I was recently running a workshop about Word of Mouse Marketing using social media from blogging to microblogging, podcasting to video casting and it was heartening to see that about 8 per cent of the 140 attendees were blogging about their business.
However I then became disheartened as most of those blogs had been developed on a platform such as Blogger or WordPress.com.
If anyone tells you that business blogging is not a significant investment of your time, they clearly are not a business blogger developing online content and implementing a link building strategy to bring traffic to their business blog.
Don’t get me wrong, blogging is a terrific online marketing strategy if executed effectively. I could think of no other way that I would have attracted as many leads to my business so cost effectively without a business blog.
However if you are going to invest in business blogging, be good to yourself… don’t have all those wonderful incoming links to your great content go to a blog that is not hosted by you.
You might think this is something that only happens for small businesses – it’s not!
From well established businesses using WordPress.com to Marketing Directors of major companies who should know more about branding than most, using a blog that is detracting from their personal brand online as they are using Blogger, many companies are using free hosted and poorly branded business blogs.
Online personal branding coaches look to encourage people to use Typepad.com as a blog platform – whilst it’s a great blogging platform that I use and recommend and it’s especially helpful if you want a low tech solution for a personal career portfolio, if you also have a website, a Typepad blog is not going to help you with your link building and search engine optimisation strategy for your main website which is becoming even more critical as few people now move beyond page 1 of Google when searching and researching online. What do they do if they can not find what they are looking for online on the first page of their search? They change the words they are using to search with of course.
Investing a little and money in implementing a business blog that is hosted on your website not only makes you look like you take business blogging seriously as part of your online marketing strategy, it also means that every link to your great content is a link to your website.
That way you will be sure to benefit even more from your online content strategy buildng links to your business blog.
UPDATE 29 DECEMBER 2008
Thanks everyone for the contribution to the discussion.
I recently had a discussion with a PR expert who advised me about a WordPress.com site they had set up for their client who wanted to try blogging but was unsure about whether it was something that they would continue in the medium to long term. The plan was then to import the content into a blog hosted on their website if they determined that blogging was for them.
If this is a way to encourage companies to blog (alternative approaches could include hosting a blog internally, having a project related blog or password protecting your business blog in the early days as you get into your stride) then it’s certainly worth considering – but make sure that you define the trial period on the hosted platform.
Hosting your own content for the reasons outlined in the comments and ensuring that your blog reflects your brand and corporate identiy and tone of voice is important.
And remember if you are still not convinced by the debate in the comments to this article about the benefits of hosting your own blog and you decide to continue to use one of the hosted free platforms or low cost platforms available, take the time to map your own domain name to the blog (as an example here is the guidance form Typepad on domain mapping).
Your business blog is an extension of your online identity and brand. So don’t let your business blog be bland!
Many people claim that Blogger is not suitable for business blogging. But this is due to a misunderstanding about the way Blogger works.
Blogger is used widely and successfully in business blogs and maintains brand. My own web site (http://www.grahamjones.co.uk) is actually built from FOUR different Blogger blogs, all stitched together to make it look like one web site.
Few people delve into the guts of Blogger to find out how to make it really work for good business branding. But if you do, you discover it has better features for business branding than many other options.
To find out hwo to achieve that, see my videos at http://www.changingblogger.com
Comment by Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist — October 12, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
My main blog/Web Column is hosted on Typepad, and it is probably the most professional services out there right now (even though it’s gotten increasingly less reliable due to almost daily server outages and crashes).
I also host my entire business website (translation and writing services) on Typepad.
I also have mirror sites hosted on Blogger and WordPress, so as to ensure that my stuff is always available even if one service gives out.
I think all those platforms are OK for businesses; what matters, after all, is content and not the platform on which you host your blog.
Companies can host their blogs, as this article suggests, but unless they stand out for great content, they won’t go anywhere with that either.
As for linking and ending up on Page One of Google search results, Typepad is the best one, hands down. Whatever people google out there, my Typepad sites are among the top-5 search results about 90-95% of the time — much better than for my mirrors on Blogger or WordPress (since I have sites on all these platforms, I can really compare the effectiveness with respect to Google ranking).
Comment by Werner Patels — October 12, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
[…] blog should be part of your site. However, Krishna De writes that many businesses have opted to create their blog on third-party sites like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, and […]
Pingback by Business Logs » Blog Archive » Your Business Blog Needs To Be On Your Site — October 13, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Isn`t it sometimes more important to be direct part of the community?
To be on the same level as your readers are. Some blogging strategies are not just about links but about bending and positioning. I`m not sure if wp.com or blogger.com are the right examples but i`ve seen many successful business blogs hosted on the “local” blogging platform, where the customers already are.
Comment by darko156 — October 14, 2008 @ 1:56 am
This is a great post. I just launched my blog a month or so ago and was not sure which direction to take. Paid or Free. I’m glad I went with Typepad.
Comment by Randy San Nicolas — October 14, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
Graham
Your argument is shot to pieces when you click on the comment icon on your blog (changingblogger) you end up at the blogger commenting platform well away from your well presented site.
Good videos though.
