited control and limited ability to customize.
2. Design choices limited making it difficult to achieve a distinct look.
3. Code produced is not valid W3C valid code.
4. “No Follow” cannot be removed from comments.
5. Lacks categories to organize posts. Uses labels instead.

Wordpress.org
Wordpress.org is the free open source blogging platform that you download and run on your own hosting account.

Advantages

1. You can completely control and customize blog functionality.
2. Ability to organize posts by category.
3. WordPress is built following W3C code standards.
4. Large library of plug-ins available to add functionality.
5. Multiple user security levels

Disadvantages

1. Set-up and customization is more complex.
2. Longer learning curve because of available options.
3. Requires setting up a hosting account.
4. Requires a separate domain name.
5. Tech support is available thru forums and wikis.

Our recommendation for blog marketing is strongly for Wordpress.org. Hundreds of independent developers regularly produce new plug-ins and customizations making this the most versatile and best performing blogging platform available. For the beginning Blogger, is easier and quicker to set-up and is a better choice for the “tech-challenged.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 4:46 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.