Did you know that marketers who blog gain 67% more leads than marketers who don’t?
Blogging is incredibly powerful because it’s content that your business creates, distributes, and owns—it’s all proprietary. This provides a controlled way to engage with your customers, offer value by sharing your knowledge, and drive relevant traffic to your website.
Blogging is a long-term effort that requires ongoing care and attention. But when it’s done right, it can really help any business get a leg-up on the competition. (And remember, you can always outsource and get an get a great return on your investment.)
Think about it: Blogging not only gives your audience a steady flow of enticing and useful content, but it also gives your business a steady stream of updates to boost SEO rankings. It’s also powerful content to share on your social media platforms. That’s why blogging is such a key part of any successful marketing strategy!
If you’re ready to start blogging, here’s a list of blogging platforms to make the process a piece of cake.
1. WordPress
In 2004, WordPress began as a blog-focused platform and has now become one of the most sophisticated blogging solutions and full-fledged content management systems available today. In fact, WordPress is the most popular solution, powering more than 39% of all websites on the internet. And it’s the platform we recommend for your website.
WordPress has all the features to make it a robust, yet approachable blogging platform. For example, you can manage all media content, posts, user permissions, content versioning and choose from countless themes and plugins to customize your WordPress blog any way you’d like.
You can choose between the hosted and self-hosted versions of WordPress but we absolutely recommend setting up a self-hosted site. If you need help setting up a self-hosted WordPress site, get in touch and we’d be happy to help.
2. Medium
In 2011, Medium hit the scene as a quality content-driven alternative to sites like Reddit. It operates more like a social network, combining a user-friendly blogging interface with a robust community, that enables Medium bloggers to trend both within the Medium ecosystem and outside it as well.
Medium provides bloggers and marketers with an easy and cost-effective way to publish blog posts and get them out there to a lot of readers. Many people like that Medium doesn’t require any technical setup or web hosting.
Medium comes with its own host of features including publisher profiles, built-in analytics, mobile image grids, and inline code writing. It also offers the chance for anybody to make it onto Medium’s homepage and go viral both inside and outside the platform.
3. Ghost
John O’Nolan, the former Deputy Head of Design for WordPress, founded Ghost in 2013 as an open source platform, with the goal of returning to the WordPress-like roots of a publishing platform. Ghost is currently a niche player in comparison to WordPress, but it does make publishing simple and straightforward.
Ghost comes with its own set of features such as a markdown editor, the ability to collaborate in a team, content scheduling, native apps, and full control over both your code and JSON API.
4. Tumblr
Does your business have lots of visual content? Then Tumblr might be an option worth considering. This platform allows you to publish blog posts, photos, GIFs, links, quips, quotes, audio snippets, videos, art, and really any other content you create.
Although Tumblr is more of a social network than a blogging platform, it’s still a powerful way to get your business’ message across in many different ways, particularly for B2C brands.
If you’d like to learn more about how blogging can grow your business, get in touch with Barker Social. We offer a free marketing consultation, and we’d be happy to evaluate your current practices and suggest how we can help accomplish all your blogging goals together.