Paul M Tate – where accounting meets IT
Comment by Paul M Tate — October 15, 2008 @ 5:46 am
Graham – thanks for your comment. As a solopreneur then Blogger perhaps works well for you.
I am concerned however when I see established businesses with corporate websites then get advised by people that you should establish a blog on platforms that don’t connect those great links to their site.
Thank you for making available a link to your site with the videos.
But does that mean that your real estate is still hosted by Blogger rather than you? If so then I am afraid we have to differ in our point of view as I want to be sure that my IP and content are not available or not based on a third party.
Comment by Krishna De — October 15, 2008 @ 6:42 am
[…] more I’m falling in love with blogging. In a recent post by Krishna De, he has suggested that Blogger, TypePad & WordPress.com are not at all good for a business blog and I second […]
Pingback by Confirmed - Blogger is not good for Business blogging! | Blog Design Studio — October 15, 2008 @ 9:58 am
That’s exactly why Compendium Blogware was born! I’d really love to provide you with a demonstration of how our platform differs. I actually have a WordPress blog and my Compendium blog, but I would never use WordPress in a business atmosphere – there are tons of reasons: security, infrastructure, speed, seo, ease of use, approval process, etc.
Comment by Douglas Karr — October 17, 2008 @ 11:41 am
A lot of potential business blogs get “blogged-down” in the IT Department.
We recommend to our corporate clients that they set up a blog on a separate domain that retains the first part of their domain and then ads something like “online” or “blog” (eg flightcentre-online.com).
They then link to this new domain from their primary domain and are able to monitor the performance of their blog independently from their main website.
Comment by John Townsend — October 17, 2008 @ 2:49 pm
Good points Krishna.
Regarding WordPress, I think novitiates get confused between WordPress.com as a hosting solution and WordPress software as a blogging platform. It’s important to understand one (WordPress.com) is a quick and easy way to get started blogging (competing with Blogger, Blogspot and so forth), whereas the other (WordPress software) is a powerful, well-supported and free platform than can be used to drive practically any solution for small- to mid-enterprise blogs.
Comment by Roger — October 20, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Nice article Krishna.
I think the problem is that it’s not the fact the Blogger is a bad tool. It’s that hosting your blog with Blogger (or with any third-party vendor) is bad, for SEO.
Blogger enables you to send your posts via FTP to your own server so you could still use Blogger.com to manage and write content. A WordPress blog can be installed on your own server which, I assume you’ll agree, is preferably.
I just felt that didn’t come across that clear in your post.
Comment by David Mead — October 20, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
I agree with your view of using blogger or wordpress. Fundamentally there is no problem with it but the perception of having a x.blogger.com or x.wordpress.com blog does not go well. Even in the early days the internet if you had an aol.com email address you were considered a joke. If I stumbled upon company.wordpress.com I would think that this may not be a legitimate site. But if I go to company.com/blog or blog.company.com I would know that this is the actual business blog.
Comment by Rob H — October 21, 2008 @ 7:29 am
[…] De of BizGrowthNews wrote this article on Why Blogger is No Good for Business Blogging, the same reasons should apply to any person trying to leverage a website for […]
Pingback by Why you should have your own domain name | Blogger 911 Blog Consultant — October 21, 2008 @ 7:39 am
Hi,
Good post.
I tend to agree.
Having a business blog hosted in the website does help in getting good back links.
Regards
Ranjana
Comment by Ranjana — October 23, 2008 @ 4:14 am
I am a beginner, so I apologize if this comment is ignorant. However, the statement above that says that these types of blogs have “content go to a blog that is not hosted by you” seems out of place. Many companies have their own hosting sources and can switch different sites to the hosting site… A good example of a company is eVisibility, and they have a blog at http://www.dannydemichele.com/hire-me/ that seems to be wordpress but it is hosted by the company.
Comment by Erin — October 23, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Blogger is definitely not good for business blogging. It does not create a sense of brand, and quite frankly is not a good blogging platform to start with. I recommend my customers to use WordPress – great platform, can be installed in subdomain of main site or on a separate domain, has 1,000s plugins to extend functionality…
Comment by Max@Viliat-Blog — October 24, 2008 @ 12:48 am
So are you suggesting that companies avoid platforms like wordpress all together and custom code their blog software? Or simply to avoid using the free wordpress blog accounts? It seems like installing a WordPress on your own hosting would give you a much better starting point than trying to build blog software from scratch.
Comment by Jon Hustead — October 29, 2008 @ 2:11 pm
Krishna-
I would hope that the number of businesses using blogs would be even higher than what you mentioned, but it’s a good start. I completely agree with your opinion on using free, hosted blogging platforms for business blogs – not a good idea at all.
I wrote a long post about this over at the iePlexus blog, and it goes into detail about the whys and why nots when it comes to this topic. You can read that post here: http://www.ieplexus.com/blogging-news/157-business-blogs-deserve-better-than-blogspotcom/
Personally, I’m a big advocate of WordPress and its flexibility in open source when it comes to blogging for business.
Great post!
