Top Blogging Platforms for Businesses
Blogging offers businesses the opportunity to connect with their customers by integrating images, links, opinions, and experiences related to their industry. This not only raises your credibility and expertise, but provides an additional opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers through publishing knowledgeable information.
Top 7 Blogging Platforms and Features
1. Blogger – Post preview, social networking options, and developer hosted.
2. WordPress – Premade templates, traffic stats, social networking options, and is free and open sourced.
3. Tumblr – Premade templates, post preview, social networking options, and developer hosted.
4. TypePad – Premade templates, post preview, traffic stats, social networking options, and developer hosted.
5. Movable Type – Free and open sourced.
6. LiveJournal – Traffic stats and is free and open sources.
7. Durpal – Premade templates, post review, and is free and open sources.
Who is Blogging?
Over half of bloggers are male with the remaining 40% female. 81% of bloggers have been doing it for more than two years while 79% have college degrees and 43% have graduate degrees.
• The Hobbyist – Blogs are fun, no doubt about that. However no income is reported from blogging and remains difficult to measure success and personal satisfaction with it.
• Self-Employed – This person blogs full or part time for their own company.
• Part-Time – Blogging can also be used to supplement income as a part of their job.
• Corporate – Blogging as a full time for a company allows the sharing of expertise and a way to connect directly with the consumer.
How Blogging Can Help Your Business
Blogging can help your business the following ways.
• Marketing Integration – Convert your content from your blog into sales and marketing materials.
• SEO – Having an active relevant blog is the most powerful tool you can use to gains search engine ranking.
• Sign of Activity – A current blog shows that your website is updated and relevant.
• Customer Engagement – Creating a dialogue with your customers can bring your business large benefits. Have your customers contribute to your posts.
• Re-Purpose the Content – Repurpose the content for newsletters, e-books, and other publications.
• Marketing Segmentation – Many companies maintain multiple blogs to reach customers of different interests, demographic, and geography.
• Keyword Tag – Use meta tags to emphasize the importance of strategic words and phrases used within a web page.
• Humanize Your Brand – What better way to show how powerful and cost effective you are by showing the soft side of business and storytell.
Frequency of Using Business Blogs
Almost half of bloggers use a blog two to three times a week with 27% claiming to use a blog once a week. Over 60% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog recommendation and 80% of consumers trust information and advice provided on blogs.
10 Top Earning Blogs
Here is a list of some of the top earning blogs.
1. The Huffington Post – $2.3M on Pay Per Click
2. Mashable – $560,000 on Advertising Banners
3. Perez Hilton – $450,000 on Advertising Banners
4. Techcrunch – $400,000 on Advertising Banners
5. Smashing Magazine – $190,000 on Advertising Banners
6. Timothy Sykes – $150,000 on Affiliate Sales
7. Gothamist – $110,000 on Pay Per Click
8. Tuts Plus – $110,000 on Membership Area
9. Car Advice – $70,000 on Advertising Banners
10. Venture Beat – $62,000 on Pay Per Click
Although millions of people visit Brandon's blog each month, his path to success was not easy. Go here to read his incredible story, "From Disabled and $500k in Debt to a Pro Blogger with 5 Million Monthly Visitors." If you want to send Brandon a quick message, then visit his contact page here.