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The Advantages of a Blog are:
- A Blog can be a Website as well as a Blog
- You can set up your front page as a Static page or a blog
- You could even have a free one (less options and flexibility)
- You can install it into an existing website
- You can maintain it yourself
- You can choose from thousands of lay-out options
- Thousands of plugins to choose from
- Easy to have photos and videos on it.
- WordPress makes all this easy
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Ongoing Free Information providing value leading to:
- draws visitors to you
- repeat visits
- relationship with reader (rapport)
- establishing trust (credibility)
-
Google ‘loves’ blogs leading to:
- Better ranking
- More exposure
- More traffic
-
Social book marking made easy twitter, face book etc leading to:
- more exposure
- more traffic
- Comments including the reader
- leading to back links, more traffic
- It costs as little $3.50 a month (Hosting and Domain Name)
WordPress.org provides a platform with themes, widgets and plugins.
WordPress also has a great support system if you need to find out how to do something.
Themes allow you to create the kind of Layout, set-up, appearance that you want.
There are lots of free ones to choose from.
This blog uses the Suffusion theme and there will be a tutorial on how to customise it to your liking.
Widgets are like boxes which can contain text, video, optin-forms and other application.
You can customize how many, which ones and were you want to use these.
Plug-ins are extras which help with running and optimising your blog.
Examples of the important ones are:
Akismet – Security and spam control
Help with Search engine optimisation :
All in one SEO
Dagon Design sitemap Generator
Google Xml sitemaps
RB Internal Links
Backup:
WP-DB manager
Social Bookmarking:
Face book share
Tweetmeme (retweets)
Onlywire (can share up to 40 sites with one click)
Sexy Bookmarks – gives people a choice which ones they want to use to share with.
WordPress.org also gives the option of having
hidden and private and password protected pages
and if your blog is large enough to have a forum as part of the blog.
All of the WordPress.org options I mentioned are free.
You can buy extra themes and plugins if you want.
So the only expense is the Hosting and Domain name.
You can get a Domain Name from Go Daddy and hosting from Hostagator.
Ipage provides a package deal of the Hosting for $3.50 a month, which includes your choice.
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Thank you for this article! I’m so glad I found it, I recently purchased my first domain and am setting up a blog through wordpress but I would like it to be a website as well, not just about blogging. I’ve been a bit stalled in setting it up but after reading this I am feeling re-motivated! I’m thinking about creating another, more personal blog but am not sure if I want to set it up on WordPress or try it out on some other platform like Tumblr (which a blogger friend has recommended to me), have you used Tumblr at all?
Hi Yorinda,
Thanks for sharing this informative post on the advantages of a blog, and in particular on the WordPress platform.
These days a blog is a must have tool for ANYONE that wants to create a web presence and brand themselves.
Using the plugins that you suggested is a great start to getting your blog up and running and optimized, so you start to get traffic.
You blog acts as your central hub for ALL your business activities with links flowing in and out, is easy to maintain and the dynamic and fresh content will hopefully help to build relationships and the interaction can’t be beat.
Keep up the great work,
Marc
Marc Korn recently posted..Your First 30 Days in MLM and 2 Ways To Profit
Great summary of the benefits of using a self-hosted WordPress.org blog or website. I build WordPress blogs for people for a living so I can see that you actually know what you are talking about in this issue. Helpful information and nice list of plugins. So many people don’t know the first thing about WordPress blogs so this article is a great place to start. Some of the most important points that make a blog different are the fact that Google Loves Blogs AND blogs are more socially interactive and gets people to come back again and again.
Thanks,
Jupiter Jim
Jupiter Jim recently posted..WordPress Tutorial: How to Update to WordPress 3.2 or WordPress 3.2.1
Great Article! This is exactly the answers I was looking for! Thank You for the information.
Chuck Ferraro recently posted..How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods
Hi Yorinda:
Thanks for the very comprehensive post! I just started using WordPress 5 months ago and I am loving it.
Blessings,
Kevin
Kevin Martineau recently posted..Stuck is a state of mind- and it’s curable
I am glad to read this post. I am in the process of combining my blog and website into a wordpress blog. I especially like the social media widgets and plugins that are available. Thanks for providing more info.
Hey this is a great post Yorinda with lots of juicy info on the many how to’s of blogging now available to us. Your posts are always full of great info and value and I love to share them around.Your doing an awesome job. Keep them coming…
Thanks and Cheers
Caryn
Caryn recently posted..Latest Trend or Life Changing Service
Wow Yorinda what a list. I’m having problems with blog.com not even being able to respond to my comments so while I’ve put so much time an energy into it I’ve got to consider other options and you mentioned Host Gator which host my website. I did not consider them for my blog. Thanks so very much for this. I’ll see if I can point my current blog to a HG blog. Any suggestions from anyone that has made a transition would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Michael
Wow…lots of good stuff here, Yorinda. A run through of the salient points on the advantages of blogging. It’s hard to resist. Really colourful site too. Will come again. My favourite word press theme is Socrates…it is so simple to monetise…anyway. Will be sharing your stuff for sure.
Take care
Peter
Peter Chapman recently posted..Creating Good Karma – The Key to Network Marketing Success!
A very detailed list of why blogs are so awesome. I personally have seen a huge difference in my business with a blog. I share many of the positives you’ve listed above … great job putting such a comprehensive list for your readers.
Janette
You said it all wordpress is probably the easiest content management system every built and every blogger loves it. I don’t know what i would have become without wordpress especially with my limited knowledge on website design. Yet i can build a good looking website with wordpress and have a nice theme installed on it
Loic recently posted..Outdoor Dog Kennel- 3 Best outdoor dog kennels you can choose from
A very clear and to the point list for the fairly new blogger. Thanks Yorinda.
Hopefully this will simplify things for a lot of people.
Yorinda,
We agree that having a blog as our main site has made it so much simpler to set up and maintain. As well, with all the themes, widgets and plug-ins, it gives us so many options on making our blog a very informative and useful site for our prospects and customers as well as ourselves.
Cool list of the features and benefits of having a WordPress blog.
Thanks,
~ Pat and Lorna
http://TheCoolestCouple.com