Conclusions on Blogging

With the blogging workshop imminent http://bit.ly/embdig15 I have decided to blog my conclusions on the 3 platforms I used to in the development stage

From the outset I was clear in my own mind that I wanted to deliver something that was not about the Content Management systems (CMS) that many blogging tools have become but focussed on the idea of personal journalism or being an online diarist. In other workshops I’ve talked about the importance of posting regular and relevant content to our business website and this would include the act of blogging. However, everyone’s case is different and one person may post their entire written output into their business website whilst another person may desire a different vehicle in order to write content that is not pertinent for their business/website. In either case, building up a portfolio of interesting and useful content will have value to the writer from both a personal and business perspective (in my opinion)

I set out to use Blogger, Wordpress and Tumblr for my Blogging workshop. I chose these tools for a few reasons. First of all I was already reasonably familiar with them but more importantly they are all free, fairly easy to use and all very popular and mainstream.There are other tools for sure  but I think these three tools give a good range of options for  blogging.  I did a quick check using namechk http://namechk.com/ and found that I could use the name  steveblogstory on all three platforms so my address for the three was www.steveblogstory   followed by dot.wordpress.com - dot.blogspot.com and dot.tumblr.com respectively.

With the blogging workshop imminent I’m getting into practicalities. My first decision will be to ditch Tumblr. In my opinion it’s way too “niche” for what I have in mind. Too many platform specific idiosyncrasies for my liking. My hunch is that if you like Tumblr then you probably love it so I’ll still suggest that participants try it out but it will not form part of the practical workshop.

This leaves Blogger and Wordpress. Well I love Wordpress and Blogger is really THE original in my book. The downside of Blogger is that I think it’s stayed pretty static over the past few years but that might be a plus. Wordpress is constantly progressing and is really sophisticated but as I write it seems to be half way through a transition that is a little annoying. One or the other of these platforms will certainly meet any bloggers needs with the added bonus with Wordpress of installing the software on your own webspace if you want to go the whole hog. So, now we’re down to two platforms for the workshop. I’ll blog later when we see how it all went.