Choosing a Blog Platform - Pt 1 of Architecting Your Blogsite
Over the past two posts, I've been talking about blog platform. There's an ongoing debate in parts of the blogosphere about whether blogs need PR (Public Relations) or SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and whether they equate. Personally, I feel that some sort of intelligent promotional campaign is crucial for blogs, to compete with the approximately 70,000 new blogs that are estimated to be created daily.
One way to build PR is to build not just a blog but an online community, where readers can comment and maybe even have their own (relevant) blog with which you can build trust. Having polls and even quizzes are another way to boost your "sticky" factor in drawing readers back. Several blog platform plugins allow for communication between readers via any of chatboxes, shoutboxes, and private message boxes.
Not all blogs are suitable for a community, but many are. If it's appropriate, allowing readers to contribute recipes or reviews (books, movies, music, software, hardware) is a way for them to participate, and a motivation for them to return.
A drawback in building a community that is more than just your own blog is that monetization has to be handled carefully. If you are not contributing at least as much content as your readers, but are taking all the ad revenue, you may lose people.
One possibility is to revenue share the advertising. Several blog platforms let you decide on what percentage of pageviews should go to the site owner (and the rest to the author). Some forum plugins allow this as well.
Revenue sharing allows you to reward front-page contributors - who you would typically moderate - to encourage repeat contributions. I've previously checked with the Google AdSense and Chitika eMinimalls team to be sure that this is okay.
Building a community is only one way of producing PR for your blog. When you choose your blog platform, find a solution that works best for you. I personally prefer being able to add plugins as necessary. What I don't like is adding software from several different sources, some of which may not be compatible.
As I've said in a previous post, I've currently focused my attention on Drupal, as it has all the features I need, for several of my blogs and that of clients. These needs outweigh the technical learning curve, and there's a supportive community to answer questions.
Another good community-building blog platform, and which is an easy install as well, is WordPress. It has a smaller learning curve than Drupal, and is recommended for those of you that have less technical webmastering skills, and only need to manage one blog on a single domain at a time. Because of my own complex publishing needs, it's not suitable for me, but it has tons of powerful plugins, and lots of friendly community support.
In part 2 of this series, I'll discuss what to do if you plan to change blog platforms.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogger, multi blogs, blogging platform, adsense, ad revenue
One way to build PR is to build not just a blog but an online community, where readers can comment and maybe even have their own (relevant) blog with which you can build trust. Having polls and even quizzes are another way to boost your "sticky" factor in drawing readers back. Several blog platform plugins allow for communication between readers via any of chatboxes, shoutboxes, and private message boxes.
Not all blogs are suitable for a community, but many are. If it's appropriate, allowing readers to contribute recipes or reviews (books, movies, music, software, hardware) is a way for them to participate, and a motivation for them to return.
A drawback in building a community that is more than just your own blog is that monetization has to be handled carefully. If you are not contributing at least as much content as your readers, but are taking all the ad revenue, you may lose people.
One possibility is to revenue share the advertising. Several blog platforms let you decide on what percentage of pageviews should go to the site owner (and the rest to the author). Some forum plugins allow this as well.
Revenue sharing allows you to reward front-page contributors - who you would typically moderate - to encourage repeat contributions. I've previously checked with the Google AdSense and Chitika eMinimalls team to be sure that this is okay.
Building a community is only one way of producing PR for your blog. When you choose your blog platform, find a solution that works best for you. I personally prefer being able to add plugins as necessary. What I don't like is adding software from several different sources, some of which may not be compatible.
As I've said in a previous post, I've currently focused my attention on Drupal, as it has all the features I need, for several of my blogs and that of clients. These needs outweigh the technical learning curve, and there's a supportive community to answer questions.
Another good community-building blog platform, and which is an easy install as well, is WordPress. It has a smaller learning curve than Drupal, and is recommended for those of you that have less technical webmastering skills, and only need to manage one blog on a single domain at a time. Because of my own complex publishing needs, it's not suitable for me, but it has tons of powerful plugins, and lots of friendly community support.
In part 2 of this series, I'll discuss what to do if you plan to change blog platforms.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogger, multi blogs, blogging platform, adsense, ad revenue
