WordPress, Blogger or Tumblr? What’s the Best for Blogging?
Want to start blogging without investing money? Well, the easiest way is to join any three of the world’s most famous blogging platforms; namely, WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr and start sharing your rants for the world! Ofcourse, everyone is aware of these blogging giants, but not many people are able to make the right decisions when it comes to choosing one of them. Should you opt for Tumblr – a more creative, interactive platform? Or WordPress, which is a professional platform or Bloggger/Blogspot, which is more of a, ‘getting along’ with Google? If you’ve ever asked these questions, this article is meant to guide you to making the right decision.
Why is it Important to Know Which Works Best? Well, first, each of the blogging platform caters to a different demographic and a different type of content requirement. For example, Tumblr is mostly about teenage posts, creative work posts, quotes and motivational stuff and things that people like to share visually rather than textually.
On the other hand, WordPress is a platform used by millions of businesses and serious bloggers worldwide, who want to do a lot more than mere blogging. It is for people who want to at some point later make money out of their blog or expand it to accomplish other goals.
Lastly, Blogger, Google’s brainchild is for people who want to get some good traffic from Google itself. It’s not as smooth as WordPress, but it’s not bad either. Great for leisure blogging. So you see, the platform you choose to host your content has a direct bearing on your marketability and viewership.
We take a look at 3 popular blogging platforms of today, and why they can help you promote yourself better and increase your audience.
WordPress
WordPress is popular for a variety of reasons but one of the ways it absolutely excels over others is in its marketing potential. WordPress blogs generally put the bloggers (and brands) up and center.
But WordPress is not just for blogs. In fact businesses and individuals can use it to build up entire websites, even the nifty little blog section.
In fact, if you really want to make little changes here and there on the website, WordPress is easy enough to use by yourself, thus eliminating the need to get a designer or coder on board. For blog creators, that means new pages and posts are completely DIY things.
The changes that you make on your website are instantaneous. That means your audience wont have to wait days before someone decides to FTP that new page or article on the website. The owner of a WordPress website can make the changes via an easy-to-use dashboard and update the site as required. In fact, WordPress comes built-in with social integration options that can let you and your audience share posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.
Some Stats:
- Founded: May 27th, 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little of Automattic
- Size: 45.8% of the internet uses WP and 2 in every 5 websites as of December 2023
- Pros: flexible customization, numerous functionality, security and backup
- Cons: theme can only be changed when paid, limited functionality with FREE version.
- Costs: Your domain name and hosting can be bought together for about $3-6 per month.
Who Should Use WordPress?
Professionals, entrepreneurs, serious bloggers, online marketers, and anyone who wants an aesthetically pleasing platform without not much fuss. More importantly, people who want flexibility in choosing their own domain and hosting space should opt for WordPress as it offers a free hosted version too. If you require full control over your content and hosted files, going for a hosting service like BlueHost is recommended.
Tumblr
Tumblr is home to 132 million blogs and growing. In the US, its considered one of the top 15 websites. Pretty great stats that vouch for the popularity of the blogging and social platform right?
Quantcast, a web analytics firm, has found that Tumblr receives 5.5 million page views in May 2013. With stats like these, no wonder Tumblr offers brand sand people to expand their reach and raise brand awareness.
Tumblr is popular in terms of the sheer amount of customization and personalization that it offers its users. It is a more multimedia-friendly blogging platform which makes it great for visuals. Promoting your brands with image-based posts is a good way to start off in Tumblr since 50% posts in the microblogging platform involve pictures. This makes Tumblr a great tool for companies and individuals that wish to reach out to people without any language barriers.
They always did say that pictures are worth a thousand words, making Tumblr a most popular destination for picture-based posts.
- Founded: February 2007, by David Karp
- Total Posts: 99 billion posts, 420 million users with 217 million blogs
- Pros: great for photography blogging, creative posts, easy functionality
- Cons: not a great place for business activities.
- Costs: Free for all!
Who Should Use Tumblr?
People who want to do photography blogs. In fact its has deeper integration with Flickr, making it easier to do photo-based posts easily. Tumblr is also good for audio and video bloggers. It features support for embedded support for services like SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify and more. Short form text lovers can also benefit from Tumblr’s microblogging focus. Its perfect for posting haikus, short poems, quotes etc. And its faster to use Tumblr to post those short updates.
Blogger
Blogger might not offer the wealth of customization features like WordPress and Tumblr but it remains a good blogging platform for driving traffic to your page, thanks to its Google+ integration and SEO prowess. According to Hubspot, a SEO authority, businesses with a blog receive 55% more traffic than those who don’t. Blogger’s deep integration with Google (not surprising since the company owns Blogger) makes it great for monetization. Blogger is great for Google Adsense, Google+ for comments support and FeedBurner for RSS syndication.
- Founded: August 2013, 1999 by Evan Williams of Pyra Labs and bought by Google in February, 2003
- Total Users: As of 2013, Google counted 540 million active users.
- Pros: Easy to start and use, good for Google traffic and ads, simple platform even for newbies
- Cons: Limited theme options, childish outlook and not very professional
- Costs: Pay $10/year for a domain name without the “.blogspot” extension – otherwise totally free.
Who Should Use Blogger?
People who need more storage space for their blog. Blogger gives you 1 GB free space plus additional space from your Google+ account. This service is easy if you don’t need customization, just a means to easily set up your blog and post away. Blogger does however offer automatic maintenance services such as backup, security, spam protection features, and much more. So if you’re just a writer who wants to have a word out there, without being finicky, Blogger is just right!
3 different blogging platforms. 3 different routes. 3 different ways of capturing and nurturing an audience online. Based on how you want to promote you and your business online, you can choose a platform that best personifies your brand.
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