Kris Themstrup
iePlexus.com/blog
Comment by iePlexus — November 3, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
Graham’s anecdotal evidence aside, the fact remains that when you build a blog on a free blogging platform such as Blogger or even WordPress.com, you are building a house on land you do not own.
I’m currently working with a client who built an impressive blog on WordPress.com and now she wants to move to her own hosting platform for more control. Oh, but she’s going to lose A LOT in the move and that’s hard for her to accept.
Comment by Kathy @ Virtual Impax — November 3, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
Being new to the world of blogging this article was definitely an eye opener. There is so much more to creating a blog that actually has a presence… thanks for the tips.
http://www.customcareblog.ca
Comment by Cheryl Hurlburt — November 4, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
I really liked the point that having a blog as a component of your web site will make you stand out as a professional and serious about what you are doing. It is a key component of your marketing strategy.
Comment by Lynn Northrup — November 10, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
I have three Internet businesses and they all have the blog embedded in the actual website. I use Rapid Weaver for two of them and SBI! for the third. I experimented with third party blogs, but it never really worked all that well. I like having the blog an integral part of the website, especially for business.
Great post by the way!
Comment by cleaning business guru — November 20, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
Interesting article Krishna.
Are you suggesting that any business looking to develop a blog should engage their Web Agency to build them a blog solution so that they can house the blog within their site and retain their content?
This seems like a waste of money when there are so many great 3rd party options available with terrific inbuilt features. Assuming you use your own domain name (instead of a default you.wordpress.com address) and ensure you customise the look & feel to suit the brand, then I would have thought the 3rd party road is a cost effective and logical path to take.
Your thoughts?
Comment by Michael — November 24, 2008 @ 3:10 am
Hi, thanks for this. Good thing I just recently migrated to wordpress.
Comment by Millionaire Acts — December 2, 2008 @ 4:49 am
I agree that hosting your own blog will add creditbility, I would also argue that by hosting a blog on an entirely different site can as well. On a different site, you add links for pagerank, you can also create a totally separate authority to refer visitors to your home site. So, its a very hard choice to make, and sometimes trial and error or experimentation might do the trick.
Comment by Chad Atkins — January 3, 2009 @ 11:55 pm
Keep in mind, of course, that while WordPress.com may not be a good solution if you’d like to maintain complete control over things that WordPress the software is easily set up on your own domain if you have a little technical skill.
Comment by Patrick — January 6, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Blogger recently added a free capability to redirect to a subdomain of your primary domain, so I believe it is back in the game. For example, my web site is ‘www.startupprofessionals.com’ and my blog is ‘blog.startupprofessionals.com’. Thus search engines will index all my content of both to the same domain.
Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.
Comment by Martin Zwilling — January 12, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Blogger is for personal who low on budget but high in determination. If you can afford it, the best is using your own domain in the combination with wordpress.ORG. wordpress.COM is the worst, even you have to pay to edit the CSS. You want free and good, use blogger. You want free and bad use wordpress.COM. Whadaya think?
Comment by Isaac Yassar — February 13, 2009 @ 10:56 am
Well, WordPress is the most popular platform used by network marketers at the moment. The reason is that it’s more search engine friendly.
However I’ve got my Blogger blog incorporated into my website and I’m happy with search engine results.
So in my opinion it all depends on how you work on your blog, how often you update it with fresh content and the platform won’t make that big difference.
Reagards
Dan
Comment by Daniel Gebura — March 26, 2009 @ 5:42 am
Blogger recently added a free capability to redirect to a subdomain of your primary domain, so I believe it is back in the game. For example, my web site is ‘www.startupprofessionals.com’ and my blog is ‘blog.startupprofessionals.com’. Thus search engines will index all my content of both to the same domain.
Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.
Comment by Kshitij Pandey — April 26, 2009 @ 10:49 am
I agree that blogger is a bit behind in terms of business blogging. WordPress leads way ahead!
Comment by Lyndon — July 27, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
I hate blogger, but it’s like being in a bad marriage for many years — it’s hard to say good-bye when you’re used to the abuse.
WordPress Mu has looked cool to me, in theory, but I’m afraid of the potential problems with no direct tech support. I have a day job, you know? I don’t have time to be figuring out WordPress.
So, I guess I’ll stick with blogger for now.
Comment by Tony Vahl — December 16, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
Ironic you discourage Typepad when there was a paid Google ad for Typepad at the top of this page!
I’m trying to figure out blogging to market my business and appreciate your information.
Comment by Matt Phillips — March 3, 2010 @ 6:40 pm
Personally, as a graphic designer designer with BA in Advertising, I find that businesses using hosted services (wordpress.com, blogger, etc) for business blogging to be somewhat unprofessional.
Honestly, I compare it to receiving VistaPrint business cards from people, with the “get free cards” ad on the back. If I see that you don’t invest in your own business, why should I?
I feel that hosted services are cool if someone wants to get their feet wet in the blog pool or wants a personal blog on the cheap. But as a business, investing a little time in setting up a blog on your server is not only good for your SEO and site, but shows your potential clients that your serious about your business.
Comment by Gabriel — October 21, 2010 @ 11:00 am