Building a well-designed website is a crucial element in the development of a detailed content marketing strategy. But the ever-changing landscape of consumer demand and technology requires businesses to do more. It is increasingly important for today's businesses to regularly engage with their customers. This is where a business blog comes in.
A blog is a valuable marketing tool because it is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness, attract prospective customers, and enhance your inbound marketing efforts. The only thing you need to get started is a blogging platform.
That said, not all blogging platforms are equal. There are so many great choices available, too, so choosing the right one might be tricky.
How to Choose the Right Blogging Platform
The right blogging platform for you will depend on some factors. Namely, your level of technical skill, your target audience, and your budget.
For example, if you're not very tech-savvy, you'll want a low- learning- curve blogging platform that's easy to set up and doesn't require any coding skills.
Defining your target audience means that you can narrow your choice down to the blogging platform that is most frequented by your audience.
And nobody knows better than you, the business owner, how important it is to manage costs to maximize business profits. This means you'll have to create a budget for your blog and find a blogging platform that falls within its scope.
Once you've carefully considered all of these factors, choosing the right blogging platform for your business blog should be a walk in the park!
However, to make the selection process even easier, we've compiled a list of some of the best blogging sites below:
The Best Blogging Platforms in 2021
Wix: Best Blogging Platform
Wix is one of the best if not the #1 blogging platform on the market today. With WIX, you can design almost any type of blog using any of the many useful built-in tools that allow you to start writing content instantly.
Wix also provides a Blog App that includes all the built-in social features, layout templates, customizable dividers, and integrated media collection available on the web version, with the added benefit of being able to create and publish your blog on-the-go.
WordPress: Best Site Blogging Platform for Flexibility
WordPress.org is a free, open-source blogging platform that allows you to build a blog in a matter of minutes. WordPress also offers unmatched flexibility because you get full control over your blog - full customization options, a wide range of publishing tools, and thousands of plugins and themes.
It's important to note, however, that even though WordPress is the best free blogging platform, you'll have to pay for web hosting to get your WordPress blog live on the Internet.
Medium: Best Traditional Free Blogging Platform
Medium is a blogging platform like WordPress.com, but with a social networking feature.
Like WordPress.org, you can start publishing immediately on this blogging platform—but without the hassle of SEO. Medium's algorithm plays a significant role where and when a content piece is shown, but the idea is simple: medium blog posts are social media posts too. Each blog post is shareable, searchable, bookmarkable, and acts as a gateway to your profile that other users can follow.
What's more, Medium has a simple interface without bells and whistles. This makes it one of the best all-around traditional blogging sites.
Linkedin: Best Blog Platform for Businesses and Professionals
You are probably already familiar with LinkedIn as the social network for businesses and professionals. But with its open-to-all-accounts Pulse feature, LinkedIn has become a very powerful blogging platform.
LinkedIn’s Pulse comes with an integrated share option, a simple publishing interface, and straightforward analytics tools.
Also, with Pulse, LinkedIn offers you a ready-made audience who will engage with your blog posts in the form of your connections and followers. And with the option of adding hashtags to your blog post before publishing, you'll be able to reach a wider LinkedIn audience.
Instagram: Best Blog Platform for Creatives and Visual Content
Instagram is the blogging platform for you if you're a creative or business owner whose content medium is video and images. Because unlike other blogging sites on this list, Instagram focuses on visuals (videos and images).
Making it the perfect platform for microblogging. Especially for telling your brand’s story using short, engaging visual content. And with over one billion active users, creating a blog on Instagram will get your content in front of a very large audience.
What's more, with a business account you'll be able to analyze how your audience interacts with your content, which can help inform your future content marketing strategies.
Facebook: Largest Audience Size
Facebook isn't a traditional blogging platform, but just about every audience is on Facebook. So, while you can create a microblog on this platform, we recommend creating a Facebook blog fan page to drive traffic to a more traditional blog. Thus helping to grow its popularity and increase your readership.
Also, If you use Facebook properly for your content marketing effort, you might not need to rely on search engines for conversions and traffic.
Guest Blogging: Building Your Authority
Guest blogging is a tried and tested strategy for building high-quality backlinks, increasing search engine rankings, fostering an uptick of targeted traffic to your blog, and building authority in your niche - for free!
Guest posting as a blogging platform works because it helps you build trust and familiarity with your target audience. You not only get to bask in the glow of an influential blog's reputation, but you also gain authority points because you're featured on their pages - an implicit endorsement of you and your business! And people do business with companies they know and like.
What’s the Best Blogging Platform for You?
Well, at this point, you've got all the information you need to make that choice. But always remember to go and try out some of these platforms first before you settle on one.
