Blogging for Business
Having a company blog makes a lot of sense. You can inform (potential) customers and other interested parties about your company,(future) products and services, strategy and place in the market etc. You can also give your organisation a more human face and even build a sense of community by engaging readers one on one or communicating about ways in which your company is engaged with society on other levels such as sponsoring, events, causes the company or individual employees support etc.
Choosing A Service
Once you have made the decision that any of these reasons are sufficient to maintain a regular blog, you are faced with a number of choices including: how to integrate your blog in your site and which service to use. One of the most popular options is WordPress. WordPress is a great blogging service with many possibilities for customization and a following of many millions of bloggers and readers.It comes in two versions: you can choose between wordpress.com or wordpress.org.
WordPress.com:
Your Blog is hosted by WordPress, you can edit it online and it comes with limited free options and a number of paid services.
WordPress.org
You host your Blog on your server,you have more editing control and it comes with more powerful customization features.
So which of these is more suitable for your organization?
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the right choice for you if:
-you have limited time or technical know-how.
-you don’t want to maintain your website on a (hosted) server of your own
-look and feel are served well enough with limited customization possibilities and a choice of a (considerable) number of CSS themes
-you are satisfied with a (wide) range of standard third party widgets to integrate
-you are not interested in using Java-script (disabled) or having control over the (HTML,PHP) code directly other then in a few limited areas
-you are willing to pay a monthly fee for additional services such as a adding your own domain (DNS), CSS customization and other potentially important functionality
WordPress.org
WordPress.org is the right choice for you if:
-you are willing to spend some time and effort and have basic programming skills
-you are interested in thouroghly communicating your brand by rigorously customizing your blog to match your website by editing CSS, PHP, HTML and Java-script yourself.
-you want to be able to choose between many thousands of free and premium CSS themes
-you want advanced functionality integrated into your blog that uses Java-script or PHP that you want to be able to control and customize.
-you are interested in the analytics or SEO of your blog and want Google Analytics or other third party analytics functionality available to optimize it.
-you are interested in adding payment functionality to your blog
-you want to add advanced third party functionality based on hundreds of thousands of plugins, API’s or other code to add directly
Other Considerations
WordPress.com offers a lot of value for a free blogging service but as soon as you need any functionality beyond the considerable free resources to give your blog some professional appeal, you have to pay a fee or there are limitations in place.
Installing WordPress.org is a simple process which only takes a few minutes. Adding functionality and customizing can be quite time-consuming. There are some implications to choices you make during the process which you may not anticipate.
For example:
-your choice of a Theme seems superficial but in fact it can limit your options. Certain themes are capable of supporting more plugins and advanced editing functionality then others.
-some plugins come with advanced settings and work well, others simply don’t work
-you can always deactivate plugins and/or switch themes but some of your earlier settings may be lost
-before installing a theme or plugin read the description and reviews and the number of people the rating is based on
-keep in mind that some Themes and Plugins were written for earlier versions of WordPress.org software
-if possible choose your theme based on a prioritized list of functionality you would like to add
Bottom Line
If your needs go beyond the standard features of WordPress.com and you have a server you can upload it to, don’t hesitate to install WordPress.org. Basic programming skilly are all that is required. When making choices for themes and plugins, base them on a prioritized list of your businesses needs and read a few blogs like these. Otherwise it could potentially lead to a waist of time and effort. Get an idea about the potential of WordPress.org components first :
Findout more about Plugins
Find out more about Themes
And then:
Download and install WordPress.org in five minutes
