Blogs have become increasingly popular over the last few years.
Whereas traditional web sites are still popular, the introduction of blogs has made it possible for many more individuals and organisations to gain a presence on the Internet. There are various blog systems available, and whereas this is not a recommendation, personally I use WordPress.
The advantages of blogs are as follows:
1 Low cost-the blogging software is free, so the main costs are the buying of a domain name and hosting, both of which are relatively low cost.
2 Flexibility of design-the look of the blog is known as the theme. There are literally thousands of themes (most of which are free) and the introduction of a theme is easy as literally as loading and activating.
3 There are thousands of plug ins, again most of these are free. These include facilities like Google verification (essential if you want to be found by the main search engine) and the introduction of a contact form.
4 There are a wide variety of widgets, including such facilities as the introduction of a search facility on the site.
5 Easy to load photos and images-increasingly we are seeing more images on sites as it has been said, “a picture paints a thousand words”
6 Videos are easy to load-increasingly people are using videos to deliver a message rather than writing lengthy text. From start to finish I recorded a video and loaded it onto my site in less than 1 hour.
The steps involved:
Recording the video-I used the web camera integrated into my laptop. The software I used is available within my auto responder at a very low cost.
Editing the video-I didn’t like the first video, so making another one was literally as easy as pressing the “re-record” button.
Filing the video on my computer
Loading the video onto my blog-this literally took me 10 minutes
7 Logos are easy to load-I have some software which is very reasonably priced.
I design my own logo and load it onto the blog.
The software lets me use various templates, allows me to adjust font styles and colours and enables me to type my own text.
8 Search engine friendly-you will see many blogs near the top of search engines for the following reasons:
Because blogs are easy to change, they are frequently updated, which is key as far as the search engines are concerned
Videos are favoured by the search engines
Keywords are easy to add-with the introduction of a plug in keywords are easy to enter. If you can use a word processor, then you will find it easy to add the keywords
Google verification-many web site owners are not aware that their sites need to be verified in order to be found on the search engines. On blogs this is a very easy exercise
9 Free training available-if you go to the search engines and type “free WordPress training” or “free WordPress training videos” you should find some training
10 Easy to use-with traditional web sites making changes could be costly and time consuming as you wait for a web designer to make the changes. With a blog you can literally do it yourself. I can literally add a page to my blog in less than half an hour.
