Five of the Best Blogging Platforms for Beginning Bloggers

by Rahimah Sultan

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What is the best blogging platform?

Through research, I’ve found the following list to be five of the best blogging platforms for beginning bloggers.

There are many popular options to choose from including Wix.com, Tumblr, Weebly, Blogspot, Joomla, Typepad, Ghost, Squarespace, and others.

We’ll focus on only five (FREE) platforms for beginning bloggers.

1. Medium

How to get started

Medium has several ways to register.

Go to Medium.com, and to avoid having to remember yet another password Click the “Get started” button.

Choose to sign in with Google or a social media account then click “OK.”

For $0 you get a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) minimalist blogging platform.

After you join, click the avatar (floating head) and select new story. You’ll land on an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

There’s no trial and error or guessing.

Medium’s pros:

Built-in audience of over 60 million readers!
Good for all blog types
Your blog looks professional
More business-friendly than WordPress.com
Monetization is possible with the Medium Partner Program


Medium’s Cons:

Little to no customization. Your blog will look like all other Medium blogs. Medium offers stats, but you can’t link to your Google account to use Google Analytics


2. WordPress.com

How to get started

Go to WordPress.com and click the “Get Started” button.

Enter your email address, a username, and a strong password.

For step 2, enter some details about your blog.

In step 3, enter an address for your site.

Start typing and you’ll get a list of options. Select the “Free” one.
Then, pick a plan. Again, select the “Free” option.

The “free for life” plan has numerous features.

For $0 you get:


A free WordPress.com subdomain
“Jetpack” essential features
Community support
Dozens of free themes/templates


A domain is what comes after the https:// at the top of your browser.

In the case of WordPress, the domain name is wordpress.com.

So what’s a subdomain? If the domain is the parent, the subdomain is the child. Anything between the “https://” and the domain is a subdomain.

Some examples:

alumni.harvard.edu

braves.mlb.com

finance.yahoo.com


So, if I wanted to start “Marketing Success Review” on WordPress.com, my subdomain might be
marketingsuccessreview.com.

Readers would type marketingsuccessreview.com.wordpress.com in their browser to browser to view my site.

If you’re a business blog, this is not a good look. But for a sandbox blog where you’re testing ideas, it’ll be okay.

Jetpack Essential Features

Unless you upgrade to their “business” plan, WordPress.com doesn’t permit third-party plugins. So, if hear about an amazing SEO tool plugin, you’re out of luck until you upgrade to a self-hosted version.

Nevertheless, the free plan does come with many built-in WordPress plugins that offer everything from spam protection to contact forms.

Community Support

Perhaps WordPress.com’s best feature (beyond the pricing) is its extensive support system and knowledgebase.

You can find practically anything you need to know about using their free platform in WordPress.com’s Support section. To call their collection of how-to articles merely “extensive” would be an understatement.

At the WordPress.com forum, you can see if anyone else had you same question. If you can’t find the solution, post the question yourself.

Free Themes

WordPress has dozens of free themes from which to choose for design flexibility that isn’t available with Medium and the other free platforms.

Although WordPress.com offers so much for free, it is not for anyone who wants to present a professional business blog.

WordPress.com Pros:

Suitable for a variety of blog types
Solid support articles and forum
More design options than other free platforms
Shorter learning curve if you choose to transition to self-hosted WordPress later
Website builder that’s good for more than just blogs
Premium plans are available, for those interested


WordPress.com Cons:

Not ideal for businesses
You can’t install premium or free WordPress themes and plugins (or another blogging tool) from third parties
Lack of community makes it difficult to build an audience from scratch
WordPress advertising and banners may appear next to your blog content


3. LinkedIn

How to get started


Go to LinkedIn.com

Enter your name, your email, and a strong password. Then click the “Join now” button.

You’ll be asked to answer a few more questions.

For zero money you get a free-to-use publishing platform that’s focused on professionals and business contacts.

