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Part 3b - Starting a Business Blog - Tech Matters

Different blog programs have different features, but they all do essentially the same thing. They convert the text that you type into an HTML web page (known as a blog post), and they do it at the click of a button. You simply type your blog post, add links or images as desired, and click a "Publish" button. The blog application will then publish your post onto the web, making it a part of your blog.

Most blogs are published in reverse-chronological format, with the most recent post at the top of the first page. Generally speaking, there are three ways to publish content to a blog. When I say "ways to publish a blog," I'm talking about where your blog will be located on the web.

Here are your three publishing options:

1. Have the blog hosted by a blog company.
2. Make the blog an extension of your website.
3. Give the blog a domain of its own.

Option 1 - Host your blog with a blog company.

In this option, your blog will reside under the blog company's web domain. For instance, Blogger's web domain is blogspot.com, so if Jane Doe setup a blog under this domain it would look something like this: www.JaneDoe.blogspot.com. Jane will never truly own this domain, because it is part of Blogspot.com. This is one of the down sides of this bog hosting option.

Option 2 - Make the blog an extension of your website.

In this option, your blog will reside on your own web domain, but as a sub-domain of your main website. In other words, the blog will be an extension of your website. One of my marketing blogs, for instance, is an extension of the website ArmingYourFarming.com. I publish my blog to a sub-domain of that website: www.armingyourfarming.com/realestatemarketing/

Option 3 - Give the blog a domain of its own.

In this option, your blog will reside in the top-level (or "root") directory of your website domain. So the blog becomes the website itself. When somebody types in the root web address ending with ".com" ... they land on the blog itself. For an example of this, visit my blog at www.ceoblogwatch.com. This is a blog, but it resides on its own domain. It is not an extension of a website like my real estate marketing blog under option #2.

Which Hosting Option is Best?

The blog publishing strategies in this book can be applied to any of the three scenarios above, but I recommend option #2 or #3. All of my blogs are published through options #2 and #3 above. I avoid option #1 entirely. There are several reasons for this. First, I like having the website and blog under the same domain. It's just easier to manage.

But there's a more important reason why I avoid option #1. I once had a blog disappear from blogspot.com (remotely hosted by Blogger). I mean it just up and disappeared. I emailed Blogger's "support" team, but they basically ignored me. Did I violate some term of use? Not that I'm aware of. It was just a harmless informational blog. I wasn't selling anything, and I wasn't even running ads. Just a basic blog. And then poof, it was gone.

Because the blog was being hosted by Blogger, I had no way to retrieve anything. And because Blogger is a free service with "as-is" disclosures, nobody seemed to care that my blog had vanished.

After that incident, I vowed never again to host a blog under somebody else's domain. I still use Blogger as a blog publishing tool, but I publish the blog itself onto my own domain, where my website is hosted. Bottom line — I recommend you put your blog onto a web domain that you own, regardless of which application you use.

So now that your blog is up and running from a technical standpoint, what next? Now it's time to think about the blog's design and usability.