Web Merchant Resource Center

Ok, so you have decided that starting a blog would be an avenue for you to increase exposure to your business online and that you have the commitment it would take to start and maintain a blog . . . .

So, “how do I get started”, you ask.

Excellent question, and there are some important considerations to take into account before you do.

First and foremost, you need to understand the difference between hosted solutions and hosting your own application. There are advantages and disadvantages to both — as with pretty much everything in business, there is a cost-benefit analysis you will need to determine.

Hosted solutions

The biggest advantage of using a hosted solution such as Google’s Blogger.com or Automatic’s WordPress.com is that these are free, you can get up and running very quickly, all of the application software is managed on the host side . . . so you have quick setup and ease of use.

The biggest disadvantages of using a hosted solution is that you do not have much control over your blog — most especially control over features, how your pages look, plug-ins you might want to use to enhance your blog and interaction with end-users, or customizations you might want to make to your layout and functionality.

Hosting your own application

The greatest advantage to hosting your our application is that you have total control over it.

However, this approach may not be free ( it will need to be hosted somewhere ), it may not be a quick to launch ( as you my need a developer to install, set up, configure, and customize ), and it will be up to you or your developer to manage updates to the core application and it’s plug-ins and customizations. Honestly, if you are not considerably experienced in a wide variety of application development platforms, are not familiar with making backups of your database, etc., you will probably need to contract a developer to get your blog up and running for you and to manage upgrades to the core application and plug-ins.

In our experienced opinion, though, it’s almost always best to have full control of your application — no matter what the application, blog, shopping cart, CMS, etc. or otherwise — rather than use 3rd party hosted solutions. One might get started or “dip a toe” into an new concept using free, 3rd party solutions . . . . but every “serious” business will sooner than later hit that moment when you find that you need to control you own application.

Cost/Benefit

If you are just wanting to dip your toes into the water and experiment which the concept of blogging, then you might want to start with a free, 3rd party hosted option.

However, if and/or when you get serious about blogging, you will will almost certainly want to host your own application and realize enough advantages from that approach.

WMS will be happy to help you either way. Just contact us or request a quote.

Tags: Blogging, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Blogging for Business. 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.