Business people, who are new to the idea of business blogs, require some information on which blog host to select. After all, picking the wrong blog host can hurt your business blogging program.
A business blog requires all of the latest blogging features. Lacking any of them prevents the business blog from achieving its full marketing, public relations, and SEO potential.
Here are some suggestions of good blogging hosts for your brand new business blog.
The options provided are in no particular order. Keep in mind that some blog hosts are free, while others charge a nominal licensing fee for their services.
Some very good blog hosting companies include:
TypePad and Movable Type are very good. Both are offered by Six Apart as separate programs and licences.
The Six Apart people have strong blog customer support.
Six Apart do charge a nominal fee for their blog licensing, but is well worth the money, for the additional benefits and customer service provided.
WordPress is a very good, and free to use well known blog host. It is a full service system too.
t-Blog and Blog City are also good fully equipped hosts for bloggers. They are also free to use.
There are several other good hosts as well, and a search for blog hosts will probably turn up some other good options.
Most blog hosts will also enable you to publish your posts on your own company website, while using their interface to create the posts themselves.
Google owned Blogger is the blog host that I use, and have used it for several years. That said, I don't recommend it for business blog purposes.
There are too many limitations, as Blogger has not kept up with the most recent advances in blogging technology, including trackback, tags, and categories; to name just a few. I fully expect Blogger to announce some further upgrades in the near future, however.
When looking for a blog hosting company, check out some blogs that use that host first. Read them over and examine their layout and design.
Get the feel of the look and style of the blogs that appear on the available blog templates. Most blog hosts offer pre-coded templates, but in virtually all cases, they are highly customizable as to coding.
For SEO purposes, they usually require some re-coding, especialy in the pre-written CSS code. Most blog templates were written for design, and SEO value was not likely a consideration.
A good blog must include the following basic essentials:
comments, trackback, categories and tags, RSS feed
Comments are necessary for your visitors to interact with you. For a business blog, that is powerful customer feedback. It builds a relationship of trust with potential new customers and clients.
I believe that blogs are a conversation between the blogger and the reader. Comments provide that opportunity for dialogue.
Trackback is used to tell another blog that you quoted and linked to one of their posts. As a traffic builder, it is extremely powerful, as it builds a long tail of interconnected linking, all through the blogging community.
Trackbacks bring targeted visitor traffic back to your own blog, from many other blogs.
Categories and tags are also important. Categories classify the posts by subject matter like a library. Posts on business, customer service, marketing, etc. are all grouped together for ease of navigation and on site search.
Tags are used by the blog search engine Technorati to classify blog searches. Tag searches bring visitors and potential customers every day to the blogs that use them.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a syndicated feed from your blog, that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators. Your blog post can sit in a news reader, right beside a news article from CNN.
People can also subscribe directly, to your blog's specific RSS feed, and read your latest post as it appears, in real time. Simply place the buttons, to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed, in an easy to find location on your blog itself.
People will readily subcribe to your RSS feed, if your blog offers ineresting and useful information.
All of those traffic and relationship building features are essential for a good business blog.
By carefullly examining the various blog hosting options available, your business blog can look very professional.
A well written and designed blog will reflect well upon you and your company.
Happy blogging!