If you’re already a LinkedIn member, publishing content will be easier than WordPress.com, Medium, or any other blogging platform, because it’s built right into your LinkedIn profile.

Click the “Write an article” button and start writing.


LinkedIn Pros:

Clean, simple design
Good for professionals and business blogging
Built-in audience of like-minded professionals
Ease of use — publishing platform is built right into your LinkedIn profile


LinkedIn Cons:

Very few customization options
Only good for professionals and businesses
You can’t schedule posts for future publishing


If you want to write posts to reach professionals and business, LinkedIn is the best free blogging platform available.


4. Instagram.com

How to get started

On your personal computer, go to Instagram.com where you’ll see the log in page.

Enter your phone number or email address, your name, your desired username, and a strong password. Then click the “Sign up” button.

Or, if you have a Facebook account, skip all that and click the “Log in with Facebook” button.

You could also do the above using the Instagram app on your mobile device.

For $0 you get a very popular social media platform that’s perfect for microblogging.

An example of microblogging is:

Uploading a great image such as a photo from your camera or a Creative Commons image that fits your current mood.

Upload your image to Instagram.

Then write a short blog post stating what you want about the image.

Anyone who focuses on highly visual topics should use Instagram.

You can have great success using Instagram as a microblogging platform if you can combine impressive visuals with short posts that pack a punch.

Instagram Pros:

Great for visual topics
Ideal platform for microblogging (short posts)
Great if your target audience primarily uses mobile devices

Instagram Cons:

Limited to 2,200 characters
Limited to one hyperlink (in your bio)
If your target audience isn’t on mobile, it’s less than ideal


5. Guest Blogging


How to get started

The best platform for building your authority is guest blogging.

The first way to get started is to determine if the blogs you like to read, (that are relevant to your niche) accept guest post submissions.

Browse their “About” or “Start” pages. Try their “Contact” page. Sometimes, they’ll make it easy and have a “Contribute” or “Write for Us” link in their navigation menu or footer.


The second approach involves using Google’s and Twitter’s search capability.

You can query a topic (for example: “blogging”) together with a search phrase (“write for us”).

Not all sites are worth your effort. Click on the results that look promising, browse them, and see if they’re a good fit. Skip the ones that aren’t and bookmark the matches.

Continue with similar queries.

Do the same on Twitter.

Type “guest post”, “guest blog post”, “guest article”, etc. in the search box. Twitter will give you a list of tweets where people used those exact phrases.

For $0 you get the chance to put your words in front of already-existing, relevant audiences and a chance to acquire fans for life.

You should guest blog if you want to build credibility and boost your authority.

You should NOT if you want to build up your own blog.

Guest blogging is no longer a great way to increase traffic to your blog.


Guest Blogging Pros:

Write for interested, targeted audiences
Fastest way to build your authority and reputation


Guest Blogging Cons:


Fastest way to destroy your authority and reputation
Not an efficient method for getting traffic to your own website
Getting published on quality sites is hard work
Time-consuming — may be hard to fit into busy schedules


WordPress.org

Technically, there’s one more free option.

WordPress.org software — the same software used by WordPress.com — is also free for everyone.

However, WordPress.org’s software isn’t actually free once you add up the other expenses.

To use the software you’ll need a blog hosting provider (aka web hosting services), you’ll need to register a domain name (some hosting providers give you a free domain, but you should keep  your domain registrar and web host separate), you’ll have to install WordPress on your own web host, and you’ll also need your own domain name. All of these cost money.

This is something you’ll eventually want to do, but not right now when you’re just getting started.

So how will you know when you’re ready? One source recommends making the switch once you reach a 20% outreach success rate.

The best blogging platform depends on what you want to accomplish. There’s no one platform that fits everyone.

This article has covered Five of the Best Blogging Platforms for Beginning Bloggers.

It all boils down to what suits your needs and situation.


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