DotNeil.com

If you’ve decided to blog, you need a platform for doing so. There’s many options available - but if you just want to get on with it, sign-up with a free blogging service such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com. If you can create a LinkedIn account, you’re more than qualified to operate a blog from either of the aforementioned services. The only thing to watch with hosted blogging services is to find one which will let you export your blog data. If you sign-up for a free service as a temporary solution, you really need the ability to export the data in the event you decide to move to a proprietary set-up. You won’t want to lose your blog posts and visitor comments by making a transition to a new blog - it’s this content that counts.

Customised Blogs

As previously mentioned, blogs are available for free from a fully hosted service, but these are lacking in customisable options, e.g. original visual designs. Most free blogging services will only offer a limited number of themes for your blog, and if you want your blog to stand out (or even fit in with your company colour scheme), you’ll need to pay extra on some services (e.g. WordPress.com) and also have the necessary skills to create a CSS based blog design. On the other end of the scale, blogs can be hosted on your own domain name, completely customised (in both content format, layout, and visual design), and even fully integrated with an existing on-line prescence, i.e. the corporate website. Leaning towards this end of the scale gets my vote. Invest some time into defining the blog format, make it fit in with the rest of your branding, find a direction for the messages you will be sending out and, most importantly, find someone who can send out these messages and feel passionately about what they are saying. If you make all of these steps, your blog is much more likely to receive the attention and community that all bloggers aim to achieve. It will look different to the average blog, create some cohesion with your company branding, and say the right things in order to draw in the right people.

My Blog

NeilCauldwell.com is my very own example of a customised blog. I use my own domain, my own visual styling, and a heavily customised version of the WordPress software. You could go all the way and create your own customised content management system (CMS), but when there’s an excellent open source solution in the form of WordPress, there’s little reason for constructing your own. WordPress has great support, great plugins, and I highly recommend it if you want complete control over your blog.

If you’ve looked around my site, you’ll have noticed several features which really liven up the experience. Top of the list is the MyBlogLog ‘Recent Readers’ widget. I like social networks - they help me to connect with other people over much larger distance than off-line networking does. MyBlogLog takes some of the good things from social networks and applies them to blogs. First hand experience says this widget makes a lot of difference to building a blog community - it’s great to get a visual indication of your visitors and readers. If you opt for a custom blog installation, then the MyBlogLog can, and probably should, be installed.

Invest Resources

A fully customised solution suits what I want and need from a blog, but deciding on what work’s for you is down to your own ambitions. If you think your blog is going to a complete success (if you don’t I’d recommend investing your time elsewhere), arrange time with the marketing department, or whom ever runs the company site, and make a push for full integration with the company site. Put the blog on home page if you can, it’ll give regular visitors something to read, and also make the site feel used. The more centralised a blog is to the company, the more likely you are to use it, and using a blog is a significant part of making it a success. It’s not a bad idea to invest time & resources into a blog, and to use these investments as just another good reason to make blog posts.

I haven’t even looked at corporate blog providers or alternatives to the technologies mentioned - but WordPress, social widgets (possibly MyBlogLog), and pushing for main site affiliation/integration are a good combination, at least until enterprise 2.0 applications have had a chance to settle in. I intend to come back to these when I have had a chance to test a handful; many of them have integrated blogging solutions and collaborative applications, and should really be the next step for corporate blogs.

Side note: Feedburner says I have some subscribers - if it’s telling the truth, it’d be great to hear from you regarding your own blogs, the technology behind them, and why the set-up works for you….