It seems like almost everyone has a blog these days – my bank, my newspaper, even my mom. Most of the popular blog platforms are free or have free versions for use. Many people want to know which one to use to start a blog. Which is the easiest one to use? Which one can you put videos in? Which one has cool looking back grounds? Etc. etc. etc.
When you start looking at reviews the same platforms keep coming up. The nice thing is that they almost all have the same kind of features and are all fairly easy to go from 0 to blogging in half an hour (or less). I’m going to recommend three FREE platforms that appear in nearly every Top 10 list. I’ve extensively tested each of them and suggest you base your choice of blog platform on what kind of blog you want to make.
WordPress: http://wordpress.com/
WordPress feels like “professional” blog platform. It has every option you could possibly want on the control dashboard. With all the options WordPress is very powerful, but also comes with a slight learning curve. The themes are often geared toward a slick professional look and feel. If you have a business or want to be business-like, WordPress is the blog site for you. This blog, the McCombs Office Solutions and Tips, is a WordPress site.
Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/
Tumblr spelled without the “e” claims to be “the easiest way to blog.” The paired down user interface has just seven buttons (text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, video) that let you post just about anything you could put on the internet. Tumblr like the name implies is the “hip” blog platform. It’s a favorite for picture blogs and micro-bloggers who want to post many short posts. With almost 700 themes to choose from tumblr is a great platform for self expression. It’s kind of like FaceBook, Twitter and your iPhone all crashed into each other and started blogging.
Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/
Blogger is the “classic” platform. One of the first on the scene, with credited book deals and movie references galore. It is owned by Google so that makes connection with a Gmail account or other other Google applications easy. What was once thought of as a writer’s platform now has all the latest features, and with its easy start-up feature you can go from no blog to self publishing in under 15 minutes.
The best thing to do is read the about pages for each platform, look at some sample blogs, and experiment to find the platform that is going to best speak to the audience you are after.
Good info. Thanks Jeff.
i like wordpress more control especially self hosted wordpress
Another free blog platform that definitely belongs on this list is
posterous.com
It is extremely easy to use PLUS you can connect it to other platforms and re-broadcast it’s content or links to the content to twitter, FB, WordPress and other micro blogs.
This re-broadcast feature gives posterous blogger a significant time saving advantage. You can make a single post and it is multiplied to your social media channels automatically. If you wanted to check it out I have linked one of my posterous blogs to my name… and as I posted it the post replicated to our twitter @stockingfactory, facebook and other social media.
I just started to experiment with the posterous platform and so far love it!
i use wordpress (can’t load plugins), blogger and some others blogs systems
i preffer WP & Blogger – Google too
with tool scribefire you may write easy & fast
Personally, I love WordPress! It really gives total control on your blog.
Just as Britax said, self hosted WordPress interface is the best in the market.
Thanks for sharing this information. Just bookmarked the post!
I use several different free blog platforms and my favourite would have to be Wordpres because the great plugins you can get for WordPress are so easy to install.
I use Blogger for all my blogs. I think it works perfectly fine and I don’t need hosting.
For SEO purposes,i think the WordPress blog platform is best of all as i have ranked many websites highly using WordPress.