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It seems like everybody has a blog these days. Do I need one?

Posted on | January 8, 2007 | 1 Comment

Good question! Of course, the answer varies according to your needs and goals. A blog is a great website alternative for artists and individuals who would like a low-cost website that they can maintain themselves. A blog is also a great addition to your regular website that will help you keep in touch with your customers and to keep your website fresh, adding new content as often as desired.

First of all, what IS a blog? Blogs started out as basic web pages, written in HTML, by the geeky types who would write about their adventures on the web. It would act as a diary, or log, of their surfing activity, with links to other sites. These pages were called web logs, and the name was shortened to “blog.” You can read more about the history of blogs on Wikipedia.

There are a number of ways to obtain a blog. There are many blogging websites and communities such as Blogger, Vox, WordPress, and Live Journal, to name a few. They all generally work in the same manner.

Sites like LiveJournal and Vox allow you to restrict who can view your site based on their membership in the system. For example, artist Bernie Berlin has a journal on LiveJournal where she talks about her animal rescue efforts. If you went to see thecre8tivei.livejournal.com, you would see all of her public entries. You can read them, but you can’t read any of the entries she has marked “Friends only”. Other LiveJournal members, who are designated as her “Friends” can, however. Different services offer different levels of privacy, as well. So far, I like Vox the best for keeping the personal stuff hidden or available to specific people.

A lot of these services are free, unless you want to take advantage of more advanced features. They are easy to set up and most offer extensive help files if you get stuck. LiveJournal is a great community and many members volunteer to help the support team answer questions. Another advantage to these blogging communities is that you can search other blogs and find bloggers with similar interests. There are communities you can join, as well. I love rubber stamping, so I belong to a few stamping communities on Live Journal. It’s a great way to exchange ideas and learn new techniques.

If you are looking to blog as a part of your business marketing plan, I do suggest taking things a step further than signing up for one of the aforementioned blogging communities. Installing software such as WordPress, Moveable Type, or Nucleus onto your own web server, is, in my opinion, the professional route to take. The software can be installed on your web server and will be accessible via your own domain name. As you can see, my web design business blog is eeep.com/blog. I have the blog linked to my site proper, as well. You can set up your blog however you like. For example, I have an artist client who wanted to maintain her site herself, without having to ask me to make updates regularly. We set up her blog as her entire website. Visit www.artsyfran.com to see this site in action.

eeep! productions is offering a blog package that will include setup, configuration and 1 hour of training. The blogging software we use is WordPress, which has thousands of themes (the plugin that gives your blog it’s own look) and other plugins that allow you to make your blog do exactly what you want it to. The whole package is $700, not including hosting. Your new blog can be installed on your own web host, or you can take advantage of eeep! productions’ hosting services.

Future articles will discuss how to use your blog for marketing and blog etiquette. Happy Blogging!

Category: blogs, website content

Comments

One Response to “It seems like everybody has a blog these days. Do I need one?”

  1. eeep! productions blog » Using Your Blog as a Marketing Tool
    March 26th, 2007 @ 9:23 am

    [...] A while back, we discussed the benefits of having a blog and how to choose the type of blogging service or software to use. [...]

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