What is the Best Blogging Platform for Business?

When you’re ready to launch your business blog, there are several key considerations to keep in mind. A successful business blog is built with numerous components, including quality content, strategized blog topics, keywords, and of course—the blogging platform.

However, before you even consider your first blog topic, you’ll need to decide on the best blogging platform for your needs. The best blogging platform for business is somewhat subjective, but there are certainly a few choices that can help you achieve your blogging goals.

Let’s first discuss what truly makes a blogging platform the best business blogging platform.

What do You Need in a Blogging Platform? Considering Your Top Priorities

A blogging platform is designed to function as the home where your blog lives. Many blogging platforms are installed directly onto the business owner’s website and accessed through a dashboard.

The dashboards, features, and functionality of the blogging platforms vary by design—and choosing the right one for your needs will help make blogging a simple part of your content marketing strategy.

There are several priorities for business owners to keep in mind when picking the best blogging platform. These priorities include:

Price of the blogging platform
Design or coding knowledge
Access to HTML code (if desired)
Templates
Availability of themes and plugins to enhance the appearance of your blog
The ability to self-host, which maximizes maximize web traffic and SEO efforts

Overall, in the world of best blogging platforms, hassle-free is the way to go.

What Blogging Platforms Are Available for Business Owners?

Business owners have an extensive selection to choose from when they’re searching for the best blogging platform. These are three of the most widely used platforms by business owners and marketers alike:

Ghost

Ghost is a free open-source blogging platform that is written in JavaScript code. Other popular blogging platforms, such as WordPress, use PHP. The benefit of this code is that makes the application very fast, since it’s developed with Node.js applications.

But don’t let all of this tech talk scare you. Ghost is a user-friendly platform that can be managed by those who aren’t very tech savvy. In fact, Ghost doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, which is entirely by design. You won’t find a lot of configuration options, and the reasoning behind this is so you can focus on content creation and publishing.

One of Ghost’s most notable features is its split screen design inside of the dashboard. This is where marketers can see text they are typing on the left hand side of the screen, and the preview on the right hand side of the screen.

The split screen is beneficial for keeping an eye on your formatting and catching as many mistakes as possible before you hit publish—which can help save time for editing down the road.

How Much Does Ghost Blogging Platform Cost?

As far as price, the downloadable version is free. If you choose to move forward with Ghost Pro, you’ll pay a monthly fee that ranges from $19 to $199 per month. These prices coincide with the number of web visits (views) that you expect to receive per month, the number of blogs that you publish per month, access to phone tech support, and more.

If you choose the basic plan at $19 per month, you will be allowed to publish 1 blog per month with up to 25,000 views. Ghost Pro also includes free setup with server maintenance/backups done for you.

Is Ghost the Best Blogging Platform for Business?

Overall, Ghost has a very clean interface that allows business owners to dive right into their content. It strips blogging down to its bare essentials and keeps the experience of blogging very straight-to-the-point without any fuss.

LinkedIn Pulse

If you’re a business owner or marketer, it’s a safe bet to say that you have a presence on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a significant social platform when it comes to expanding your potential client reach and growing your network.

Not only is LinkedIn the ultimate social media platform for professionals today, it also can supplement your blogging efforts for maximized exposure.

Furthermore, blogging on LinkedIn pulse is completely free.

Writing a blog post on LinkedIn Pulse is almost as simple as logging into your account. When you log into your LinkedIn account, you’ll see a button with “write an article” in orange.

Once you click “write an article” you are immediately redirected to the page where you can craft your new blog.

You’ll notice there are several features that you can use when you’re blogging on LinkedIn pulse. These features include:

H1 – Largest header tag that makes your text very prominent. Don’t overdo it with this tag—use it for important headings.
H2 – The second largest header tag that works the same as H1, only slightly smaller.
Quotation Mark – This option inserts a block quote

The next set is for font customization, which includes bold, italic, underline, and cross-out text. You’ll also notice a few buttons with horizontal lines. These lines will allow you to center your text or align to the left. There is also an option to create a numbered or bulleted list.

Don’t forget to add an image to your blog post. LinkedIn recommends that your blog image should be at least 700×400 pixels.

Once you upload your new post to LinkedIn Pulse, your connections are notified of your new content. This is a convenient feature that can help drive more traffic to your blogs.

If you’re unsure about where to start with blogging, LinkedIn pulse is the best blogging platform to test the waters. However, keep in mind that you’ll be losing a lot of key benefits that you’d receive if you blog from your own website.

If you’d like the full step-by-step guide on how to get started using LinkedIn for business blogging, take a look at the video below:

WordPress

WordPress took the blogging world by storm back in the early 2000s. It was initially designed to be a bare-bones blogging platform such as Ghost, but it has evolved into perhaps the best blogging platform for business that’s available today.

Installing WordPress can be accomplished in the snap of a finger with many web hosts. For example, BlueHost has a one-click option to install this platform and have you up and running within minutes. GoDaddy also has a simple process for installing WordPress on your hosting account, where you click “install now” and complete the on-screen fields.

You’ll simply need to select the domain name where you’ll want to host the account, choose your directory file, and enter a username, e-mail, and confirmation e-mail address.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: What’s the Difference?

If you decide to explore the world of WordPress, you’ll quickly discover two variations: wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

WordPress gives a handy chart where you can see the difference between the two. The major difference is that WordPress.org is hosted on your own business website—which is the ideal choice for professional business blogging.

Exploring the Wonders of the WordPress Dashboard

WordPress has an extensive dashboard that is designed for you to customize your business blog. You can customize nearly any portion of your blog and website through this dashboard.

Since this isn’t a tutorial on how to customize your WordPress theme, we’ll just give a quick overview of the dashboard and take a peek into the blogging platform itself.

When you first install WordPress and log in, you’ll be greeted with this dashboard. The magic with blogging happens behind the “posts” tab on the left. You’ll click “add new” on the pop out menu to enter the blogging platform.

This is the area where you will write your blog post. As you can see, there are many more features and functions than what you will find on the LinkedIn publisher platform. You have all of the features from LinkedIn Pulse, plus more.

You can also install extra add-ons to your WordPress blogging dashboard, such as social media integration and more.

How Much Does WordPress Cost?

The answer to this depends on which variation of WordPress that you choose to use. If you choose WordPress.org, the cost is free. However, you will be assigned with a WordPress.org domain name, such as MikesForkLiftRepair.WordPress.org—which isn’t the most elegant web address to give to customers for blogging or marketing purposes.

On the other hand, the WordPress.org variation only costs as much as your yearly hosting account. Some web hosting accounts cost as low as $3.95 per month, such as BlueHost.