What's the Right Blogging Platform for My Promo Business?

You’ve decided to step up your marketing and start a blog to publish content. Before you start, since this is a long-term strategy, it is wise to make an informed decision about where to house your content to get the most benefit from this effort.

The best place to publish your blog is WordPress. Despite many other platforms in the market, it continues to be the preferred platform for blogging, worldwide.

What if I don’t have a WordPress website and don't want to change platforms?

There are many other website platforms that can work well for your promo business. Maybe you have an e-commerce site, or a template-based site such as Wix, Weebly or SquareSpace, or it’s just an industry cookie-cutter site you’ve upgraded.

Most of these web-builder platforms offer a blog function that you can use. But it is not in your best interest to use them for your blog.

Why not use the blog function that comes with my site?

First off, you want to think about your long-term business goals. Chances are your business will evolve, and so will your website. As you grow, at some point you might find your current platform doesn’t support your business moving to the next level, which happens more often than you think.

If your content is housed within the platform, it will be nearly impossible to transfer it to a new site. If it’s on WordPress, it will be a non-issue.

You really cannot afford to lose such an important business asset. And it’s not just the content itself, but also the online footprint your content creates.

What happens with these types of templatized websites is that you don’t really own them and don’t have any control over them. If you ever decide to move into a different platform because you’re ready to make a change and it requires a new website, you will lose all of that content that you have created and all of the SEO juice that content has produced.

It is important to know that if you’re going to be in business for another 10, 15 years or more, you can be sure that technology is going to change. The best way to avoid losing your content is to create your blog on a WordPress platform and “attach it” to your main website through a subdomain or a subdirectory of your domain. I know this sounds technical, and it is, but it’s really not a big deal for your webmaster or your hosting company to do.

If your domain registrar tells you it can’t be done, consider changing providers. You can leave the site where it is and just transfer the domain somewhere else. You need to be the one in control of all of your properties, including your domain, so the services you use have to serve your business.

The advantage of WordPress

WordPress started as a blogging platform 20 years ago. It has evolved and grown to be the most flexible platform there is, which allows businesses to grow and never have to change website platforms.

I first started using WordPress around 2008 when I started a blog for my distributor business—not that I knew what I was doing. Through the years, we redesigned our website a few times and never lost the content. Our positioning, which our content helped create, was one of the factors that contributed to the successful sale of my business.

Remember that all of that content that you’re creating becomes a part of the assets of your business, and as such, you must protect it.

I hope this was helpful. If you need any help in setting up a blog, we’re ready to help!

This article was first published in Action Marketing blog. Action Marketing specializes in SEO and strategic digital marketing for distributors. For more marketing articles, free webinars and guides specific to the promo business, visit the Resources section of ActionMarketingCo.com.