Do you need a website, or a blog?
Short version: the two are the same. But there ‘is’ a difference between a website and a blog, and you’d be better off knowing that difference.
Some basics: When you put up web presence for your business online, you do it via a web host. That is web hosting. For an address you need a domain name. But how would you upload content to your website? And how would you update, maintain and add to that content? That you’d do via a Content Management System (CMS). There was a time when these CMS’s would sell for a lot of money, but now, thanks to Open Source mostly, you get the best CMS’s for free! Case in point: WordPress. WordPress is a CMS for blogs, hence a blogging platform. There are other CMS’s like Joomla and Drupal that are used for this purpose, but you as a business owner need to know the essential detail and i.e. a WordPress CMS is the best CMS you can have for your website.
What is a blog?
A blog is short for weblog and was designed for just that, logging your thoughts on the web, like a diary. Most of the blogs still serve that purpose for millions of bloggers around the world. But given the ultimate focus of blogging i.e. to get as many novice computer users online as possible, the blogging platforms are inherently easy-to-use and automatically play well with search engine optimization and social media sharing.
What is a website?
Well, it is any page on the Internet. So a blog is a subset of a website. All blogs are websites. A forum online is a website. So is an auction site. These are all examples of different types of websites.
But what does my business need?
Your business needs a blog. And more specifically, your website needs to be set up as a WordPress blog.
Here’s why: WordPress as a blogging platform is very flexible. You can set up a blog, like this one here, or you can set up a blog that behaves like a website (like www.Kemaak.com for example). But you being a business owner, should:
- Get a WordPress self-hosted blog on your domain name.
- Start off with just a simple website model (i.e. an About Us page, your Product or services page(s) and the all-too-important contact page)
- Slowly, but surely, start putting up content on your website. Putting up content will be very easy for you because you already have a blogging platform running your website. That blogging platform (i.e. WordPress) is specifically designed to make content sharing easy! You will automatically be Search Engine Optimized (search engines like Google and Bing play nice with blogs as compared to other platforms)
- Also, putting up content on your website, is THE NUMBER ONE REASON you should have a website for your business in the first place. Having relevant content up on your website is what will engage your user in a non-spammy way. Then the possibilities are endless.
This will let you get comfortable with the whole online ‘attitude’, and let you interact with your online customers in a more meaningful way. There is nothing worse than a ‘never updated’ blog, so putting up a blog as your website just because it is the ‘in thing’ is just not the right thing. 🙂
But remember, blog is one of the best, if not the best, way to interact with your customers online. You as a business owner, should always consider your customer, and the best thing you could do for your customers online is have a healthy, relevant blog.
Any questions?
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Click here to find out more about the WordPress blogging platform.
